In the new issue of Digiday magazine, ‘game over’ for Facebook and media

The media world, seemingly perpetually in flux, is in the midst of what appears a more significant period of upheaval, with tech giants sucking up the majority of ad dollars, digital advertising plagued by a lack of transparency and controversial content, companies taking a hard look at their role when it comes to workplace fairness and cultural impact, and the need to stake out a global claim taking on new urgency.

For our cover of the new issue of Digiday magazine, we turned to early video games and Donkey Kong. We wanted to show, in a tongue in cheek way, the current mood of publishers as Facebook continues to shift its often awkward and overbearing relationship with media. We carried the theme throughout the issue: Look for tributes to Frogger, Qbert, Pac-Man and Punch-Out, among other classics.

Of course, fixing massive industries isn’t as simple as hitting a button and starting the game over. But as we show in our ninth issue, media and marketing are in ways large and starting anew from an era where scale trumped loyalty, reach obscured impact and the short term dominated the long term. We see the media and marketing world becoming less reliant on Facebook, more transparent, increasingly globalized, and belatedly more inclusive and representative. These themes run throughout the issue, with a “Master Mechanics” section highlighting those in the trenches mastering the tactical expertise that will define what comes next.

Subscribe to Digiday+ for only $7 per week by this Friday, March 9, to receive a copy of our ninth issue.