Category Archives: Business

#wef11: Publishers share paywall strategies and lessons learnt

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“Don’t be afraid” – this was just one of many messages given by a panel of publishers at the World Editors Forum today, who shared their experiences of erecting “paywalls” or what came to be termed by the panel as “leaky walls”.

The panel featured three news outlets which have all established paid-content systems in their own ways, although the general approach appeared to be the same, leave holes in the “paywall”.

Dirk Nolde, managing editor of Berliner Morgenpost Online in Germany spoke first, outlining the site’s paid-content model which is free for print subscribers, or 4.90 euros a month. Only some content is placed behind the wall, including local news and sports, which are charged on different models, such as by day or month etc. “Make the assets paid”, he said.

The site also offers a “first-click-free”, such as via Google or social media, which works three times a day. ” We are trying to be leaky with the paywall,” he added.

The results so far is that we have 11,000 digital subscribers which includes print subscribers who can register for free. We thought it would be horrifying but we were wrong, visits went up.

According to his statistics in December 2009, the year in which the “paywall” was set up, visits stood at 2.4 million. In September 2010 this had risen to 3.3 million and last month, in September 2011 it was at 5.1 million.

It didn’t really hurt us, we were able to tell the readers and our users there’s quality behind this paywall.

But he said the site is looking to move to a more metered model.

We will give away more stuff, use a softer approach. It is about being able to accommodate users with the fact we think you should pay for content. That’s our mission.

Fellow panel member, Matus Kostolny, editor-in-chief of SME in Slovakia, discussed how they joined up to the Piano project, a group paywall used by nine news outlets in Slovakia.

The project was set up by Piano Media. I spoke to chief executive of Piano Media Tomas Bella after the panel to find out where the company is going in the near future.

Tomas Bella, Piano Media by journalismnews

The paywall was erected in May this year. On SME it costs 2.90 euros a month or 29 euros a year and, just like Berliner Morgenpost Online, is free to print subscribers. Also similarly only some content is behind “the wall”, such as opinion and political news, the wall is removed for big stories and SME is also considering a more metered wall.

But he added that is is important to remember that “behind stories are real human beings doing real jobs that are worth paying for”.

Public opinion is one of the things we want to influence and we believe it’s so important people pay for it, but if we don’t pursuade enough people then we’ll lose our inflence. We are thinking of different ways to change the structure of paid content and still think that in the end the journalism is worth to pay for and we will pursuade our readers to do it.

Revenue for the first month across all nine sites was 40,000 euros, “which was successful story for our market”, he added.

We were afraid we would lose readers but in the end we didn’t lose anybody, there is an increase of five per cent in unique viitors. We were afraid we would lose readers in locked sections but not losing them so much.

Later he added that one of the biggest lessons is not to be afraid to experiment.

The final speaker was assistant managing editor of digital content at the New York Times, Jim Roberts, who shared some interesting details on the Times’ model, which we reported on here. He told the conference the Times’ pay model is “based on number of principles”.

We try to strike a very delicate balance betwee keeping as open as possible to news junkies, but also really wanted to instill a sense of value for our loyalists who continue to consume quality journalism.

We wanted our regular users to pay. They came to our site and still do, frequently. We felt they understood the sense of value and they would want to pay for it as many of them had done for their print subscription.

Concluding the panel the speakers were asked to share their main lessons. Dirk Nolde gave three which nicely rounded off the session:

  • Communication, communication, communication  – you have to tell users what you are doing
  • This is no supermarket. We’re not selling everything, they don’t have to pay for everything. You have to give things away to accomodate readers.
  • Produce online content that’s really worthy of being paid for. That convinces readers and makes them say “wow that was good”.

Future PLC ‘considering options’ for US division

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Magazine publisher Future has said it is “considering a wider range of strategic options” for its US division in light of “challenging” conditions for the business.

In pre-close trading update the publisher said its position in the US “is significantly more challenging” than the UK. In July Future announced plans to “accelerate the transition of Future US into a primarily digital business”.

But this week, in a report preceding full-year earnings in November, the group said trading conditions in the US “reflecting ongoing weakness and decreasing visibility at newsstand” means the board is now considering a wider range of strategic options. PaidContent reports that the language used suggests the company “now may look to sell its business there”.

The publisher also confirmed that 10 per cent of its workforce has been cut in the UK and worldwide, which equals around 100 jobs, as part of its restructure to focus on digital and print efficiencies.

The company also claims in the latest report that the trends identified in its Interim Management Statement, published in July, have continued.

Revenues for the twelve months ending 30 September 2011 are expected to be down 6 per cent on last year, in constant currency.  The Board remains comfortable with market expectations of results for 2011, subject only to any period-end adjustment required in relation to US newsstand returns, beyond those already announced and incorporated into fourth quarter estimates.

US study finds 92% of B2B journalists use LinkedIn

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A study by US company Arketi Group has found 92 per cent of journalists writing for B2B publications use LinkedIn, 85 per cent of journalists are on Facebook, 84 per cent use Twitter.

