Amongst all the precitions for 2009 there was not a lot of positivity for media. In fact, if you believe what seems to be the common theme amongst many of them, 2009 is going to be a world of pain. Newspapers are at the sharp end, facing the perfect storm of a cyclical decline in the form of a tanking economy, and a structural decline in the form of the economic pressures that the internet has long put on their business model. Their own columns have been home to some pretty dire predictions, and headlines feature bail -outs and worse. Meanwhile Twitter breaks the news, and does so with an associated contextual humanity that leaves reported news feeling, well, somewhat cold.
So what to do? Seth Godin is right when he says "When in pain, the answer is not to pander to the masses and undo the very things that made you special". Those that produce great content should concentrate on producing the best content they ever produced. Those that have unique understanding of their audiences need to apply that understanding by fulfilling customer needs better than they ever have. This might mean new markets, new technologies, new structures, new ways to distribute. It should mean a different kind of relationship with their audience. It will mean huge change.
But of-course there's more to it than that. To quote Michael: "Perhaps challenging the status quo is easier when the status quo is concentrating on just staying 'status'". Change isn't just happening, the pace of change is accelerating. Meaning that the end game is impossible to see. Meaning that the required transformation could well be bigger than you think. Meaning that the longer you stay still, the further and further away your answer will get. Until, just maybe, it's just a bridge too far.
I don't think there is an answer to this. Instead, I think there are lots of answers. Whatever the future holds for newspapers my belief is that any future will need to involve a blend of multiple models that feed off each other, support and perpetuate each other. It's a little like the music industry. Music wants to be free. Information and news also wants to be free. Music is still a massive cultural currency – there is more music around now than there has ever been. People want music. And people still want news. The thing that the record companies have singularly failed to do is place themselves at the centre of the new equation. Where their product is the facilitator. So it is with content. That's the job that newspapers now have to do.
The real difference of-course is in mindset. There's still plenty of old thinking around. Thinking defined by scarcity – the availability of space for news reporting, the limited options people had for getting news. So the question to ask is have you gone far enough? The average ad revenue per digital user is typically a fraction of the average ad revenue per reader or viewer in traditional media – what Scott Karp calls 'The 10% problem'. But perhaps instead of presenting a problem, this presents an opportunity. The opportunity to originate ideas with what I would call exceptional leverage. The real game-changers.
What makes leverage? Portability, share-ability, talk-ability. Ideas that spread. Finding new ways to visualise whats going on in the world. New journalism. Link journalism. Quality journalism. Doing what you do best, and linking to the rest. Journalism as a service, not a product. Aggregating. Blog networks. The kind of thinking that would have seen a radio station launch Last FM.
The key thing is that in order to make any of this work you need to create a platform. The success of the Apple App store has surpassed all expectations by a country mile. But the really smart thing about the app store is that Apple take a slice of every transaction. They have created a platform, a marketplace. It's arguably what Facebook should have done with their apps but never did, leaving the developers to take 100% of the benefit of their idea, despite the fact that they are using Facebook's platform.
So here, for free, are my 5 golden rules:
- Think distributed not destination.
- Think networked not linear
- Think community not audience
- Think people not technology
- Above all, create value for both you and your community. Be the enabler.
Sticking to what you know ain't gonna do it. If you're sat in a media owner right now, this is your challenge. Question is, what are you doing about it?
Leave a Reply