Shift happens: globalisation and the Information Age

Do you think today's titanic changes are too much for your newsmedia company? If so, you'll hate what's about to happen.

Click the third-generation “Shift Happens” video below from Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod focusing on globalisation and the Information Age.

It is my understanding this was modified for a Sony BMG executive meeting in Rome in late 2008.

Click here to view where much of the “Shift Happens” work resides.

The video (below) and the link (above) are well worth the time of newsmedia executives.

Even with Sun-Times news, there’s still no domino effect

Another day, another doom-and-gloom story. Today, it’s the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Sun-Times Media Group.

And the obligatory press reaction equating one group’s woes with a domino effect. I’ve already done a print interview and television interview this morning, and the storyline continues to be that it’s just a matter of time before all newspapers everywhere close.

Let me repeat my thesis: Every newspaper whose country is undergoing an economic downturn is experiencing – you guessed it – an economic downturn. Every newspaper is fighting through that downturn.

It is the marginal companies in good times and the companies that took on extraordinary debt in the good times that are closing or filing for reorganisation protection in bad times. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News were No. 2 newspapers in markets that can only viably sustain one print newspaper. Tribune, Philadelphia Newspapers, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Journal Register filed for bankruptcy protection because they had extraordinary ...[more]

Star Tribune goes print-first with best journalism, intelligent experiment with platform management

I read with great interest today that the Star Tribune in Minneapolis has begun debuting its best journalism in the print newspaper – a sharp departure from the online-first habits of U.S. newspapers in recent years.

Editor Nancy Barnes told readers in a column that investigative projects, "deeply reported" non-breaking news stories, and "beautifully written" feature stories will become "print exclusives." The Star Tribune, meanwhile, has asked the Associated Press not to distribute this content to other AP subscribers. At the same time, the Star Tribune will continue to post all breaking news immediately online.

Similar in thought process to what the Philadelphia Inquirer began in August 2008, this is an intelligent way to look at value propositions. The Star Tribune is merely flowing its best content to the audience that generates the most revenue and the audience of highest interest to advertisers – which pays the bills for everything else.

This is precisely the kind of ...[more]

Want to save journalism at newspapers? Get real about advertising and editorial output

I visited with the publisher of a leading U.S. newspaper Friday, and numbers and scenarios were flying.

With print-to-online models like the Christian Science Monitor, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and Ann Arbor News as the backdrop, the publisher walked through how the economics of an online newsmedia company simply don't support an adequate level of journalism – quality and quantity – for a major metropolitan market.

In short, he was willing to live with perpetually lower profit margins of 10% or less of a print-centric multi-media news organisation if it preserved a certain level of journalism – beyond which, in his words, "what's the point?" He passionately defended the need for journalism which preserves and maximizes democracy.

The publisher worried aloud that while he could take another 25% revenue hit in 2009, the equation would get dire in 2010 if the revenue bottom wasn't found. "By then, I will have run out of room to cut," he said.

 ...[more]

With Swiss market flooded with compact free newspapers, Blick to buck global trend and expand to Berliner in differentiation move

Newspapers are in an inexorable slide toward smaller formats because consumers prefer compact and companies are conserving money in print. This has been the rallying cry for broadsheet-to-compact format change since the London quality dailies sparked a global revolution in 2003.

Switzerland’s Blick was one of those format change newspapers five years ago.

There are four general sizes of newspaper worldwide: broadsheet, Berliner, tabloid, and micro. Several years ago, I tried to track the history of micro newspapers in Austria and Switzerland – no avail. They have been around in some format since the early 20th century, which looks odd to the outsider but which is normal to residents of these two countries.

In 2004, the Ringier-owned Blick changed from Berliner (what the Swiss would consider “broadsheet”) to micro (what the Swiss would consider “tabloid”). It was a differentiating move since there was only one other micro-format daily in the German part of Switzerland, ...[more]

Let’s get real: IBM “Beyond Advertising” study captures aspirations, but not realities of emerging marketing communications

IBM has just released a study that describes a "growing rift between advertisers and content owners, media distributors, and agencies."

In "Beyond Advertising: Choosing a Strategic Path to the Digital Consumer," co-author Saul Berman said media companies must develop new capabilities to support micro-targeting, real-time return-on-investment measurement, and cross-platform integration.

Yet here's where the disconnect begins.

The IBM study shows 63% of global CMOs expect to increase interactive/online marketing expenditures while a similar percentage to decrease traditional advertising – data seen for many years.

Look, this is the general direction of marketing. But at the ground level of the marketing community, agencies and advertisers are not set up for this future. The CEOs that run these companies are ready. Their staffs are not.

