Some Plain Talking In Two Important Speeches About ‘Appointment Media’: Tom Curley of AP Says News Industry Attitudes Have to Change and Gavin O’Reilly of WAN Says Online Has Little To Do With The Future Health Of Newspapers

Curley does not believe that online has mortally wounded newspapers, but he emphasized the time has come to “take bold decisive steps to secure the audiences”. He emphasized, “The irony of the disrupted news economy of the 21st century is that the news is hot, but the news business is not.” He said the problem is that “old media companies the world over are bemoaning their lost audiences and sinking revenues,” but he knows from AP research conducted by anthropologists the world over that many young adults are news junkies.

“I’ve been inside many major news organizations the last couple of years, and, invariably, I hear the same refrain. We know what to do, but we can’t get it done. Or, sadly, we’re in worse shape than we were two years ago because we’re spending even more proportionately trying to keep the old model functioning. More than a few persist in trying to make their online sites life rafts for newspapers or newscasts.

“So, a few more things have to change. The pressure on the bosses will have to build. Many more of us in leadership positions must step up and say, now.

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An Editors’ Survey Gushes That Newspapers Are Here To Stay Which Is Reassuring, But A More Meaningful Survey Would Have Asked Advertisers How Much Print Figures In Their Future And Newspaper Boardrooms How Little Margin Is Now Acceptable -- Then You Would Know The Future Of Newspapers
A survey of some 435 global editors-in-chief and senior news executives says they are very optimistic about the future of newspapers. That Newsroom Barometer is swell for telling how journalists see the future of newspapers, but unfortunately, and this is going to bang on some egos, they are not the ones that count. Better that an “Advertisers Barometer” had asked advertisers their future spend allocation plans, and a “Boardroom Barometer” sought out whether executives plan to continue their cuts to maintain current margins or whether they accept that yesterday’s profitability is gone, and are they willing to settle for less?

New York Times Sends Out The Strongest Message Possible That Its Future Is In Digital By Putting the “For Sale” Sign On Its Profitable TV Properties To Raise Money For Digital Now Rather Than Later

The New York Times’ Broadcast Media Division currently produces around 4% of the company’s total revenues. Digital is already responsible for more than 8% of total revenues and that number keeps growing by the month. Where do you think the smart investment money should go

As Public Newspaper Companies Hold Their Annual Shareholder Meetings The Ghost of Knight-Ridder Newspapers Is There, Too.
Tribune Chairman, President, and CEO Dennis J. FitzSimons told his shareholders this week what a few weeks ago would have been the unthinkable: “As Knight-Ridder found out, everything in this environment is possible. That’s one of the reasons we have to operate as efficiently as we are operating right now and continue to look for efficiencies.”

William Dean Singleton Bought At A Premium Four McClatchy “Orphans” From Its Knight-Ridder Purchase, Putting His Money Where His Mouth Is In Saying Newspapers Have A Rich Long Future
With so much bad news being debated about newspapers – falling circulation, loss of the young reader etc., -- a breath of Texan fresh air entered the debate last week. William Dean Singleton, ceo of the MediaNews Group, told an editors convention that newspaper printing presses were not going the way of the dinosaur.

US Newspaper Executives Tell Wall Street This Week Their 2006 Prognosis But the Real Story is That Knight-Ridder Won’t Be Presenting – It’s In the Midst Of Being Forced to Try and Sell Itself -- And That’s the Real Future That Many of Them Don’t Want to Talk About!
When the major US publishing companies give their various reports to the 33rd annual UBS Media Week Conference and to the Credit Suisse First Boston media meeting this week the shadow of who is not there will be overwhelming. Knight-Ridder’s prognosis is already known – its three main shareholders want it sold to gain shareholder value, and many of those other newspaper companies – especially those without family protection on their shareholdings – fear they could soon be in the same boat.

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“The first thing that has to go is the attitude. Out institutional arrogance has done more to harm us than any portal. We must understand and embrace the new ways (young) people are consuming content.

“There’s still a place for appointment media – a home delivered newspaper on the porch each morning or evening newscast while making dinner. But it is a smaller place. People, of course, want the news when they want it. Even more difficult to accept, they want control over what they get.”

Once attitude is taken care of, the next to go must be despair. News, he says, is a growth business, and the industry must not allow declines in the appointment media to hide that there are terrific news opportunities available.

