Apr
4
Editorial Views and Viewers
Filed Under Blog, data protection, eBook, Industry Analysis, internet, mobile content, news media, online advertising, Publishing, social media, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
So thanks so much for all the comments on the last piece. I am now truly troubled and confused. Some of you seem to think that the regional press never will re-create itself, so it must be left to innovators to innovate and old brands to die. Yet those who are deeply involved in the regional press claim that the tools and utilities required for innovative services are simply not available. I decided to look at the latter this week, to look only in the UK, and to follow up some of the leads I received as a result of the first piece.
Since the premiere brand of Johnston Press is the Scotsman, I started my search in Edinburgh. There I found the Edinburgh Reporter, and a small team of local reporters working around an editor (Phyllis Stephens) to create, at www.theedinburghreporter.co.uk, a start-up local event site. This is powered by the nOtice web software currently being trialled (progress report awaited) by Guardian Media Group, which is itself an innovative newspaper project, given that it is an invite-only beta run by a group that sold its regional division and exited hyperlocal. But have a look at the intentions listed 18 months ago (http://gigaom.com/2011/10/28/guardians-n0tice-puts-a-new-twist-on-hyperlocal/) and look at http//nOtice.com to see what is being trialled. Clearly the effort here is to find ways in which users can post content and link to existing content. If you look at The Edinburgh Reporter, then you can see how they use Bambuser and You Tube to provide the image and video upload elements. The principle of hyperlocal is emerging here: we are all our own reporters and freelances, and whether or not we need an editorial hub depends more on brand and business model than on anything else. But the vital feature of this model is the need for someone to be able to signal what sort of news update they need so that those “closest” to the news can create media – video, audio, text – and send it back to be accessed and posted.
Which is when I was introduced to CivicBoom (http://civicboom.wordpress.com/about/). A great deal of the communication around nOtice is twitter-based. CivicBoom, from Canterbury in Kent, has its own mobile app, Boomlly, which acts as the reporting link, and the means of signalling when stories are needed. As far as I know, CivicBoom is not currently in active use in the newsroom of any UK regional, yet it is the perfect tool for experimenting with hyperlocal on the smartphones of a local youth (or mature) audience. As we move into the 4G world, the image and video output of an observant community can be turned into hyperlocal news and information, and the news organization/newspaper can tune and frame this content flow by using apps like Boomlly to request coverage, seek other views, repeat coverage or request similar coverage from different places. In other words, citizen journalism can now be organized on a far better basis than ever before, to the extent that it really does become the answer to “how can we do all that we need to do for hyperlocal on a reduced and reducing journalist workforce”. The first examples of citizen journalism at any scale that I mapped were in Florida in the early years of this century, and they plainly lacked the tools to do the job. Well, the answer is now clear – recognize and adopt your own community as participants and partners, follow the interests of that community, seek quality and set standards but do not forget who is doing what for whom. In order to succeed at hyperlocal the regional press may need to retire its editors, turn its remaining reporters into Boomlly operators and forget what was learnt in the age of print about editorial power. But since the alternative is a slow road to extinction then I strongly recommend anyone interested in survival to contact Lizzie Hodgson (e.hodgson@civicboom.com) at Civicboom and discuss the re-integration of community around news. Now.
And if the partial answer to “there is no hyperlocal news is a community answer, the other important reminder is to underline the fact that local news organizations do not mine existing database resources for hyperlocal news. Thus, for example, the national database of roadworks (www.elgin.com) is not used in any active news environment, as far as I know. Yet one of the most important pieces of information you can give anyone on a hyperlocal smrtphone service would be where delays and disruption can be expected, when it starts and when it is due to end. Much more data of this type is now becoming available, both through Open Data mandates and commercial efforts. You do not need Big Data in a local context to find it, and it blends beautifully with citizen journalism.
If the regional press is to hold its post-print position and move forward, then the size and shape of the local opportunity must be re-defined. Successful citizen journalism can point to entrepreneurial activity in local eBook or local eLearning activity. The media organization as a one delivery, advertising-driven, wholly broadcast news operation in the locality may finally be dead; visions of its future are experimental, but it is only by iteration that we drive netorked publishing forward. There are plenty of US models, and even if Patch.com will not eventually succeed then the broadcast media work around EasyBlock (MSNBC) and iReport (CNN) should provide some clues – and TownSquareBuzz and The Batavian suggest others. This is the eleventh hour – there is not a minute to spare!