It's a problem for newspaper companies because the major publishers worldwide are ready to play in IBM's digital pool today even if they sometimes lack the metrics to back them up. ...[more]

A trip to the grocery store with Expressen

I visited last week with the executive team at Expressen, a 300,000-circulation popular national daily based in Stockholm, Sweden, about the trials and tribulations of publishing in a recession.

Like all daily newspapers, the recession is impacting advertising sales and generally making life tougher for everyone. Yet like most popular dailies worldwide, their unique business model shields them from the worst from today’s downturn.

“Popular” newspapers are populist in nature, and Expressen’s wasp symbol and its slogans “It Stings” and “Expressen To Your Rescue” tie the tabloid closely to the reader.

Its business model is one-third advertising and two-thirds circulation, all single-copy in nature. About 55% of Expressen’s business model is traditional newspaper publishing – even shielded, stung itself by a recession that has devastated the country’s automotive industry. The other 45% of its revenue comes from sales of DVDs, ...[more]

Text mining may offer clues to higher CPMs on newspaper web sites

Newspaper executives are frustrated at the lack of a business model for their web sites. While they are growing audience, they can't sufficiently monetise them.

Talking with industry vendors may provide a clue. A U.K.-based supplier of editorial, advertising, and circulation systems who now is moving aggressively into the online space told me in a visit that newspaper people are obsessed with replicating a browsing experience on their web site.

In fact, what drives advertising cost per thousand (CPM) is keeping people on a page with relevant content. While sticky niche content like videos can keep people on a page, this U.K. supplier said smarter and smarter text mining that produces a deeper, more relevant experience for readers may be the "beyond SEO" application that Danny Meadows-Klue told INMA about last week.

Higher CPMs online won't come with locking down content or shoving readers through mazes that you create. They may come by grabbing hold of their ...[more]

Reflections from Europe: a lengthy recession, making the internet pay, and urban newspaper profit margins

As I sit in the Aquavit Bar of Stockholm's Clarion Hotel – sipping an Apple Dream "infusion" and listening to a lounge band belt out Simon & Garfunkel tunes – I can't help but reflect on the last two weeks of travel in Europe.

There isn't as much panic in Western Europe as the United States, but there's plenty of stress. It's not the depth of the recession that worries European publishers. It's the length. If the light at the end of the tunnel doesn't appear by the first quarter of 2010, this becomes more of a cash conservation game for newspapers. Whether or not you are exposed because of debt, it's a degree of pain most have never felt.

Like elsewhere in the world, there's plenty of tension about making the internet pay off – now. There's a lot of impatience for a business model that doesn't exist. The model still is 90% print newspapers, but virtually ...[more]

How classifieds and the local franchise are hammering U.K. regional dailies

The U.K. daily newspaper industry can be divided into two genres: national dailies and regional dailies. Both genres are feeling pain in the recession, but the local newspapers are feeling the brunt of the pain for two core reasons:

Classifieds: Their business models have been disproportionately dominated by classified advertising which was sliding to online sources in the good times and disappearing altogether in the bad times.

Local franchise: Their local news franchise is being chipped away by national dailies producing local editions with local content, as well as emerging online sources.

This is peculiar to me – given my perspective on the U.S. market – but that may be me trying to make two puzzle pieces not designed to fit together ... fit together.

In the United States, the three main national dailies are doing fine, the local dailies are doing fine, but the metropolitan dailies are in cardiac arrest.

In the United Kingdom, ...[more]

Are you Earl Wilkinson?

Everyone needs an ego boost.

This morning at the Stockholm Clarion Sign Hotel, groggy from two weeks of travel in Europe – each day a new city and a new country – I was deciding between fried eggs and scrambled eggs in the breakfast buffet when I heard the following:

“Are you Earl Wilkinson? With INMA?”

Not the words I was prepared for in what I thought was going to be an anonymous environment, but welcome nonetheless.

It was Anna-kari Modin, marketing director of the Swedish national press association Tidningsutgivarna and an INMA member. She was meeting with colleagues about press association projects.

What a coincidence!

As we stood in the middle of hordes of breakfast-seekers letting our food go cold, we talked about an interesting Tidningsutgivarna project designed to put data behind consumers’ online consumption habits and comparing those to print consumption. I don’t believe I’ve seen Anna-kari since the London format ...[more]

The Netherlands: disarray and the lack of negativity

In visiting with Dutch newspaper executives this week, I was struck by the disarray caused by debt loads and purchases – and the simultaneous lack of negativity. What a contrast with counterparts in the United Kingdom and North America!

As classifieds disappear for major publishers Telegraaf Media, PCM, and Wegener Media, I found the talk of:

The need to transform De Telegraaf and its low margin performance in good times.

