Tag: rupert murdoch

  • Even distribution

    The per second and per character billing wars happening in the Indian mobile space now, made me consider whether its beyond a price thing – a need for consumers to slice and splice until they get exactly what they need. I see a parallel in the flow of content too, something I discussed earlier.

    Which explains why I tweeted that I was still watching with great interest, the results of Murdoch’s arachnophobia, though it will take months. (despite having some fun with irobot.txt, and Walled Street Journal 😉 ) Now that’s a subject on which everyone’s had an opinion, so I’ll refrain. (though I’ll share the interesting Bing Theory) The other part of his announcement, where he wants to be paid for content, will obviously depend on the quality of content he can give, and whether it can be found elsewhere for free.

    Meanwhile, as a believer of the link economy, I should’ve logically said that News Corpse was the future, but I refrained. The reason was that for me, the complete mechanics of content distribution is still in an evolution stage. I wrote about brand content distribution last week, and I’m exploring similar thoughts on information in general, especially when i see studies on sharing trends like these (via Social Media Explorer), which I still think is a good indicator despite the inherent skews in sample/methodology it might have. The specific part that interested me being the low shares of Google channels and Twitter, and the larger understanding (reminder) that the web is much bigger than the social media savvy crowd. While Google News has become a great aggregator, there might be other distribution mechanisms that can be developed, keeping a paid model in mind.

    Media has long served as a distribution platform for brand communication, so its obvious that any effect on media would also force brands to think differently from what they’ve done so far. It means seeking and understanding various smaller ecosystems that are bound to develop, where media itself would be different from what we see now. In essence, brands would have to slice and splice their content to reach various audiences. Again, one can’t completely rule out the possibilities for Murdoch with niche specific audiences.

    Meanwhile, I had a good debate recently with Surekha on social media’s usage by brands- product/brand centric vs communication centric approaches. This great post (via Surekha) sums it up quite well. My contention was that ‘buzz’ (for lack of a better term) could be generated without a communication centric agenda, if brands/products were serious about social media and approached it from a business design perspective. Communication centric approaches would tend to see networks as broadcast platforms and the focus would be on ideas and execution, which may quite often be platform centric, with less thought on how sustainable it is in the long run,  especially if all parts of the organisation are not aligned to a different way of working that’s required. Also, in addition to the spurious ROI methods which are evolving, my issue with communication – centric approach is best described by Godin in Hammer Time (every function (PR/Advertising all bring their own hammers to nail social media) and Rex in “If Advertising is your middle name, your surveys will always suggest the solution is….

    (Update: Thanks Dina, for sharing this)

    Digital Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet)

    View more documents from David Gillespie.

    It led me to wonder if brands’ usage of  FB, Twitter etc as broadcast platforms, also contributes to the way these platforms are evolving – from the concept of digital sub-prime crisis that Umair Haque has written about recently to the kind of hiring that brands do. (In this context, the Ad Contrarian’s 3 Distinctions post is also worth reading) Taking it further, is that why (simplistically put) instead of collaboration and easy interoperability, there is the scenario that Tom Reilly very interestingly describes in ‘The War for the Web‘ – war between natural monopolies  (search, social networking, classifieds etc) for adjacent areas.

    I’m hoping that like with all things web 2.0, the community will turn both the fights in a direction that is beneficial to itself, and we won’t be left replacing one system with another that develops with the same principles.

    until next time, choosing sides 🙂

  • Paper Capers

    Almost 2 months since we last discussed newspapers, so I thought its a good time to update. Rumour is that Murdoch plans to sue Google and Yahoo over news services. Fact is that he’s going to charge for news, something he’s been doing for a while with WSJ, and the ‘experiment’ is going to start with The Sunday Times. Others are set to follow his example.  “Quality journalism is not cheap,” said Murdoch. “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites.“

    I, for one, am happy, because the keywords for me are ‘quality journalism’. Its perhaps a prelude to a shakedown, and the survival of only those who can adapt to a world with internet. With the width and depth of content available, the debate of ‘free vs paid’ has been going on for a while now. But perhaps the time has come to end it. Build the wall, and let’s see if people want to pay to enter. (that link is an excellent read, detailed and thought through, check it out) Opinions are bound to vary – and to be in extremes. Most people feel that it is flawed. Chris Anderson feels that at some point in the future, “maybe media will be a hobby rather than a job“,  Vivian Schiller, former senior vice president and general manager of the NYTimes.com, believes that “people will not in large numbers pay for news content online“, but there’s still space for an NYT to cut expenses and survive. Murdoch obviously believes he can get the audience to pay.

