Everything’s changed for publishers again, will they ever change?

A year ago my blog challenged publishers to finally pay attention to their readers. I haven’t blogged for a year because I was tired of chiding them on their reactions to every new technology, business model and user group…which was circling the wagons. Circling the wagons with  pay walls, DRM, lawsuits and even declaring the dot.com crash proof that content must be paid for by readers.

First they didn’t want content on the internet…claiming cannibalization and who would ever want to read online anyway.

Then they wanted to charge per article online.

Then they battled aggregators as if they were the evil empire (even though they delivered 10 to 100x more readers than any single publisher could garner).

Then they charged subscriptions and of course pointing out the exception (as the rule) of WSJ charging for content.

Then hated aggregators again in the form of Google (because they delivered audience and revenue).

Blah…blah…blah.

SO, how will they respond to the 1-2-3 punch of the last 12 months:

1. Proliferation of large screen smartphones as a viable delivery medium.
2. Tablets creating an even better medium to view content…than smartphones AND PAPER!
3. The attack on the input side of their business – crowd sourcing of news.
4. Okay…even bigger, the emergence of the greatest community organizer of all time…Facebook.

So now, a variety of viable business models are creating audiences of readers that publishers can only complain about. They are getting scooped by citizen-journalists (picture of USAIR on the Hudson) and they are still discussing pay walls, repurposing text and trying “build it and they will come” strategies…and of course deriding the grammatical errors and defending the paper medium.

If you had a business that had heavy printing costs, salaries for those with 24 hour deadlines, had to deliver the print product door to door, and got your revenue from classified ads (competing with Craigslist and placement ads from struggling brick and mortar companies , WHAT WOULD YOU DO? 

The rules for the capitalism and content game are simple. You need a critical mass of readers to support whatever business model (that aligns value to the readers’ perspective) AND you need a critical mass of content (from each readers’ perspective). Without both…it just does not matter what your argument is.

SO, how do we save publishing and more importantly keep journalism healthy. My next post will address this question, but “circling the wagons” only postpones the indians from scalping your entire clan. Okay…just ranting without some ideas is as bad as the publishers circling the wagons. Here are some ideas for news organizations:

1. Make the Sports Illustrated iPad prototype your starting point – design to the medium. (actually the iPad has some pretty good apps, namely the Economist, USA Today…)
2. Focus on expertise and scale your business on curation not creation.
3. Aggregate and curate.
4. Customize the individual’s experience
5. Deliver in real-time.
6. Integrate real-time news with in-depth, drill-down analysis and research by partnering (Lexis-Nexis for everyone, similar to what MarketWatch.com has done for financial reporting.)
7. Regain the trusted stature journalism needs (currently polls have you with used car salesman and politicians)
8. Become a trusted source for facts.
9. Hire business people to figure out the business models that will thrive.
10. To hell with your current shareholders. Map your future.

What’s Next for Publishing – pay attention to the end-user

What’s next for publishers is being dictated by the end-users (used to be readers), much more so than ever before. In the news business, the editor of your local paper did the filtering, selection and slant…hoping to execute such that they were able to keep the most people satisfied most of the time. This can apply to any publishing…it’s just more acute in the news biz with their biz model being the first to die (classified lost to Craig’s List) and their reputation sullied by political slant.

Business models will sort themselves out over time (while producing a few publishing tombstones), but what publishers really have to figure out is that the user is in control and they are informed and smart. To succeed publishers will have to meet each user’s specific needs, and not pursue an average-user strategy.

Getting the right content to the right person at the right time in the right context are the criteria, always have been, it’s just that paper-based mediums won’t suffice anymore.

Publishers need to master aggregation, multimedia, interactivity, deep and shallow options simultaneously, custom filtering by user, multiple perspective (vs. slant) and any/all electronic delivery mechanisms.

Other than that, it’s easy.

Paper loving fools forecasting for new media.

It never ceases to amaze me that individuals and I mean single individuals with only their life experiences and perspectives continue to believe that newspapers and magazines can continue as a viable business model on paper. It kills trees, adds pollutants to the environment and the audience for paper is dying off, one person at a time.  

Then they will have no one left.  The newspapers will never be able to compete with their infrastructure costs AND continuing to base their business models on what is free and thriving on the Internet…think Craigs List. Which would you rather do, squint down a page of micro-print searching a list of ads that no longer has the full inventory of choices of what you are looking for  OR go to Craig’s List and do a search and exchange a private email.

Wasting trees advertising for paper-based classified.

 Yes, I like to read the paper paper in the morning. But I didn’t grow up with smart phones with more memory and storage capacity than an IBM 360. The iPad will do to content distribution what iTunes did to records and CDs. Not today, not tomorrow, but if you were running a publishing business…you’d at least want to try to serve the growing market not just a shrinking one.