The purchase for €100 million of PCM by Belgium-based De Persgroep, sparking endless speculation about whether they overpaid or underpaid and how change is soon coming.

Wegener Media weighted down by parent company Mecom's enormous debt and rumours of sale or takeover.

Through all of this, Dutch executives say they are right-sizing their companies and trying to carve out transformational bandwidth to reinvent their companies. There was some hallway talk that Dutch publishers' reactions to the downturn have been too conservative.

The pressure to ...[more]

Position responsible for turning away advertisers eliminated in Liverpool

Heard a story today about how the good times have become bad times. The Liverpool Echo in the United Kingdom once employed a man who was responsible for going to the lobby once a day to tell advertisers who gathered there that they had no more room in the next day’s newspaper so they should go away. Not surprisingly, the man’s job has been eliminated.

French proposal to offer 18-year-olds free newspaper subscriptions has skeptics and curiosity seekers

Sarkozy, Sarkozy, Sarkozy.

The French president’s declaration that all 18-year-olds would get a free one-year subscription to the print newspaper of their choice has sparked a flurry of debate throughout Europe about the propriety and the possibilities behind government subsidies for newspapers.

The subsidy was part of a nine-part increase in government support of newspapers, boosting total subsidies to US$90 million annually.

In Amsterdam this week, INMA members offered up the following critiques:

Surely, the parents of these young people living at home will give up their newspaper subscriptions and replace them with the free subscriptions their children will receive.

The French move makes newspapers look desperate.

Slow, conservative French newspapers will now postpone innovation and transformation strategies with this back-end subsidy.

Yet while one hand criticised, the other hand strategised how newspapers can use the French example to get government subsidies.

Newspaper executives in Belgium and The ...[more]

Meadows-Klue to INMA: embrace consumer landscape, react to technology, and develop audience using methods “beyond SEO”

Danny Meadows-Klue, CEO of U.K.-based Digital Strategy Consulting, told an INMA gathering in Liverpool today that the changing role of local identity is forcing newspapers to evolve their content packaging and build local audience and advertising across platforms.

Yet newspapers aren’t transforming fast enough.

Value propositions have changed for newspapers desperate to reposition themselves as “newsmedia companies.” “Daily” has been replaced with “immediacy.” “Pushed and packaged” has been replaced by “on-demand.” Technology fractures society into more and more diverse segments that demand more diverse information cycles.

The changing role of local identity is impacting newspapers, Meadows-Klue said. As the importance of “local” fades, the role of identity through “tribes” increases – opening the door for new players to gain leverage over local content.

In response, newspapers must make some quick strategic decisions, Meadows-Klue said. For example, they should leverage local content across broader regions, focus on verticals and relationship ...[more]

Audience development across platforms: to go fast or slow?

I made a presentation today to INMA members in Belgium. During questions and answers at De Persgroep, the most intense question involved platform strategy.

Here was the question. The member’s newspaper is investing significant time and energy into multi-platform development and aggregating audience across those platforms. A competitor is investing almost all their energy in maximising the print newspaper platform. And the competitor’s strategy, for now, appears to be winning. How do you reconcile the leap of faith necessary to expand your audience without a business model to support that strategy?

Deep question.

From what I could deduce, the question danced around the competitive situation in Belgium where the two main groups – Corelio and De Persgroep – have quality dailies, popular dailies, and other assets. While Corelio has pushed hard to expand audience, De Persgroep only three years ...[more]

Microsoft video features role of news, information, and technology

Microsoft just released its “Future Vision Series” of videos designed to show the role of technology in 2019. Below is the video that comes the closest to the role of media.

Anything creative is going to be criticised. And this series is getting plenty of criticism on the internet.

Yet for newspaper executives, the key to understanding the context of news and paper is that information will become more frictionless in the future. If you’re uncomfortable with today’s digital technology, you won’t like tomorrow because it will all be faster and more ubiquitous.

Words describing this future are interesting. But this video allows us to visualise this future. Enjoy.

Economy stamping out marginally financial newspapers, not all newspapers

The closing of the Rocky Mountain News in the United States has unleashed another wave of newspaper obituaries. Let’s separate fact from fiction.

In the United States, the economics of a labour-intensive metropolitan daily reliant on print classified advertising and distributed to a vast exurban geography will force “second newspapers” in local markets to close. Meanwhile, newspapers that chose not to slim down operations in good times, through inaction or union intransigence, may consider closing instead of confronting the disorientation of cultural vertigo – peering over the cliff and cutting staff by half at one time.

Let’s be clear here. This means a U.S. metropolitan market is not big enough to support more than one kind of 20th century-style publishing behemoth – a peculiar entity on the world stage that falls squarely in the “more affected” category. Most markets in the world can handle several such ...[more]