Jan
26
Of paranoia and newspapers
Filed Under Blog, Industry Analysis, internet, news media, online advertising, Publishing | 1 Comment
Is it paranoid to think that everyone is out to do you down, when in fact everyone is trying to secure your extinction? Of course not, and the newspaper industry must be protected from the charge of paranoia, just as in previous times, when it ruled the media roost, it needed to be protected from a charge of arrogance. The truth is that the world has been unkind to newspaper men since the days of William Randolph Hearst and Alfred, Lord Northcliffe. Creating commercial empires from selling advertising and exhibiting a callow disregard for truth and accuracy when it got in the way of a good story was, from the 1890s to the 1930s, itself a good story. And newspaper owners had to be audacious rogues to get away with it.
History does this. Eighteenth century libertarians in England looked back at a world of idealized Anglo-Saxon common lands and village councils, and deplored enclosures and loss of liberty. Now we look back at the enclosed parkland estates as the real world that we have lost. In the same way, newspaper owners who have long lost touch with the ill-written bastardized press releases used in Britain’s regional press to divide columns of advertising, and who have spent a decade firing the ignoble hacks who produced this nutrition-free copy in order to maximize margins, now appear on high horse to defend their high-value “content” from web users when those Anglo-Saxon peasants have the cheek (or innocence) to want to link similar references together in the collaborative world of the web. Only this week did the Intellectual Property Director of NewsInternational liken linking to shoplifting (Guardian letters, 25 January 2009) and protest that ” The public is well-served by companies like News that invest in creativity”.
And then, still worse, the CEO of Trinity Mirror uses last week’s Oxford Media Convention to lambast local government-run news sheets as “mini-Pravdas” which provide a further source of unfair competition for her declining news output. Here indeed is an industry first: whoever heard of British local government, when mentioned in the pages of the regional press, ever getting anything right ? But here, like the BBC, they now appear to be a rival. Perhaps this is because they generally cannot afford to rewrite the press releases, and are therefore compelled to pass them on accurately? Or have they taken to employing the wordsmiths fired by the private sector? The real issue here, as with the newspapers of Mr Murdoch, may be about political influence, but that somehow does not seem to be a cause for concern.
When we get to write the history of these headless days in the decline and fall of the Press, we will wonder at the lack of strategic appreciation. It is not just that the co-operative web community environment is wholly alien to people who sell a bundle of folded paper sheets to each of many isolated, individual citizens. It is the lack of thinking around scale and impact which is so surprising. This week produced a classic example. The UK start-up Rightmove, founded by real property resellers and now a quoted company, dominates the UK market. In 2007, Mr Murdoch came in with a rush and bought smaller and more specialized services like Globrix and Propertyfinder. Last year News International sold off these interests, and this year DMGT bought Globrix, and put it into its Digital Property Group with Findahome, Findaproperty and PrimeLocation. This gives DMGT a large but second ranked portfolio of services in a market where its ability to command the attention of real estate agents is much diminished. The other News Corp property, PropertyFinder, has gone to Zoopla, the alternative community trade model which cuts out, or at least cuts down, the agent middleman. Strategically, neither DMGT or News feels like an expensive competitive auction for Rightmove: equally, neither could face up to a business model that meant cutting the throats of their erstwhile advertisers, the real estate agents. Result: strategic paralysis. Reasons for hope: DMGT is no longer dependent on selling newsprint for over 50% of its revenues and profits. And neither is Hearst. What would William Randolph and Lord Alfred have made of that?
Jan
10
Viva, Las Vegas!
Filed Under Blog, eBook, Education, news media, Publishing, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I have never really enjoyed Las Vegas very much. Too much glitter and artifice. I always think of broken gamblers dying in lonely bedsits. But I must say that I have really enjoyed my day in the desert today. Perfect antidote to the foot of snow around my Hut. And going to CES without ruined sleep, jetlag, tired feet, or the endurance test of having yet another demo from yet another salesman without being able to break in to ask the only question that I really wanted answered.
Instead I have had demos of everything I wanted to see. The aisles have looked fairly crowded but no-one jostled me. I have asked my questions , and even had sensible answers to some of them. I started by working out exactly what I wanted to see: always a good move at a huge trade show but one that I seem to rarely accomplish. I settled on a day of looking at Readers: Copia, the Liquidvista prototype, MSI eReader, PlasticLogic QUE (one of the most impressive – and a Cambridge UK development!), the Skiff, Spring Design’s Alex, the Booken Orizon, the Entourage Edge and the Microsoft Courier dual screen digital codex (why are we suddenly into that word “codex”? – it produces Leonardo da Vinci in my mind).
Then I thought, if I had time after all those stands, I would like to look at the Samsung display and evaluate the E6 and the E10. And I missed Steve Ballmer of Microsoft using the HP Slate at the opening press conference (I didn’t have a ticket!) so I would rather like to catch up on that, as well as previewing the Dell Streak and Cydle M7. Well , I did get to see the Ballmer demo, and I also visited those other stands.
And I had a ton of help. Hats off to Matthew Bernius and his colleagues at the Open Publishing Lab at RIT for gathering all this stuff up in one place for me. And three cheers for the great people at Engadget , Gizmodo and Teleread for doing the videos and demos and evaluations of all these things, and for answering my fool questions for all the world as if I knew what I was talking about (and to their communities, who spotted a sucker immediately). And to Bobbie Johnson and the Guardian for getting me in to the Ballmer session and then restlessly videoing the crowded aisles and fevered sales pitches: quite beyond the call of duty.
So I am off to bed now. A little tired but quite energized by what I have seen. But there is just one thing I cannot work out. If I was CES , wouldn’t I put all of these links and demos and ideas on my own site, and run it year round, and offer to continually update punters like me, and create a community which includes all who went to Vegas, and those like me who stayed at home. The current CES site is a good news site but hardly an eCommerce, 365 days a year community experience. In the past year I have spoken to two of the greatest business event operators in the world about this, and while they talk the talk of network connectivity they do little more. One day the physical event will be the satellite activity, and the web will be the core: I hope they transfer their brands successfully before that happens.
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