News Publishers And Digital Tech: The Enduring Disconnect

Michael Hedges May 29, 2018 - Follow on Twitter

News publishing is a business. It operates on economic principals familiar to every business. There are exceptions and many have jumped out from dark places. But big business doesn’t operate on anomalies, at least not very well and certainly not the news media.

A conference on news media in the digital age took place last week, organized by Osservatorio Permanente Giovani-Editori (OPGE), an Italian foundation supporting education, critical thinking and quality information among young people. Its tenth annual conference - Crescere tra le righe (Growing between the lines) - was held in Borgo La Bagnaia, the famous Tuscan resort. It was a summit, of sorts, with top executives from many of the world’s biggest and best known news publishers and leaders from the digital sphere.

The luminaries discussed news, fake news, digital news and digital business. Among those in the news business there was general agreement that quality trumps almost every difficulty. “If you are reading newspapers less today it’s because they are not doing a good job,” said John Elkann, chairman and president of investment house Exor NV, principal shareholder in The Economist as well as Fiat Chrysler, Ferrari and the Juventus football club. “I hire difficult journalists,” said RCS Media Group chief executive Urbano Cairo, quoted by Corriere dell Sera (May 28).
“Having a journalist asking questions is the best thing.”

It is, of course, money that matters. “People will pay for subscriptions if they cannot find the news anywhere else,” said NewYork Times (NYT) executive editor Dean Baquet, quoted by Corriere della Sera (May 28). “If we want readers to pay we need to maintain high quality journalism.” During a presentation by NYT chief executive Mark Thompson a chart showed the steady decline of the company’s print advertising since 2009, no growth in print subscription or digital advertising revenue and a huge spike in digital subscriptions.

“If the facts are so important, who is it that pays for this? If the quality of information is so important, why do you not pay for this?” asked, rhetorically, Time Warner chief executive Jeff Bewkes of panelists that also representing Facebook and Google, quoted by primaonline.it (May 28). “If they take away all the financial support from us it makes it difficult to create the journalistic content that interests readers.”

Consumer behavior has been changed by the internet, offered Google News vice president Richard Gingras in rebuttal. “The surprising thing is that advertising has followed that behavior. And this is why revenues from advertising no longer exist.”

By coincidence, the conference took place the same week as the European Council moved forward on Copyright Directive changes designed to force search engine operators Google, Microsoft (Bing) and others to fork over to publishers for showing snippets of text or visuals next to links in search results. Search engines are analogous to newsstands (kiosks) in the digital age but some publishers seem convinced search users will just appear and then subscribe. Also last week the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect, which precipitated a significant and immediate drop in automated - “programmatic” - ad placement that benefits publishers - after the search engines take their cut.

Some on hand pondered the philosophical, journalistic and digital. “I have concerns,” said John Elkann, “and we have seen this in certain democracies, that when there are political changes we do not guarantee independence to journalistic organizations but to control them. I hope that constructive criticism will remain.” Said OPGE president Andrea Ceccherini, "The great risk is that those who had intended connecting people actually end up contributing to disconnecting democracy."

See also... in ftm Knowledge

Digital Transitions

Media's transition from analogue to digital has opened opportunities and unleashed challenges beyond the imagination. Media is connected and mobile yet fettered by old rules and new economics. Broadcasters and publishers borrow from the past while inventing whole new services. This ftm Knowledge file explores the changes. 88 pages PDF (March 2012)

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