“We Are At The Dawn Of A Golden Age of Information – An Empire of New Knowledge” – Rupert Murdoch Who In The Same Speech Told Traditional Media To Basically “Change Or Die!”

Strong stuff from the 75-year-old media magnate who might be expected, because of his age, to be fixed in the ideas of old, but in fact he is the probably the world’s leading revolutionary in bringing media into the 21st century.

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And it is by adopting the multi-channel approach that Murdoch believes newspapers and television will continue to prosper.

“What happens to print journalism in an age where consumers are increasingly being offered on-demand, interactive, news, entertainment, sports, and classifieds via broadband on their computer screens, TV screens, mobile phones and handsets,” he asked in a recent major speech in London.

“The answer is that great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures, and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart.

“And, crucially, newspapers must give readers a choice of accessing their journalism in the pages of the newspaper or on websites or – and this is important – on any platform that appeals to them, mobile phones, hand-held devices, iPods, whatever.

“As I have said, newspapers may become news-sites. As long as news organizations create must-read, must have-have content, and deliver it in the medium that suits the reader, they will endure.

ftm background

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“Great content always has been, and I think always will be, king of the media castle.”

“Caxton’s printing press marked a revolution that is with us 500 years later. But the history of that revolution is not one in which the new wipes out the old. Radio did not destroy newspapers, television did not destroy radio and neither eliminated the printing of books….

“Each wave of new technology in our industry forced an improvement in the old. Each new medium forced its predecessor to become more creative and more relevant to the consumer.”

In describing how he believed we are now living in the “Second Great Age of Discovery” he said the obvious challenge is how traditional media engages a new audience that wants news on various platforms at a time of its choosing and not the vendors’

“There is only one way. That is by using our skills to create and distribute dynamic, exciting content. ‘King Content’, the Economist called it recently. But – and this is a very big BUT – newspapers will have to adapt as their readers demand news and sports on a variety of platforms: websites, iPods, mobile phones or laptops.

“I believe traditional newspapers have many years of life left but, equally, I think in the future that newsprint and ink will be just one of many channels to our readers.

“As we all know, newspapers have already created large audiences for their content online and have provided readers with added value features such as email alerts, blogs, interactive debate and podcasts. Content is being repurposed to suit the needs of a contemporary audience.”

And that comes from a newspaper publisher in the midst of a £600 million investment in the UK to provide all new color presses for his newspapers. It also comes from the same man who spent $580 million to buy Intermix media, a US Internet company with more than 30 entertainment and community sites, the best known of which MySpace.com that now has some 60 million registered users in the 16-34 age category –a runaway best seller.

And to show how he plans to integrate his Internet and newspaper properties, The Sun, the UKs daily circulation leader, is in the early stages of tying its website into MySpace and creating a “MySun” online network.

In discussing the popularity of MySpace, Murdoch told his audience, “This is a networking site in which millions of people, aged mainly between 16 and 34, talk online to each other about music, film, dating travel, whatever interests them. They share pictures, videos, and blogs, forming vital communities.

“Since launch just two years ago, the site has acquired 60 million registered users, 35 million of whom are regular users. This is a generation, now popularly referred to as the ‘MySpace generation’ talking to itself in a world without frontiers. It is just one example of how the media, with its ability to reach millions with information, entertainment and education can use the achievements of technology to create better and more interesting lives for a great many people.”

In making his point that newspapers require “must read, must-have” content, it calls into question the editorial redundancies that have been going on for the past year at newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. How are newspapers supposed to provide that “must-have” coverage if they don’t have enough journalists to do the job?

The ultimate judge of whether the accountants have gone too far and slashed too much is in the hands of the beholder. This writer, having sold news services to the media for some 30 years, learned long enough that you do not fool your clients. Cut back on coverage and the clients see it very quickly. They may not say anything, but you haven’t fooled them. Same principle for newspapers and other information sources -- cut back on the editorial product and the reader sees it. Cut back too much and the reader Is lost to the competition, perhaps another platform of information.

And there are signs already that the cutbacks are too much. In the US the Project For Excellence In Journalism says that although news can be found on many platforms these days giving the perception there is more news out there, in actual fact there is less news, just more places to pick up that same repetitive news.

The project said that budget cuts throughout the newspaper industry have caused a big fall in original reporting with much of what is out there now being repetitive. .

Newspapers seem to have learned the lesson that they must be multi-platform. But they don’t seem to understand that content is king. If they continue their cutting back of the editorial resources necessary to make them the must-read that Murdoch talks about, then that big bang you will continually hear is yet another newspaper shooting itself in the foot.

Social Networking Sites Sell - January 13, 2007

Big media companies are trolling the web for social networking websites. Their executives no longer risk censure for endlessly surfing pictures and profiles of teenage girls. These websites are hot visits for broadcasters and publishers

As the new year opened Holtzbrinck Group bought StudiVZ from its founders. The widely disputed price, reported by Financial Times Deutschland as €100 million, was not disclosed. StudiVZ, in German, appears to copy the design of US social networking site Facebook. Holtzbrinck publishes sturdy German newspapers Handelsblatt and Die Zeit. StudiVZ will fall under Holtzbrinck Networks in the organigram.

Then Hearst Magazines Digital Media bought eCrush.com, a site for teenage girls that nicely compliments Hearst’s Seventeen and Teen franchises. The deal also includes eSpin.com, a site loosely based on “spin the bottle.” No price was revealed but speculators say, “cheap.”

Sweden’s second biggest social networking site Playahead.com was picked up for a mere €11 million by Modern Times Group (MTG). Playahead also operates sites in Norway, Denmark and the UK. Playahead.com reported €2 million revenue for the first 9 months of 2006 from subscriptions, advertising and merchandising.

Strategies vary company to company but reaching out to teens and young adults has been a time-worn pursuit since the 1960’s Baby-Boom. Designing products and services for young people rarely succeeds, fickly as they are. What’s necessary is going where they go, if you can find it fast enough. And, in a media world filled with even more fickle investors, risks are huge.

“Studies show that 12-24 year-olds spend as much as a third of their media consuming time on the internet,” said MTG CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht in the announcing press release. Reaching young people with an effective advertising vehicle is on the “To Do List” of every media CEO. Social networking websites are attractive acquisitions for another, equally important reason: cheap. With mostly user-generated content – profiles, photos, messages – media companies can concentrate on selling ads.