#soe09: What are the revenue opportunities for newspapers – and what are the ‘donkeys’?
Concluding the session on future revenue for newspapers at today’s Society of Editors conference (including a suggestion of in-house PR agencies at newspapers), panel chair and media commentator Raymond Snoddy asked the speakers to name one future opportunity and one ‘donkey’ that should be given up.
Neil Benson, editorial director of Trinity Mirror Regionals
Keep: Video
“Video is a massive growth area that appeals to a spread of ages.”
Kill: Paid-for model for general news content
Morgan Holt, director of HUGE
Keep: Audience analysis and the link economy.
“Keep chasing your audience. Get very close to them and let them know you’re close to them; and make sure that everything you create is linkable to.”
Kill: Video
“It’s too expensive.”
Francois Pierre Nel, UCLAN
Keep: Valuable existing services
“We need to consider what value we provide to all our customers.”
Kill: DIY mentality
“We need to let go of the idea that we have to do it all ourselves and we need to look at new partnerships.”
November 17th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
[...] Society of Editors '09: What are the revenue opportunities for newspapers – and what are the … Kevin: A nice succinct view of what opportunities to keep and what opportunities newspapers should stop putting effort in to. Disagreement on whether video is an opportunity or a money pit. (My two pence: It can be both. It depends on how it's done. Web video is not TV.) I strongly agree with Francois Nel, who I count as a friend, when he says that newspapers need to give up on the what he calls DIY, what I call vertical ownership obsession. Francois says: “We need to let go of the idea that we have to do it all ourselves and we need to look at new partnerships.” Smart partnering will separate the winners from the dead pool. (tags: newspapers, video, revenue, partnership, coopetition) [...]