Out of the journalists surveyed, 58 per cent have a YouTube account, 49 per cent have a blog, 28 per cent use Flickr, 20 per cent use Digg, 18 per cent have a MySpace account, 15 per cent use Delicious and 14 per cent use Foursquare, according to this report.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has published advice on its blog for freelancers and those who juggle journalism careers with other jobs.

For example, a freelance or part-time journalist may also be a yoga tutor and have to decide whether or not to include details of both careers in a LinkedIn profile.

Your first decision is whether you want to feature both careers on your LinkedIn profile. If you think it might be puzzling or even damaging to one of your jobs to feature both on your profile, then simply leave off your other employment. There is no rule that you have to show everything you do on LinkedIn.

If, on the other hand, you want to promote both of your jobs or careers, here are two ways to do that effectively:

  • Embrace the slash mark: Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers, coined the term “slash careerist” or “slasher” to refer to individuals who can’t answer “what do you do?” with a single word or phrase. If you’re perfectly comfortable being a tech salesperson/photographer or a lawyer/SAT tutor, then proudly display this as your LinkedIn headline.

You’ll also want to list both of these positions as your current employment in your profile. The way to include more than one job as current is to put the end dates of both jobs as “present”. Note that whichever role began more recently will be displayed first.

  • If, instead, you want to highlight one of your jobs more prominently (e.g., because you’re hoping to land a new job in that field or believe you’ll have more networking opportunities related to that role), then I recommend writing a profile headline featuring that role exclusively and listing it as your only current position.

The LinkedIn blog post aso has advice from freelancers who are seeking a full-time position.

Here is a Journalism.co.uk podcast on how journalists can best use LinkedIn

 

 

 

 

 

FT study exposes problems in finding media information on corporate websites

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A study by the Financial Times and web effectiveness experts Bowen Craggs has found many corporate websites fail to provide journalists with information and serve the media in a useful and effective way – which is often not in the company’s favour in terms of generating positive press coverage.

The study finds “many press offices simply do not see the online medium as an important” and this article (part paywall) in the FT theorises that this could be as many press officers are former journalists who left the industry before the advent of online and social media.

The FT Bowen Craggs Index looks at:

How well a site caters to four areas of journalistic enquiry: the news release service and archiving; the ready availability of good quality contact information; the range of background about the company and its industry; and the provision of publication quality imagery.

News release service

The FT article states journalists “do not want to be spoon fed”:

Give them a ready-made story, and they will either ignore it, or look for a way to put a different twist on it (not necessarily in the company’s favour). The last thing they want is to write the same story as other people. What they do want is leads, which explains the keenness with which they have taken to Twitter. Companies need to understand Twitter – both to feed journalists leads and to get early warning that a nasty news storm is about to blow in.

Contact information and background about the company and its industry

The FT article states:

[Journalists] tend to be in a hurry, and impatient. Their inclination is often to pick up the phone rather than trawl a site. Companies can make themselves unpopular by failing to make press contacts easy to find.

Provision of images

The study found that “one of the most significant trends this year comes from the image library metric”:

The big move forward is the increasing use of Flickr as a complementary library: see for example Nestlé and Novartis.

A remarkable number of companies do not provide an image library at all – almost a quarter of the companies in the Index, including most of the Chinese companies but also a slew of banks – Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Santander, Westpac and more. Why? If you do not provide images yourselves, media organisations will surely go to your rivals or to a library.

German company Siemans comes out on top and is heralded as an example of best practice of serving the media. It has an index of 28. An example of a lower score is Johnson and Johnson with an index of nine.

Labour calls for amendments to media takeover rules

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Labour is calling for an “emergency” amendment to the law in relation to media takeovers to give ministers greater power to intervene, following News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB.

According to an announcement by the party on Sunday (28 August) it hopes to “close legal loopholes” identified during News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB, before the conclusion of the Leveson inquiry. News Corporation eventually withdrew its bid as phone hacking allegations continued to be mounted against its now-closed News of the World title.

Under the proposed amendments to Section 58 of the Enterprise Act 2002, outlined by shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis in a letter to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster, ministers would be given powers to ask regulators to apply “a wide ranging public interest test as well as a fit and proper person test”, from the start.

The changes also call for ministers to be able to intervene at any stage “if new information came to light”. Lewis will put these proposed measures before both the House of Commons and House of Lords when the summer recess ends in less than a week.

Tool of the week for journalists – Duedil, ‘Lexis-Nexis-meets-Google-meets-LinkedIn’

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Tool of the week: Duedil

What is it? Duedil is a website which launched in April 2010 and allows you to access company stats and figures for free. Gigaom described it as “Lexis-Nexis-meets-Google-meets-LinkedIn”.

It’s still in beta but is a kind of social network for company information; transparent data available on a site with an intuitive user interface.

You can, of course, access the information via Companies House (for a £1-a-report-fee) but what Duedil does really well is allow you to explore and drill down.

Graphs, charts and timelines present current stock information, the number of employees and opinions on the firm, including tweets.

How is it of use to journalists?

Whatever your area of journalism – from fashion to politics to local newspapers – you no doubt have to keep an eye on the finances, details of directors and employee numbers of companies within your field of expertise.

