Content Musings for Capitalists

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.