“More people are accessing news more frequently than ever before the world over,” he told guests at the annual Knight-Bagehot dinner. “All media platforms – video, audio, digital and even text – are seeing growth. Demand for the four major content areas – news, entertainment, sports and financial – continue to rise.”

And the bottom line: “The adjustment we’re being asked to make is to a world of increased access, new competition, and different business models. It’s not about easing onto the obit page.”

And how to do it:: “We must speed up our clock to real time. When I started, in the sixties, the news cycle was 12 hours. Today, it’s three hours – about the time it takes for a significant percentage of the people interested in a story to have encountered the story or the news they need. Yet, newspapers and newscasts run with lead stories of marginal interest that are 20-plus hours old.”

And most important of all, he warned -- obviously not writing his speech in famed AP inverted pyramid style with this towards the end of his presentation – “editors need to stop pining for the old world and intensify the leading to the new.

“Great editors connect with readers and viewers. They build – or to use the vernacular – aggregate audiences, big or niche, with value, social currency and, ultimately, impact on the political process or social norms.

“The measuring stick, really the vision, has to be about much more than yesterday’s news. Clearly, new types of news consumption behaviors have emerged. Scanning the news has become the norm. A majority get news online – more than those who read a daily newspaper, and half of them scan for updates several times a day.

“Deeper dives for the news also are vital to today’s news consumers. The need for sophisticated content sets up opportunities around analyses, perspective, opinion, interactivity, archives and related information, especially content that can be linked.

“We are approaching an amazing point in the history of media. Quality will rule. With traffic to destination websites flattening and new distribution making all content accessible, we’re entering a new era of brutal competition. The best will stand out because they will be sought out. Newsrooms need to be organized around new content needs.”

A couple of days later Gavin O’Reilly, who in addition to being WAN president is also Group Chief Operating Officer of Independent News and Media, gave the keynote address to the UK Society of Editors convention. His theme was in quoting Rupert Murdoch’s comment in the News Corp 2007 annual report, “While I share the concerns of those who fret about the future of newspapers, I have never shared their sense of gloom.”

O’Reilly reminded everyone that when comparing the health of print and online there must be financial context. Newspapers, he said, are globally a $190 billion industry that expects a 17% growth in advertising over the next five years – more than the previous five years – whereas online advertising is worth just $21 billion, and 65% of that is by Google, Yahoo and MSN. He didn’t say it, of course, but online is looking for double digit annual percentage growth instead of print’s low single digit growth, but his point was that newspapers are healthy and getting healthier, and he stressed, not just in India and China, the two main growth areas.

In studying the UK trend of steadily declining circulation he put the blame on two causes, “Firstly, the rapid and much-hyped proliferation of free newspapers and, secondly, a market that has become profoundly distorted by a promotionally-led agenda.

“Why go out and buy a paper if there’s an odds-on chance that at least 10 people will tackle you on your way to work and try to shove a free newspaper in your face, or will entice you with a free DVD, a free CD, a wall chart and the rest? Newspaper groups whose efforts are often marked by lower margins, or worse, will justify their actions by saying they are putting a newspaper into the hands of people who wouldn’t otherwise read them.

“The thinking is that recruiting readers young – and getting them into the habit of newspapers – will suddenly lead to some Darwinian evolution, where at some stage (presumably when they turn 43-and-a-half) they will unilaterally trade up and start to buy a paper. What a load of old tosh!

“I, for one, know that the future of media companies will be what it has always been built upon and that's content, content, content. Do I mean user-generated content? Well, that will clearly have its place but I'm really talking about distinctive comment and analysis; well-crafted and well-edited content that has faced the rigors of a well-honed editorial process. To me, that is not only the USP of the newspaper of the past, but more critically for its future, built upon journalistic skills that are not simply an inalienable right of someone with attitude sitting in a garage in front of a PC, but rather a skill that is learned and earned.

“I see a world where quality, distinctive journalism in print and online will stand the test of time and the constant onslaught of technological innovation. Some will accuse me of wishful thinking. I see it as a worthy financial strategy built on a belief that quality, established and trustworthy journalism will become even more relevant, even more vital in this growing digital age, where people are being bombarded daily with information and where, too often, the lowest common denominator wins out.

“I believe the prognosis for newspapers is actually quite different to conventional wisdom. To use the parlance of the day, at Independent News & Media we see newspapers as the ultimate browser, where in essence, someone else has done the hard work for you and delivered the serendipity of life in a concise, colorful, and portable way. All for half the price of a cup of coffee.”

If only the financial analysts in the City of London and on Wall Street would take note!