Market leaders often have developed huge overheads in their path to greatness…then the overhead becomes an anchor as new technologies come and supplant the old. Every industry has dealt with it. Autos, camera/film, transportation, communication.

Aim for where the market is going to be or begin working on  your exit-game.

New twists on the “Content is King” mantra.

“Content is king” is the mantra of the ostrich-like publishers. Yes, great content differentiates itself from poor content, but the value equation falls apart when you try to differentiate “good enough” from great to a mass audience who you somehow want to monetize. It gets worse if you refuse to deliver your content where and how your future audience wants to consume it. The old audience for paper is litterly dying one customer at a time…everyday.

Richard Hull, President of Blowtorch Studios, in his keynote at Buying and Selling EContent (#BSeC10) made the astute observation that “distribution is king” until a market has been firmly established…then content is king. I believe that to be true…except that once the market is flooded…then the content becomes a commodity and difficult to monetize. Which means for publishers…if you come to the party late…it will be your last.

Bottom line, Publishers would be better served if they had as their mantra: “The reader is king.”.

Murdoch again threatens Gooogle at Press Club

According to WebProNews  http://bit.ly/aEvVpV Rupert is again threatening to stop Google from STEALING NEWS. It is so unfair…but no one is stopping Rupert from hiring boy and girl scouts to deliver his paper-based news copy. That’s the model he loves dearly. Pay to deliver the paper right to the consumers door. The Washington Post, ironically costs per day almost the same as a stamp for a first class letter.

SO, Mr. Murdoch, you have been giving away news all along. Why are you complaining now. Delivery to your consumers can be worldwide and with nearly zero incremental cost…no stamp…just have some IP pipe. Your audience is expanded infinitely. Nice to happen in any business model. Now all you have to do is figure out how to get people to come to your web sites.

Gee…how much would you pay to send consumers to your web site? The same as you do to have it delivered to their door? (less of course the miniscule IP pipe cost). What if some company with a goofy name like Yahoo or Google came to you and said I will deliver your news (not your stupid papers and the trees they kill) to consumers who actually want and are asking for news…how much would you pay?

Now that Google and Yahoo arguably are free…why are you bitching?

When Samuel B. Morse invented the telegraph and news started to travel via telegraph. In May 1845, James Gordon Bennet, editor of the New York Herald, wrote that many newspapers would be put out of business by this new communications technology. Curiously he got the 21st century phrase backwards when he said: “The scissors-and-paste journalism of the country will be annihilated.” He did say that if papers provided commentary and analysis, they would survive!

As the Reuters story goes…it used the backbone of the telegraph network to get started and become overnight a new dominant force in news. Rupert should give up on the old business models and instead of burying his news in some dark hole that no one will ever find or read…he needs to do what every other business has had to do since the beginning of time when new technology comes along…use the Internet technology (of which search is now an integral part of) in a better way than everyone else or face extinction.

(The Economist of December 19, 2009 is the source of my historical facts.)

Does the fight for local eyeballs mean the end of AP?

Ken Doctor’s article: “Remaking of the U.S. News Landscape: New York Times Local Experiments Grow” http://bit.ly/c0OnEg  had a very interesting item that I conclude might be the end of the Associated Press…or at least the original founding principle. Ken said: 

“…local dailies are increasingly becoming purely local, and the national papers are getting local, adding local print editions, getting hyperlocal, finding ways to serve their readers’ (and advertisers’) needs beyond national / global.”

The AP is an association of local news providers contributing to a pool of content so that they can use/publish each others’ news, local or national. If a local paper believes Ken analysis, why would they ever want to share their content with a large national paper trying to get “hyperlocal” in my territory? AP may need a new mission.

The local challenge is critical mass…of both content and eyeballs. Lacking either one, business models fail. Maybe the news-platform isn’t the right user aggregation platform since they just can gather a critical mass of eyeballs. Besides, Angie’s List has to be more useful and credible than any targeted ad in a newspaper or their site.

Perhaps the cell phone  combined with Google and GPS is a lot more appropriate platform and everyone else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!

My session at Buying and Selling EContent April 20th: ”Whose Eyeballs are they anyway?” will address some of these issues.

NY Times Death Spiral move?

NYTimes announces plan to charge readers for access to online content—http://bit.ly/8GqWDt
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This is a stop-gap measure that will generate news but will not save the Times from having to get serious about reinventing its business model. This death spiral move is not so apparent for a major-major brand such as the Times. It’s the rest of the newspaper industry and more importantly the fate of journalism that is at stake. Do some reading…the telegraph was supposed to bring death to the newspapers…until they used it themselves to bring “real-time” news directly to the editors at the local papers. This should be hearlded as the best time in history to start a newspackaging (can’t use trees anymore) company.  Think about it: world-wide distribution at zero cost, instant reporters on the ground at EVERY event world-wide (who got the pic of USAIR in the Hudson?) all you have to do is get back to editing and packaging what the consumer wants. Hint: biased editting, classifieds and stock price pages…isn’t what we want.

