The future for newspapers is brighter than you think
Ahead of the Future of National Newspapers conference next month, Raymond Snoddy looks at the challenges facing the industry – and asks whether the doom-mongers have actually got it all wrong.
American media commentator Bob Garfield is scarcely a household name even in his own household, but he has a dramatic theory about the traditional media, even if it is expressed in the demotic.
Casting any attempt at sophistication, ambiguity or dissembling aside, Garfield, no relation to the cartoon cat noted for laziness and obsessive eating, says simply it – we – are all “fucked.” Or as the Daily Mail would undoubtedly have it – f****d.
Journalists over the age of 30 have obviously had it. Garfield has a former journalist friend who now has to earn a living watering plants in offices.
Journalism in the sense of a place to earn a decent living has had it or is f****d. Journalists will be replaced by a billion citizens with smartphones and legacy publishers will all become obsolete.
Overall, the traditional newspaper industry is tragically “circling the drain”, an orientation that cynics will recognise as nothing particularly new.
But that’s not all. The next bloodbath will be in television because technology allows people to skip the ads and when given half a chance. Choice is a really good thing but Garfield fails to explain whether all this wonderful choice is going to come from once the television industry dies. Apart from a few well promoted marketing exercises companies such as Netflix are almost totally dependent on the “obsolete” television industry.
If the Garfield theorem represents a gross overstatement it is equally clear there is not the slightest room for complacency – now or in the future.”
If there are any agency folks in the back row feeling a bit smug about all that doom and gloom facing the media, don’t kid yourself: you are all included in the Garfield vision too.
When people won’t watch the ads, and therefore there is no need for agencies or creatives, they will all become obsolete too.
Gone will be the days when the creative geniuses “parade like Tony the Tiger down Madison Avenue every fall during ad week.”
The ad industry is toast because its derives its income from creating and placing large ad campaigns and as we have already heard, there ain’t going to be any large ad campaigns any more following the demise of the TV industry.
In short, and in conclusion, “The entire media universe is in chaos.”
Well, Garfield is clearly an entertaining fellow and one who knows exactly the sort of speech that would get people going at the recent Association of Data Driven Marketing and Advertising conference in Sydney. It’s not obvious how the data-driven marketing and advertising executives are going to survive such an all-encompassing Armageddon.
If Garfield has got it right then we will all be like polar bears crowding on to Al Gore’s melting ice flow or trying to negotiate advent actions rates on one-way trips to Switzerland.
In the UK MailOnline increased its ad revenue by 49% – producing a £5m rise in revenue to £15m, thereby offsetting a £3m fall in print advertising.”
You can relax a little. The Garfield wave hasn’t hit television or the agency world just yet and as for newspapers, strangely, just as he proclaims the end of the world there are modest signs that the trends are becoming slightly less bad. No one can deny the hordes of unemployed journalists – or freelances as they like to be called – or the remorseless shift of advertising to the Internet.
Though Garfield’s apocalyptic vision comes devoid of numbers, small morsels of comfort can still be found if you are prepared to look carefully.
There is undoubtedly a death race in progress to find a way of replacing melting traditional advertising with digital revenues before it all becomes too little too late.
The scale of the problem can be seen from the latest quarterly results from the New York Times company – with net income down by 54 per cent and profits falling by 21 per cent.
Chief executive Mark Thompson blamed underestimating the difficulty of presenting new digital options to users but the total number of digital subscribers rose by 32,000 in the quarter to 831,000.
In the UK MailOnline increased its advertising revenue by 49 per cent in the quarter to the end of June producing a £5 million rise in revenue to £15 million, thereby offsetting a £3 million fall in print advertising.
But perhaps the most hopeful contemporary morsel comes from the Daily Telegraph’s content director Jason Seiken. With a few judicious tweaks the Telegraph’s website increased traffic by 20 per cent in June. The main factors, according to Seiken, were paying more attention to Facebook as a driver of readers than Twitter – journalists are all blindly obsessed by Twitter – and actually producing a smaller number of better targeted stories.
A lot of pragmatic changes are happening at the Telegraph, such as experimenting with what headlines – sometime as many as 49 different versions – get the best pick-up and trialling more irreverent football coverage to attract younger readers.
Seiken told the Guardian no magic wand was involved. It was more about “changing the culture, talent and pushing operational excellence.”
It all sounds rather tame in the face of you’re f****d theories but that is the way progress is made and there has been another small ray of hope in a report on the newspaper industry from Enders Analysis.
National newspaper advertising fell last year by 8 per cent although this decline should reduce to 6 per cent this year thanks to a stronger economic outlook. There will also be some reprieve, though rather smaller, for the local and regional press.
Overall Enders notes that digital advertising has reached meaningful scale at some titles although growth in online is slowing.
If the Garfield theorem represents a gross overstatement it is equally clear there is not the slightest room for complacency – now or in the future.
The key is encouraging creativity through the newspaper – or newsbrands – business and yes, compatible data across every platform will be vital whatever body or process is best equipped to provide it.
It might also be worthwhile given the enormity of the industry challenge to set up the media equivalent of the Longitude Prize to reward new ways to reinvent the financial model that pays for all advertising-funded journalism.
Society really would be the poorer if anything like the Bob Garfield vision of the future were to come to pass.
Another job for Newsworks?
MediaTel will be hosting a debate on the Future of National Newspapers on 29 September, with panellists including Trinity Mirror’s James Wildman, News UK’s Abba Newbery and the Independent and Evening Standard’s Chris Blackhurst. See our events page for details.
See also:
Bob Wootton – Bonfire of the JICs?
Dominic Mills – Unusual outbreak of co-operation amongst press – again
Simon Redican – New NRS chief speaks out on the survey’s future
Bob Wootton – Could dropping the NRS actually lose newsbrands money?