Bevil Wood­ing

Tra­di­tion­al news me­dia busi­ness mod­els are un­der as­sault. The irony is that the as­sailant, the In­ter­net, is al­so the po­ten­tial sav­iour. Me­dia hous­es have no choice but to re­spond by do­ing what they do best; cap­ture and tell the news as if their very ex­is­tence de­pend­ed on it. The news me­dia in­dus­try is at a crit­i­cal junc­tion in its quest to meet the de­mands of a tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven so­ci­ety. While read­ing the dai­ly news­pa­per re­mains morn­ing rit­u­al for some, a grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple are us­ing In­ter­net-con­nect­ed de­vices such as com­put­ers, mo­bile phones and tablets, to re­ceive a con­stant stream of up-to-date news through a va­ri­ety of al­ter­nate sources. News Web sites, blogs and even so­cial net­work­ing sites like Face­book and Twit­ter all of­fer con­ve­nient ways for peo­ple to find and con­sume news con­tent. These on­line sources of­ten break sto­ries faster and in more rel­e­vant ways than tra­di­tion­al me­dia hous­es. There is al­so the grow­ing trend of cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism, where the tech savvy and dig­i­tal con­nect­ed can cap­ture and dis­sem­i­nate sto­ries to a glob­al au­di­ence, from places and on top­ics in ways that tra­di­tion­al me­dia hous­es are sim­ply not set up to do.

Chang­ing Land­scape, shift­ing pow­er

The busi­ness of news pro­duc­tion is in flux and it is chang­ing the face of jour­nal­ism. With that change, pow­er is shift­ing from out­mod­ed in­for­ma­tion gate­keep­ers of the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, to those who can evolve to meet the re­quire­ments of news de­liv­ery in the In­ter­net age. Some of the biggest glob­al news or­gan­i­sa­tions have been ea­ger to ac­com­mo­date the pub­lic's ap­petite for news in more di­verse for­mats. Af­ter all, in­cor­po­rat­ing tra­di­tion­al stan­dards and val­ues of pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ism with the em­pow­er­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty and reach of dig­i­tal and so­cial me­dia has def­i­nite ben­e­fits. Jour­nal­ists can re­port the news more holis­ti­cal­ly, free from the print con­stric­tions of col­umn lengths and page size. The In­ter­net al­lows for rich­er con­tent, such as pho­tos and videos, to be em­bed­ded in sto­ries. It al­so al­lows jour­nal­ists and their pub­lish­ers to en­gage their tar­get au­di­ence in an in­ter­ac­tive, re­al time con­ver­sa­tion in ways that sim­ple im­pos­si­ble with "let­ters to the ed­i­tor."

Cost of Progress

But in­cor­po­rat­ing tech­nol­o­gy does not come cheap­ly. Man­ag­ing mul­ti­ple de­liv­ery chan­nels, chang­ing busi­ness process­es, and hir­ing new-me­dia spe­cial­ists comes at a cost. Many me­dia hous­es, fac­ing de­clin­ing cir­cu­la­tion and ad­ver­tis­ing num­bers, are strug­gling to cope. Me­dia-busi­ness lead­ers must jus­ti­fy in­creased tech­nol­o­gy spend and ex­plain the po­ten­tial re­turns. The chal­lenge is com­pound­ed when man­agers and me­dia ex­ec­u­tives them­selves, or the boards they re­port to, are not suf­fi­cient­ly dig­i­tal­ly lit­er­ate or aware. Still, print news­pa­pers will have no choice but to in­cor­po­rate tech­nol­o­gy in­to their busi­ness­es to sur­vive. The In­ter­net has made cer­tain of that. The key for news me­dia to move for­ward eco­nom­i­cal­ly is to fo­cus on an in­te­grat­ed dig­i­tal strat­e­gy.

Print is Dead! Long Live Pub­lish­ing!

