Postcard from India: circulation pricing and the Digital Revolution
Posted at 02:56 PM - 02 September 2009
 From the outside looking in, the Indian newspaper industry looks like the envy of the publishing world with its favourable demographic trends, an aspirational consumer market hungry for news, and advertisers falling over themselves to feed it. These conditions have encouraged confidence in newspaper publishers – especially this decade – creating expansionary visions for the 20+ companies that dominate. When I began visiting India five years ago, there was a curious disconnection from the rest of the world. Digital revolutions occurred outside of India's cocoon. Talks of faltering relationships between publishers and advertisers didn't happen in India. The “death of print” was negative talk by Americans or Europeans. Then, the Great Recession hit. Indian publishers today confess they had never seen revenue declines – not in their careers, not in their lifetimes. U.S. publishers staring at 29% advertising declines may laugh, but break-even growth can be tough if you're ...[more]
Content’s monetary value determined by content, audience, source segmentations
Posted at 03:24 AM - 26 August 2009
Perusing the voluminous material on the paid online content debate during a lengthy flight last night, I couldn't help but be struck by the gap among experts who seem to view segmentation as some kind of disease. On one extreme are the newspaper-phobes who hate virtually everything our industry does, believes we are going to die, and therefore advocate that all of our worthless content be free and open to consumers. On the other extreme are the newspaper-philes who are in love with themselves, believe we are misunderstood and under-valued, and therefore advocate that all of our valuable content should have a price tag for consumers. Bet on the guy in the middle – if and when a middle emerges. Trust me on this one. One of the news industry challenges is that we remain governed by people who see audiences and institutions as one-size-fits-all. That goes for the people in the boardrooms and the people ...[more]
Memo to publishers: show advertisers that newspapers work by practicing what you preach
Posted at 05:51 PM - 17 August 2009
It's not difficult to understand the irony of an industry that suggests its advertisers spend 5% of their revenues on marketing themselves in the pages of newspapers that, themselves, are marketed with often only one-third of the firepower. In short, newspapers don't practice what they preach when it comes to marketing. This is a shame because marketing works. And there's plenty of evidence to support it – especially during recessions. One of the best resources for marketing knowledge is the Strategic Planning Institute in the United States, which maintains a database of more than 3,000 strategic experiences dating back more than 40 years. PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategy) measures the relationship between business actions and business results. Simon McDonald, research manager of the Financial Times, drew from this database in a recent conference speech to draw a correlation between “share of voice” and “perception of quality” for products by consumers. In short, ...[more]
2 decades of circulation trends re-write global newspaper landscape
Posted at 04:36 PM - 11 August 2009
 For 20 years, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) – in its various incarnations – has published World Press Trends in conjunction with ZenithOptimedia, a true gem of a report on country-by-country data of the global newspaper industry. For those same 20 years, I've used this report to augment my private chronicling of circulation trends among paid-for daily newspapers. I take the circulation data and chop it up in different ways to see our industry in unique ways. The circulation data, over time, tells me less about the health of newspapers or of newsmedia companies and more about consumer buying habits of news on paper. Here's what the just-released 2008 data shows me: Mature vs. emerging: Global circulation data hides huge performance gaps between mature and emerging countries. While global circulation may be up nearly four-tenths of 1% in the past year, that is entirely on the backs of South Asia, China, Brazil, ...[more]
10 questions newspaper CEOs must confront about their transformation
Posted at 10:24 AM - 05 August 2009
In my previous blog posting, I celebrated the return to profitability of newsmedia companies – a step back from the abyss. I noticed a few comments in the blogosphere that I was celebrating a return to normalcy. Quite the contrary. Saving a company from death is a first step and should be applauded. The follow-up question is what these re-scaled media companies will do with their profits. Will they continue sinking resources into black holes such as editorial department coverage of topics that are irrelevant to today's consumer, big printing monstrosities, preservation of departmental silos, payouts of enormous dividends, and the pursuit of large advertisers at the expense of the small? No, the big companies have a lot to prove before a prolonged celebration. Here are 10 questions newsmedia industry CEOs should be asking themselves about the reformulation of their budgets and plans over the next 18 months: 1. Are you shifting capital expenditures to ...[more]
Back from the abyss: editorial cutbacks and the next steps for newspapers
Posted at 09:05 AM - 30 July 2009
 Gannett, McClatchy, and the New York Times Company last week reported unexpected second quarter profits on the backs of cost-cutting efforts amid 30% declines in advertising. Predictably, the chorus of “boos” from the blogosphere's intelligentsia gives no credit to the corporate blood-suckers who have sapped the life out of the status quo in our industry – not a moment of pause, not a back-handed compliment, nothing. Well, those corporate types have saved their companies from most doomsday scenarios – at least for the time-being. And knowing a few of those blood-suckers personally, I know they are desperately trying to turn the ship of state in ways that reinvest those profits in the multi-media transformation that sometimes gets lost between the rhetoric of conferences and the reality of “shareholder value.” The popular spin is that news corporations should reflect on the cutbacks needed to achieve these profits in bad times. That they should admit the ...[more]
As ESPN aims at local sports, how can newspapers out-local global competitors?
Posted at 07:36 AM - 22 July 2009
Sports cable television behemoth ESPN announced this week that they will expand their experiment in local sports TV from Chicago to Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas. Already the dominant force in sports broadcasting in the United States, ESPN now takes square aim at newspapers in four passionate sports markets of particular interest to advertisers. This is hardly an idle threat: ESPN Chicago now boasts more page views than the online sports section of the Chicago Tribune, according to reports. The news reminds me of industry conversations had in recent months that tend to focus on how to out-local Google. Yet it's clear Google isn't the only player taking advantage of newspaper industry confusion and the digital revolution. Upon hearing presentations at the INMA World Congress, I asked representatives of The Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and Palm Beach Post their strategy to “beat Google,” and all three responded that they must dig below ...[more]
As marketing shifts to ROI-based new media, will newspaper CEOs finally invest?
Posted at 08:36 AM - 15 July 2009
Marketing is a two-edged sword at most newsmedia companies. It's an indicator of advertising demand, which ultimately pays the bills. Yet it's also a guide for the newsmedia company's own efforts to market itself to consumers and advertisers. The strategic disconnect among many publishers is they don't believe in marketing. They have little to no faith in the concept, despite the ironic fact that their business model is built on convincing others that marketing on their platforms will grow their business. If you can get a publisher in a private moment, here's what he'll tell you: I believe in discounting because there's a mathematical formula that shows me a projected return on investment. I believe in hard sales because I can throw manpower against a market and through sheer willpower get a return on investment. I can't get my arms around "marketing" in general because it's a revolving door of people and theories. Most industries have senior ...[more]
U.K. marketer: industry deconstructed, B2B paid content possible, brand vs. content
Posted at 10:08 AM - 14 July 2009
I visited today with the chief marketing officer of one of the United Kingdom’s leading newspapers who shared some insights on the changing industry landscape, paid content, and marketing a multi-media brand: U.K. newspaper industry: The United Kingdom’s newspaper industry is being deconstructed and will grow back in different ways. Hyper-local news will be the cornerstone of what remains of the regional press. Paid content: “I can’t imagine a world with a straightforward pay model,” he said. Most newspapers could monetise the business-to-business aspects of their content, but he can’t yet see how to monetise the much broader business-to-consumer aspects of general-interest newsmedia companies. “It’s possible, but it’s going to take a very long time,” he said. Marketing brands vs. content: Newsmedia companies should be careful about separating their brand from content – especially in markets populated with strongly positioned brands. With the best newspapers, the product is more interesting than the marketing. “There’s just no point ...[more]
Amid entrepreneurial and legal options on content, keep the consumer front and center
Posted at 06:34 AM - 13 July 2009
Much has been made of the newsmedia industry's recent burst of energy related to paid content on the web. The criticism is that what publishers of content-rich media are asking in terms of consumer payments goes against at least two laws: a) content "wants" to be free, generally; and b) the internet should be free and open. These laws may ultimately be valid. Yet it should be pointed out that these laws also have never been seriously tested. Globally, there are two broad approaches to extracting maximum value out of the content creation process absent an advertising turnaround: Entrepreneurial: In the United States, news publishers are spending most of their energy devising ways to either get the online consumer to pay for content or to make a firmer connection between fuzzy online metrics and advertising dollars. Legal: In Europe, news publishers are spending most of their energy on copyright protection to reconnect content creation with commercial value ...[more]
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