Mar
29
DealMonster Eats CEO
Filed Under Blog, internet, mobile content, news media, online advertising, Publishing, social media, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
We need to take a measure of the agony of the regional press in the UK at this point: it will never get worse. 2013 will be the Annus Horribilis – or Mirabilis. If it does succeed in crossing the Chasm into digital profit, then it will be much smaller, with better margins, lower debt and worse cashflow. And it will employ far less people. And if it fails, then it will just become media history, a fascinating story of the failure of the media to re-wrap content for changing audiences. The first British newspapers, the coffee house prints of the early eighteenth century (Lloyds List is the classic) are now B2B data services. And my litmus paper remains, as ever, Johnston Press. Trinity Mirror’s issues are confused by its national interests, LocalWorld (David Montgomery and Northcliffe) has too much to do across a vast range of very different titles to be in with a reasonable chance. But Johnston (Scotsman, Yorkshire Post and 200 or so other titles) was a well-run business with a reputation for squeezing every extra penny from advertising sales. Markets loved it: this was a a 350p share price in 2007 (as Media Guardian reminded us on 25 March), valuing the company at over £1 billion. The share price was down as far as 4p two years ago, but the current management team have recovered it with good decisions on debt and staffing to 16p, valuing the company at around £100m. Staff is cut by a third, the albatross is still the debt and the interest rates, and there appears no likelihood of a print advertising recovery (15% down last year, 16 % down in the first 10 weeks of 2013). This will never now return. The big plus is an industry-leading 17% margin and £57m in operating profits. Digital advertising is growing fast but is still only £20.6m in revenue. So what do we do in make or break year?
In charge at Johnston Press is Ashley Highfield, and as I have commented several times already he has some huge advantages: he has no experience of the regional press (a vital quality for a clear mind), he was the Big Idea man who gave the BBC the iPlayer, and, as an ex-Microsoft man, he understands software and consumers. And he has survived a most difficult and dangerous year with a degree of success that would have surprized investors in 2011 when he arrived. So far so good. But this year will be another steep climb. If advertising continues in print in this way then more titles must close and overall manning has to be reduced: it is hard to argue against the proposition that the headcount of 4350, reduced by 23% last year, must fall again by up to 1000. This is a tragedy, but one of the roads to survival which does not work well in a traditionally-organized, heavily unionized industry is the idea that the future is freelance and outsourced. Where titles close they have to leave behind digital space fillers to try to hold the constituency and the brand in place while new communities are built online. Johnston has plenty of websites but few real communities, so the current push in the group towards mobile apps is very valuable, and could help with the dying demographic, where readers are still expiring faster than they are being created.
So far the digital push has amounted to some 20 tablet and mobile apps and some 200 “mobile websites”. And DealMonster, a coupon-based bargains site that I have been playing with for the past week (www.dealmonster.co.uk). There digital display works very well. It needs video and could well develop a “magazine” feel around its regions, but if the idea is that digital display answers everything then I must declare myself agnostic. What I really miss so far in the Johnston response is the evidence of re-invention nationally inside new models and disciplines for hyperlocal-to-national device-based news. DealMonster is good, but if display eats all the energies that the struggling company can expend, then the drive to subscription-based news, the only high ground in this territory, will suffer. DealMonster is good, as long as it does not eat the CEO and his ability to think outside of the regional box.
Now, if you were going to build a subscription -based hyperlocal news environment, would you start with a regional newspaper? Its a moot point, but I could argue that if Johnston can keep their local brands visible on the device then they start at a good point for attracting user-generated content, and freelance attention. But notice how perversely un-local much of the local press in the UK has become. Great if you want what happened in the local courts, or local government, fine on local professional sport and all football, wholly inadequate on what happened after the car crashed into a lamp post at the corner of your street. Local news has a social media dimension wholly missing from the things that local newspapers do online. We are always told that local advertising has huge value in introducing buyers and sellers: years spent discussing online classifieds at Fish4 convinced me that buyers have their own local boundaries and only online can release the flexibility they need. If you live this side of the motorway you don’t go food shopping on the other side. You will travel 50 miles for cheap tyres but only 3 miles for cheap shoe repairs. The whole business of circulation territories defeats what digital does best for user convenience.
So can Johnston Press do all of this fast enough to successfully cross the chasm? Cost-cutting and the return to break-even buys time. But the Project is not transitional – it is simply about Re-invention. Time now is very short indeed. Next year it will be easier to re-invent without the constraints of owning all these failing assets.
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