Another Digital Innovator Bows Out

While the tech world considered life AJ (After Jobs), another digital pioneer of no small note also decided to call it a day – Jim Romenesko.

Perhaps unknown to most, Romenesko, as The New York Times reports it, “was a blogger before there were blogs.”  Working primarily to aggregate news by and for journalists – and provide the occasional insight and gossip about newsrooms across the country – Romenesko came to feel that aggregating had grown boring and tedious – that anyone could do it.  On his new site, www.jimromenesko.com, he will concentrate on something that sometimes is in short supply on-line – actual reporting.

So while both traditional and new media will devote reams of mirrored coverage to the departure of Steve Jobs, let’s take a moment to consider what Jim Romenesko has meant to the digital world and what the end of his news aggregating site signifies.

It’s a good reminder that even those things that once upon a time seemed so bright and shiny  – like news aggregating sites, blogs and even Twitter –  can lose their innovative edge, become cog like and need to be Rebooted.  The one constant in our digital environment is continual change and innovation.  So if you are doing the same things you were doing 6 months ago, and not in the process of ongoing re-invention, you’re probably falling behind.

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Dean DeBiase is the Chairman and CEO of entertainment.com, the leading provider of the most recognized and purchased consumer discount, promotion and coupon service. He is known as an expansion phase CEO with a track record scaling emerging growth companies and embedding entrepreneurial-grade talent into multi-national corporations. He’s a co-author of the best-selling The Big Moo.