    Meanwhile, the Associated Press is planning to charge $2.50 per word if 5 words or more are quoted from its articles, with the help of a microformat. Not surprisingly, it has been widely criticised in several tones all over the web. Jeff Jarvis even has a post on ‘How (and why) to replace the AP‘, and illustrates the interesting concept of ‘reverse syndication’. Chris Ahearn, at Thomson Reuters, implores entities that are declaring war on the link economy to stop whining, and stands ready to help those who wish for an alternative to AP.

    Interestingly, Google had recently quadrupled its newspaper archives. (Locally, Dainik Jagran is now part of Google’s News Archive Partner Programme, and has a strategic deal with Google to help the group archive its bilingual daily, Inext) The average newspaper’s stance on Google is understandably ambivalent. On one hand, it is happy to get the traffic from Google, but its not happy that its only one among the websites shown, and the amount of content that Google shows. (that might prevent a reader from visiting the site) Sometime back, Google had posted its views and how, any publication can block search engines with a slight change in code.

    The reactions to this obvious ‘transition stage‘ for the newspaper industry has been taking many forms. Paywalls are boycotts are only one kind. Alternate methods of news collection like crowdsourcing+crowdfunding, public collaboration, (an interesting case, for more than this reason), nichepapers and ways in which journalists can use tools like Facebook and Twitter, are being discussed, as well as radical ideas like making the newspaper a gateway for particpative experiences, even as technological developments – touch screen ‘intelligent plastic’ roll up reader, and experiments from NYT (‘What we are reading‘) continue.

    While it would be easy to say that these are trends in the West, that are not very relevant to India at this stage, I’d still say that these are trends that media in India, especially newspapers, should be closely watching and learning from. A good read from Pradyuman Maheshwari at e4m on the same subject. While the Nielsen Online Global Survey on trust, value and engagement in advertising shows that newspapers are the most trusted form of paid advertising (in india), the TCS study on Indian urban school children show that they are extremely technology savvy and totally at ease with the web and social media.

    As stated in the TCS study “This societal trend has important implications for parents, educators, policy makers, as future employers as well as companies and brands that want to sell to tomorrow’s generation.” Some understand this, and have started experimenting with new forms of distribution. I just got  a mail asking me to check out Star Player!! The point is that one can never be sure whether the trends in the US will be replicated in India, though I’d say its more a ‘when’ question than an ‘if’, even though India’s version of the trends would be mutated, thanks to its own socio-cultural and economic pecularities. But it helps to be prepared. I read at Medianama, a few days back that the Hindu is taking Ergo, its 5 day a week publication aimed at young professionals in Chennai, online. Though the motive might have been cost saving, I’m sure it will be a great learning in understanding consumption patterns and figuring out revenue streams. I quite liked the site, powered by WordPress, with a very casual ‘About’ page, and covering some interesting stuff. It looks like an online news site, not the website of a newspaper.

    On hindsight, the collision was bound to happen. Newspapers, which subsidised news to the reading audience by making advertising pay for it. Google, which aggregated content, and served ads in context. They had to meet somewhere, and disagree on who makes how much. The concern areas for newspapers are manifold – news consumption has changed – quantitatively and qualitatively, modes of creation and distribution have changed, and Google has developed a much better advertising model. In essence, all entities in the publishing business have changed – producers, consumers, advertisers. Isn’t it inevitable that the publisher has to find a new business model? Newspapers in India still have some time on their hands, and some good tools too. With most publishing houses having multiple products that cater to specific audiences, they can actually experiment in different directions. It does cost money to create good content, the trick obviously is to figure out ways to minimise the cost and work out how much each stakeholder – reader and advertiser, is willing to pay for it. Now would definitely be a good time to start, unless you want to sound like the (as usual) hilarious Onion story – “Why did no one inform us of the imminent death of the American Newspaper industry” 🙂

    until next time, think about the link economy

  • News..yes. Papers?