To­day, me­dia hous­es must re­vis­it their rai­son-d'etre. The core busi­ness is now pub­lish­ing, not print. Con­sumers are ex­pect­ing, and in­creas­ing­ly de­mand­ing ac­cess to sto­ries as they hap­pen. This ap­petite is putting pres­sure on new rooms around the world to churn out con­tent at an un­prece­dent­ed rate. Ac­cess to news sim­ply can­not wait on tra­di­tion­al print cy­cles. De­clin­ing print read­er­ship is a tes­ta­ment to this fact. Shift­ing con­sumer ex­pec­ta­tions is in turn plac­ing tremen­dous stress on tra­di­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion­al hi­er­ar­chies with­in me­dia hous­es. The lux­u­ry of sim­ply or­gan­is­ing teams around a print pub­li­ca­tion and a pre­dictable pub­lish­ing cy­cle is no longer an op­tion. Si­los must now be bro­ken and teams in­te­grat­ed fpr new or­gan­i­sa­tions to be more re­spon­sive and ef­fi­cient. The big chal­lenge, though, is train­ing old staff in the new ways. Jour­nal­ists need to be able to write a sto­ry for print, up­load a Web ver­sion, tweet it, and man­age on­line in­ter­ac­tion with read­ers. This is a mas­sive shift from the sub­mit-and-re­lax cul­ture that de­fined many 20th cen­tu­ry news rooms. The sim­ple truth is, old me­dia habits will not sur­vive in the new me­dia age. Me­dia hous­es have lit­tle choice but to in­vest in staff-train­ing, process re­struc­tur­ing, ser­vice in­no­va­tion and even busi­ness re-or­gan­i­sa­tion to re­main rel­e­vant, and in busi­ness.

Adapt and Evolve

How will me­dia hous­es re­new them­selves to re­spond to the dy­nam­ic changes in the In­ter­net-en­abled glob­al elec­tron­ic me­dia en­vi­ron­ment? The an­swer is a work in progress. For all the tu­mult it has caused in print me­dia, the In­ter­net has brought pos­i­tive change for the ad­ver­tis­ing in­dus­try. For ad­ver­tis­ing com­pa­nies, elec­tron­ic me­dia al­lows them to bet­ter track the amount of read­ers ac­tu­al­ly look­ing at their ads. As a re­sult, on­line ad­ver­tis­ing spend is on the rise. Me­dia hous­es can of­fer ad­ver­tis­ers a re­port of what pages view­ers have looked at and can even in­clude prod­uct link to ads. This gives us a point­er to the fu­ture busi­ness mod­el for news or­gan­i­sa­tions-val­ue-added on­line ser­vices.

With the right sys­tems, me­dia hous­es can al­so of­fer elec­tron­ic sub­scrip­tion ser­vices. Such mod­els help in­for­ma­tion hun­gry read­ers and while pro­vid­ing ad­ver­tis­ers with greater in­sight in­to view­er pro­files and read­ing habits. These new tech-en­abled pos­si­bil­i­ties can pro­vide savvy me­dia hous­es with en­tire­ly new rev­enue streams, and jus­ti­fy deep­er ex­cur­sions in­to dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing. It is in­creas­ing­ly be­com­ing less cost­ly, more prac­ti­cal and more prof­itable to pub­lish dig­i­tal­ly. How­ev­er, as long as peo­ple like tan­gi­ble ob­jects, there will be news­pa­pers in print. The good news is that the de­mand for news is ac­tu­al­ly greater than it has ever been be­fore. The chal­lenge now is for me­dia hous­es to adapt and evolve to meet that de­mand.

Bevil Wood­ing is the founder and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, an ed­u­ca­tion-fo­cused not-for-prof­it de­liv­er­ing val­ues-based tech­nol­o­gy train­ing pro­grams in­clud­ing dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and eBook cre­ation work­shops. He is al­so Chief Knowl­edge Of­fi­cer of Con­gress WBN.Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing and Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing