INMA to news industry: what’s next?
15 May 2012 · By Earl J. Wilkinson
Last week’s INMA World Congress was both a beginning and an ending.
The ending was closing loops on why and how culture change is a foundational step for transitioning to a multi-media news company, a discussion which INMA has spent much of the past year leading. This is now less a leadership subject than a best practice that needs to be hammered home repeatedly, company by company.
The beginning was opening loops on the new priorities for our industry. I believe there are five such priorities that emerged from the INMA conversation in recent months, as well as during World Congress in Los Angeles last week. They deserve our special attention in the year ahead:
- Smartphone boom: Preparing for the smartphone and tablet boomerang effect on the publisher’s business model, especially distribution models.
- New product development strategy: Creating a new product development and management process template that points the way to how we conceive and manage consumer-driven portfolios.
- Core competencies: Identifying and simplifying core competencies on the content, audience, and advertising sides of news companies and making these the cultural driving forces of product development moving forward.
- Digital advertising rulebook: Collating the emerging digital advertising revenue streams and making these common practice in the news industry.
Is your company meeting its 1,440 daily deadlines?
20 April 2012 · By Dawn McMullan
As senior editor for INMA, I’ve hijacked Earl’s blog for the day. Everyone who knows Earl knows the man can talk. In this nine-minute interview by Toronto-based VP Digital, he does just that, sharing his thoughts on iPads (how they did — and did not — change the industry), the transitional newsroom (we’re looking for more oxygen, not more content), business models (think memberships not just paywalls), and corporate culture (which trumps everything else).
What we also know about Earl is that he doesn’t like to toot his own horn. So I’m doing it for him.
Earl is a worldwide leader in our industry. So sit back and enjoy nine minutes of perspective we all need to hear. Here are the interview highlights:
On the transition to digital from a newsroom perspective:
“The No. 1 thing to look for in terms of changing newsrooms is the fact that there is not one deadline. There are 1,440 minutes in a day and those are your 1,440 deadlines. So how do we build newsrooms and news organisations around those ideas? I would make the argument that as we transition our culture to multi-media, that more and more it’s going to be less about quality journalism ... [and more about] how to inject oxygen into the journalism that we produce.
“Look for the oxygen to build up the journalism, not more journalism.”
...[more]Creating news industry benchmarks for new product development
02 April 2012 · By Earl J. Wilkinson
When I visit INMA member newspapers worldwide, I have a standard question: “Of what initiative are you proudest?” That answer is very different in 2012 than it has been in the past, and the answer has bearing on new product development in our industry.
Over two decades, the question’s answer has varied greatly yet usually comes in waves. For example, in 2003-2004, everyone was thinking about format change. In recent years, everyone was thinking about integrated advertising sales.
Yet something strange began to surface in the past 18 months. The result was the recent INMA report “News Audience Engagement Initiatives You Can Use,” available for free to all INMA members and at a charge for non-members.
Beginning in 2010, the “proudest” initiative became new clubs and communities that were tightly defined and either were engagement devices or non-traditional consumer revenue-generators. Moreover, the clubs and communities — at least at the concept level — seemed very transferrable to other INMA member companies.
...[more]What to do with journalism in the multi-media news brand
26 March 2012 · By Earl J. WilkinsonWhere does journalism fit into the increasingly complex brand news companies are projecting onto quickly emerging multi-media audiences?
In presentations to INMA members in the United States in recent weeks, this seemingly incongruous question emerged in the context of the practicalities of culture change, department by department and profession by profession.
The crux of my argument is: News is going from a print bundle whose attributes are at the core of the marketing message — home delivery, tactile benefits of print, shutting out the world, print as a status symbol — to a multi-media subscription bundle to be enjoyed across platforms. In that emerging world, no news company has the budget to market platform by platform. Thus, branding becomes essential to an experience that now transcends platforms.
So, what makes up that brand? Surely it’s journalism, the core mission of most news companies.
I argue that journalism is too insider, by itself, to be a differentiating benefit for news brands. The consuming public cares little about journalism or its role in keeping democracy honest. The consuming public cares only about what’s in it for them: benefits, benefits, benefits.
...[more]Bundling a table with your newspaper subscription
17 January 2012 · By Earl J. Wilkinson
Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat learned something shocking about non-readers in 2010 field studies: Many ordinary, middle-class, working families did not have a dining table. That is yet one more impediment to reading a print newspaper. Instead, the heart of their living room was a home entertainment centre with a flat-screen TV and other devices, the study found.
In an article for INMA's Ideas Magazine, Editor-in-Chief Reeta Meriläinen opined: "If one does not have a table, it is impossible to spread out and read a broadsheet like ours. Perhaps, we thought, we should bundle a dining table into our subscription."
Count me in.
I'm a single guy who lives in a 20th floor condominium in downtown Dallas. Great nestled, panoramic view of the skyline. When I moved here two years ago, I made a series of design and furniture choices. None included a dining table or a kitchen table, much like the Finnish field studies suggest.
...[more]2011 in video perspective: culture, business models, multi-media, social media
30 December 2011 · By Earl J. Wilkinson
The rapid shift from print to multi-media companies dominated industry headlines in 2011 — punctuated by the urgent need to get the right people for new hybrid job functions.
Below are some video interviews and presentations I made about culture change, business models, multi-media, and social media in the past year that I thought might be a good year-ender as we all pivot to what looks like a dangerous 2012.
Happy New Year!
...[more]Wind behind transformation: U.S. publishers’ EBITDA at half of peak
15 December 2011 · By Earl J. Wilkinson
When I looked at the hand-written, crumpled piece of paper, and compared it with the historic data I had on file, I did a double-take: profitability of U.S. newspaper companies has dropped to about half of its peak from 12 years ago!
Analyst John Morton faxed the data to me this week, he the rare and meticulous keeper of such industry data. This was the final piece to my authorship of the INMA Newsmedia Outlook report that looks at culture change and the path to a multi-media growth story. You can see the chart of EBITDA margins of U.S. publicly traded newsmedia companies on this page.
When you realise that the 2008-2011 numbers were achieved on the backs of massive cutbacks, you see in numbers what it takes a lot of words to describe outside the United States.
...[more]In a pinch, INMA saved me with its social media resources
23 November 2011 · By Earl J. Wilkinson
When Bhaskar Das of the Times of India invited me to speak at the AdAsia Conference in New Delhi, I agreed without hesitation. It's an event that would attract 1,200+ media and advertising executives, and Bhaskar is without peer as a marketing genius and INMA member. I couldn’t say “no.”
The problem came with the subject and the format. I didn’t look at the details of the invitation — until the week of the event.
Instead of a presentation on media industry trends (my strength), I was serving on a panel of experts about social media.
Social media?
Panel?
Surrounded by people smarter than me on the subject?
I panicked.
And I did the only thing that INMA members, faced with the same conundrum, should do. I burrowed deeply into INMA resources and took a cram course.
...[more]Changing culture not an assault on newsrooms, but the entire newspaper template
15 November 2011 · By Earl J. Wilkinson
Suggesting culture change at newspapers is like questioning religious tenets in church. It may be sacrilegious, but it also may be necessary. You will be bashed by the high priests and bolstered by those in the shadows.
In the past few weeks, I’ve taken my theme of culture change from Australia to Sweden to Portugal to the United States to India. Every speech I make, I swear it will be the last time I touch the subject. Yet I get the same voracious reaction — good and bad.
The good:
- Bangalore: In India, I was shocked in recent weeks at the year-to-year change in attitude about digital’s role in this historically print-dominated market. As the tectonic plates shift, publishers are talking culture as a foundation for multi-media. Young executives came up to me after a speech in Bangalore with such great enthusiasm for speaking on a taboo subject.
- Williamsburg: In Williamsburg, Virginia, CEOs desperate for new wind behind the sails of tired newspapers asked me to push harder on the culture change subject and if INMA would be willing to do day programmes on the subject.
Inspiration from the road: how digital dimes will save journalism
11 October 2011 · By Earl J. Wilkinson
Clark Gilbert pointed to the concentric circles like a mad scientist might draw out the cure to a disease on a napkin.
Deep into Conference Season, Gilbert’s presentation to the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association (SNPA) in Williamsburg, Virginia, mesmerizes an audience of CEOs looking for the Holy Grail.
More precisely, his audience wants to know how to continue funding high-quality and high-quantity journalism with digital dimes — and how to work around the innovator’s dilemma with which he was once associated at Harvard University.
For media companies, the innovator’s dilemma is about playing defense with the legacy business while simultaneously playing offense with a new digital business going after revenue, Gilbert says. The concentric circles are the growing overlap of the two businesses over time.
The businesses that today are nipping at you initially had almost zero overlap with your space when they started. Over time, the new business encroaches on the old business and intensifies the natural desire to play defense. Disruption eventually creates new net growth, though the incumbent never sees it that way. The incumbent only looks at displacement.
Gilbert’s challenge now that he’s a media company CEO: confronting the dilemma.
The CEO of Deseret Media says that the lessons he took from academia suggest the only path to survival involves a couple different actions.
...[more]