    Rupert Murdoch recently stated that the doomsayers predicting the end of the newspaper industry are off the mark. According to him, online readers also need news form a source that they can trust, and that’s what newspapers have always been doing. He agreed though, that newspapers would have to change from the ‘one size fits all’ approach to cater to readers’ demands. He mentioned his plans for WSJ, to offer three tiers of online content: free news, a subscriber-level service, and a third “premium service” of reader-customizable “high-end financial news and analysis.”

    The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today.

    On the whole, I tend to agree with him. However, I also feel that newspapers would be missing the point,  if they see this as just a change of platform. Its a mindset change, not just in terms of news delivery, but also in the way they approach business. After all, even the biggest names, like NYT , Gannett (publisher of USA Today) , are not in the pink of financial health.

    Before we get to that, a few varied ‘heritage media’ (print) trends. On one hand, we have publications like Christian Science Monitor and PC Magazine and many others switching to a primarily online only presence. On the other hand, the NYT opened up a couple of APIs, releases an AIR based news reader, the Guardian buys PaidContent, and offers full text RSS feeds, the Financial Times’ new site design resembles a blog, and some magazines are even rolling out Instant Messaging functionality. Over to India, Live Mint and Business Standard have recently launched podcasting (via WATBlog), India Today added Cosmopolitan to their existing list of digital properties and Business Standard has launched a branded Instant Messenger – BS Buddy (via Medianama). In essence, newspapers and magazines seem to be looking a bit more seriously at making the transformation from real to virtual.

    So this is a good question to ask – what’s the next step for news? To start with, they could take a good look at this list of 10 things that every Newspaper/Magazine site must do. This itself would be completely against a few things that they’d consider sacred – most notably, link sharing and responding to comments. Broadly, I’d imagine it to be a two pronged approach

    • figure out how to deliver their content on digital platforms, and that might even lead to changes in the kind of content they gather, and the way they gather it.
    • figure out a business model that can leverage the content they have – subscription/ advertising/ both.

    First the content aspect. A lot of publications have been experimenting with citizen journalism. They’d do well to check out tools like CoverItLive. Instead of randomly adding a ‘blog’ section to the website, make it work. Get enthusiastic journalists to blog. Get regular bloggers to do guest columns on specific topics of their interest. Promote them and the content they add to the site. This would help them being aggregators who also serve niche interest communities. What is equally important is to bring about a systemic approach to making journalists regard their story as just a start, and getting them to take ownership of making it a conversation. There are advantages in it for them – new story ideas as well as a better understanding of their readers. Yes, Twitter can help in the conversations too. These changes in news gathering techniques might very well change the quantity and quality of newsroom staff. This makes a great case study.

    The business aspect. I read a a very insightful article on how the entry of print publications into the digital medium will change the balance of power and wealth in the link economy. This process has already started. But before that, I think they have to see themselves as news sources, rather than just the newspaper on the web. This would influence how and where they position their ads, and would help them deliver better value to advertisers, as well as readers. While on this subject, I think online ad networks that include newspapers (with various editions and publications) along with independent blog/ blog networks that complement/add on to their content, might make sense. I remember NYT making a sort of conglomerate in association with 3 other newspapers, sometime back. There are other business models too. For example, there are community funded reporting services like Spot.us. (via RWW) Do check out this link for a very radical approach.

    Though readership of dailies (with very few exceptions) continue to drop, I don’t think newspapers are in their death throes in India. But should they wait for that? A good brand takes some time to build. There’s a reason why more people in India visit Rediff and Yahoo and even the web 18 properties than Indiatimes/ Times of India group properties. I’m hoping to see something like Instablogs join the big league soon. Brand loyalty in the real world need not translate into brand loyalty in the virtual world, especially when you’re dealing with a (by now) commodity called news. And as newspapers would know from their real experiences, once readers are used to a certain way of consuming content, it’s difficult for a competitor to sneak in. It would pay well to learn from mistakes – of those aborad who might have waited too long to transform. After all, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily have to make you stronger. And I’m not sure if newspapers would like to be part of the thin end of the long tail of news consumption, with pure play web entities occupying the head.

    until next time, save paper, save the environment 🙂