Consumers pay for the delivery of their news…always have. Get over it Murdoch et al and begin packaging…err okay NYT you just made this announcement and in the right direction. Hopefully, Yasmin will figure this out:”
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Message from Scott Heekin-Canedy: A Masthead Announcement
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Yasmin Namini as General Manager of a new Reader Applications business segment within The New York Times Media Group. Yasmin will add this title to her current role as SVP, Marketing and Circulation for NYTMG. The New York Times Media Group currently comprises four business segments: the newspaper, NYTimes.com, the International Herald Tribune and News Services.

Murdoch forgets about journalist and readers

In Rupert Murdoch’s recent WSJ editorial (from comments to FTC) he admits some failings, holds on to pay to read mentality and totally forgets about journalism’s role in newspapers demise and journalism’s potential role in news organizations (not paper) rise from the ashes. http://bit.ly/8qjYs5  

Some clear thinking in his editorial (1-awards do not equal customer satisfaction, 2-the Internet actually brings an unprecedented opportunity for journalists and news organizations with unlimited audience and source potential, 3-the old model was based on quasi-monopolies, 4-government should stay out).

 BUT as usual, very dense thinking too. Most egregious is his total lack of recognition that the journalists (and editors) themselves are of equal blame to the demise. They are not “fair and balanced”. They do not keep opinion to the editorial pages. Front page/buried page bias dominates on key issues. Headlines mislead (like Rupert’s freedom headline) and facts are buried away from the slant. Why else are journalists listed close to car sales people and politicians on respect and trust surveys?

 Journalism is key to freedom. Journalism must survive (perhaps re-born with the original tenets in place), but it will take journalists, editors and publishers committed to facts, democracy and we the people. They should be helping to dampen the current (nation paralyzing) polarization on key issues, not contributing to it.

 As for fighting the Google’s tsunami of readers, get a life Mr. Murdoch. Readers are your life-blood (who you and your newspapers have ignored for years). Google’s delivery of readers is the ONLY way you will attract the critical mass of readers to your sites that you have to have to survive.

Can anyone feel sorry for Washington Post?

Maybe the solution for such business incompetence is the same for our sorry (and also disrepected) congress. FIRE THEM ALL. This Internet distruction of the newspapers may be the best thing that has ever happened to journalism. It will force a new and smarter business model. Witness the 2008 winner of the Knight News Challenge: New Journalism funding model. Community funding for news they actually want to read! Knight News Challenge 2008 winner. http://bit.ly/D3sKN 

Why am I on a rampage this morning. Open the sports section of the WP. Check out the MLB standings. See the little “x” next to the Orioles. That “x” means: “We don’t give a damn about our readers.” (Forget that its the end of the season and they are in last place. This has happened all season.)

WHY…the “x” means there was a late game and presumably too late to update the standings. Okay…I get it. Physical papers have to be put to bed so they can be printed and delivered to our door step by the time coffee is brewing.

SO THEN TELL ME WHY THEY HAVE A STORY ON THE PREVIOUS PAGE THAT IS ABOUT THAT LATE NIGHT GAME. The story even has the new won-lost tally. So if it could be in an edited story, why in the hell couldn’t a table be updated at the same time. The answer is they don’t care about their readers.

If they were run like a business and one that had to actually compete, the person responsible for the sports section would be summarily fired. How can you have an article on one page about how the Orioles dodged the 100 loss season milestone and have the “I don’t care” X on the standings page?

Well wake up Post. You have to compete. You have to want readers. You have to respect readers. Show it by delivering what the readers want.

BTW…good move teaming up with Bloomberg for business news. Hopefully, you’ll put what resources you have left over to cover local business instead of cutting. We’ll see.

Disruptive technologies is nothing new.

Every industry has had to deal with technology disruption. Sometimes its even regulation that disrupts an industry, but it’s not new. In 1896 Congress passed the “Rural Free Delivery Act of 1896″. This ensured that all mail would get delivered even to remote areas. Equate this with regulation requiring telcos to serve the mid-west where homes are miles from each other. It would have been more cost effective to abandon those markets and just serve the high density cities.

Anyway, Sears-Roebuck the year before put out their 532 page mail-order catalog. Imagine how this disintermediated the general store. The customers got wider and newer selections, delivered to their door at competitive prices including delivery. Was there a government bail out for local stores? Did local stores go out of business? Did they have to change…probably. Service and fairer margins and providing credit were probably their value-adds.

My point is, it is no different today. Capitalism rewards change…change that the purchaser wants…not those that whine the most. So journalists…stop whinning, stop riding the broken tangible newspaper model and find a business model that delivers what your readers want.

Better, faster and cheaper communication is better. Distribution is free and your potential audience is world-wide…perfect for your mission. Never has journalism been positioned so well to deliver value.