Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Newspapers will never be the same. But what happens to democracy if the Web business model can't fund journalism?

...The assumption is that there has to be a way to make profits doing digi­tal journalism if journalists and owners simply wise up and get with the program. Over the past few years, many American newspapers have been purchased on the cheap by hedge funds—nearly a third of the twenty-five largest dailies are now so owned—the subtext being that these business ge­niuses can generate profits where dummkopf journalism industry types have failed. As John Paton, the journalist-cum-CEO for a newspaper company purchased by the Alden Global Capital hedge fund in 2011, put it: “We have had 15 years to figure out the web and, as an industry, we newspaper people are no good at it.” Apparently, neither are the hedge fund managers. David Carr wrote in July 2012 that “hedge funds, which thought they had bought in at the bottom, are scrambling for exits that don’t exist.”...

When to trust a theory over hard data, why companies that try to do too much get picked apart by competitors, and why sometimes industries have to learn the same lessons over and over.

...Skok said news organizations often do study their history, but they don’t focus enough on what’s coming next. Looking at profit and loss statements every quarter emphasize a snapshot of the past; Clay’s work says no, don’t only trust that balance sheet — trust a theory to predict what will happen in the future. But the idea of running large companies based on theories over hard numbers is a tough sell, Skok said.

As disruption occurs, it commoditizes layers in the value stack — what used to be a high-value-added activity, one others couldn’t easily replicate, becomes cheap and easy. In journalism, the Internet, wireless technology, and other technologies have broadened the market for information. As a result, Christensen said, everyone has access to more information than they could possibly use. But that doesn’t mean that the whole indusry has become commoditzed and profitable: Commoditization opens up opportunities in adjacent layers in the value stack, he said. What you thought was a commodity becomes more profitable and proprietary — so even as one business dies, it opens up new opportunities. He cited the example of Forbes, whose previous core business — a print magazine — has been commoditized, but which has made interesting new moves online....

Tech site develops predictive platform to monetize traffic surges

In an analytics-obsessed Web climate, everyone is chasing the big story. The problem is, more often than not, big breakout traffic scoops yield attention, eyeballs and notoriety, but very few dollars. Last month, Deadspin broke the story on the Manti Te’o girlfriend hoax, netting the site nearly 4 million pageviews. But as Gawker Media mentioned publicly following the story, the company had no technical solution in place to monetize an unforeseen surge in traffic.

Gawker is not alone. Web publishers have struggled across the board with this, which is why Ars Technica has been hard at work with what could be a viable solution.

At Ars Technica, Condé Nast’s 15-year-old high-brow tech site, Ken Fisher and his small in-house team were lamenting the traffic conundrum when they decided to build a real-time dashboard geared toward examining pageviews with a predictive eye toward recently posted articles that are poised to trend.

"Within two days we found it was working really well," explained Ars editor in chief Fisher. “We were identifying within an hour stories that would go on to do 900,000 views. And these were not pieces you’d hear by title and think, ‘That’s going to be killer.’ One was titled, Quantum Networks May Be More Realistic Than We Thought.”...

One of the high points of last week's DLD Conference in Munich was the What's Next? panel which explored the future of media in the digital age.

Buoyantly chaired by DLD host Yossi Vardi, the panel included longtime media exec Jon Miller, whose illustrious career includes stints as Chairman and CEO of AOL and Chief Digital Officer at News Corp.

So, I asked Miller when we sat down at DLD, what indeed is next in digital media? Miller’s response was encouraging for content creators in TV, music, and books. Companies that actually produce digital content, he explained, will become more valuable than companies that are simply channels for distributing content. And it’s television, Miller told me, that will become the key “battleground” in the war to successfully create models for distributing digital content....

We've all seen how profoundly the Internet has disrupted industries such as music, travel and even florists. But what's easy to miss is that it's not even close to finished yet. In fact, the Internet's impact is just getting started in most other industries. And it's also revolutionizing business practices across all industries.

One of these is marketing. Yet most companies have no idea of how big a change digital is bringing, and they certainly aren't prepared for what's coming.

As with any such change however, there are opportunities as well as threats. The companies that are aware of the transition and find ways to use it to their advantage will be the net beneficiaries. Those that do not are likely to slowly fade into obscurity....

...For the past few years, we as an industry have been asking (often with great consternation): What is a digital magazine? All of the magazine titles I mentioned are answering this question differently. Some have created a news feed. Others, a video channel. Many repurpose their print articles into blog posts. The smart ones have created a searchable archive of past issues. A few just beg you to download their app.

When we ask the question that way, we open the floodgates to all sorts of slop that is decidedly un-magazine. The typical guru’s answer involves heavy-handed social media. And push notifications. And monetizing your online channel by paginating just below the fold, capitalizing on viral lift, and recalibrating expectations to include a mix of advertorial content and strategically placed calls-to-action powered by a new algorithm to maximize synergistic opportunities.

Gross....

Newsweek's top editors faced a different kind of danger than the Flying Wallendas. Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post and owner of Newsweek, made a habit of decapitating her editors.

...Very few “star” journalists of that time and space have made the trip to the digital world. Most of those I spoke with and saw are pretty much doing what they did 20 and 30 years ago. They’re doing it for traditional media companies that haven’t changed much either, although executives at each have convinced themselves otherwise. Those no longer working romanticized about the past. The experience also reminded me of something I repeatedly told Tim Forbes three or four years ago when I was deep into my startup, True/Slant. “There’s a new wave of of talent out there that’s going to blow past traditional journalists — and they don’t even see it coming.”

We’re fortunate to have members of that new wave at FORBES. They do their jobs differently, particularly when freed from hierarchical editing systems to build their own brands and be accountable for their own success. They relate to and engage with the audience unlike a past generation of reporters who could care less what readers thought (after all, what do they know?). Using the tools of social media, they follow their colleagues as competitive beat reporters to gain insight from them. Most important, they banter with them in full public view, a far more raw, if not real, version of any “news analysis” than shows up in newsprint. Sometimes, they even ride the crest of a competitor’s scoop by filtering it through their own eyes for different audiences. They produce their own videos, photos and galleries and podcasts to extend their reach. And they trust in Google, angling stories (and a story’s headline) to give them the best chance of reaching the world. In the video below, six people who sit in our newsroom talk about their jobs and the FORBES model of digital journalism.