What’s really nice is that if you log in with your LinkedIn profile, it automatically suggests companies you might be interested in.

Even if you never use Duedil for journalistic research, it’s worth exploring and curiously addictive once you start browsing.

Here’s an example: Journalism.co.uk is interested in following newspaper groups, media organisations and tech companies.

Let’s take News International Publishers Ltd. You can click to see various details.

For example, you can click on the financials for various years.

You can then look at the list of directors and find James Murdoch’s current and past positions presented on a timeline.

Now click on the group graph and see the family of related companies.

Here’s another example, this time for Johnston Press. Here you can see the stock information, number of employees:

Under the “opinions” heading, you can also see the tweets that comment on JP.

It is worth checking and data you access from Duedil (you can report bad data if you come across it and receive £5 as part of its guarantee).

Simply by following companies on Duedil – in the way you would follow people in a social network – you may well come across data to inspire further investigation or information that reveals a connection.

Second country expected to adopt group paywall later this year

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Three months on from Slovakia’s group paywall going up around nine news outlets, with “promising results”, means a second small country is expected to adopt the model before the end of the year, according to Piano Media, the company which signed up the publishers and put up the paywall.

Tomas Bella, chief executive of Piano Media told Journalism.co.uk that the paywall generated €40,000 in the first month. The company aimed to sign up around 1 per cent of Slovakia’s 2.5 million internet uses in the first 12 months. He said that after three months the company has achieved two thirds of the target for the first year.

Bella said:

Piano expects to launch one more country this winter and it is likely that a few more countries will follow next year.

Bella did not reveal which countries are expected to follow Slovakia’s model explained that serious discussions are talking place.

We are now thinking about some of the smaller to medium-sized European countries which maybe some of the Scandanavian countries.

We’ve also had interest from France and from Australia.

Bella explained that Piano’s first foray into the bigger markets, such as France and Australia, is likely to trial group paywalls for regional news sites or parts of sites, such as sport.

Slovak paywall model

Nine major publishers with more than 40 websites entered a joint paywall deal in Slovakia which went up in April.

Users are charged €2.90 a month to access content – a bit like paying a satellite or cable TV subscription to view channels owned by different broadcasters.

Piano developed an algorithm that times how long a reader spends on a site, with content weighted accordingly. So the longer a reader spends on a publisher’s site, the more revenue that publisher generates. Video therefore pays more than editorial and the model does not encourage crafty headline writing to generate clicks.

Different sites in Slovakia have opted for varying restrictions with some being extremely porous paywalls with just one article behind the wall, some charge people to access comments or to participate in forums, other sites have much stricter Times-style pay-to-view.

Some Slovak sites opted not to sign up to the paywall deal, Bella explained, but said the “the number of readers for the sites that went behind paywalls is basically very comparable to the sites that remained outside of the paywall”.

It didn’t cause any big drop in the number of readers, it caused only some drops in traffic to specific areas of the sites that went behind the paywall.

Bella also said visitors are moving between paywalled sites, a benefit of the joint model.

Funnily enough in June and July the news sites that are inside the Piano paywall were even doing a little bit better in traffic than the ones that are outside the paywall.

Bella has talked to 10 publishers in the UK and explained from next month the company will be negotiating a deal for a UK publisher with websites abroad.

He told Journalism.co.uk, he thinks adoption in Britain requires wider use elsewhere, with English language sites being far more difficult to sign up to a group paywall deal due to competition from abroad.

I’m not saying it won’t work in Britain but we have to prove it in two or three more countries first.

In Slovakia companies that opted out of the paywall initially will be joining next month.

Publishers that are already part of the group are now “fine tuning” what they put behind the wall. Additional content will go behind the wall and a small amount will be brought in front of the wall.

Changes will be made both ways but much more content is going behind the wall.

The funny thing is some of [the companies that did sign up] said we didn’t want to tell you before but we never thought it would work.

Bella said Piano Media had not heard of any publishers losing advertising revenue due to the wall.

Advertisers and media agencies might be a little worried as publishers are getting a little bit independent and less dependent on their revenue.

Greenslade: Phone hacking book deals already signed

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The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade reports today that book deals relating to the phone-hacking scandal have already been signed.

This includes one for Guardian journalist Nick Davies, of which is said to be “provisionally” titled Hack Attack.

It’s scheduled for release in autumn next year. So it looks as though Labour MP Tom Watson will get in first because his tome, for Penguin Press, is due to be published before the end of this year. It is being co-written with Martin Hickman of the Independent, a former journalist of the year.

Greenslade adds that “there is not the least sense of competition or animosity between Davies and Watson”, with the story big enough for the two of them, if not more.

Guardian: Police files investigated and News International to lose exclusive Olympic access

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The Guardian reports today (21 July), that Scotland Yard has been asked to look at “thousands of files” to investigate whether officers unlawfully obtained mobile phone-tracking data for journalists.

There were half a million requests by public authorities for communications data in the UK last year – of which almost 144,000 were demands for “traffic” data, which includes location.

In other phone-hacking related news, newspapers under the News International umbrella are to lose exclusive access to British athletes in the lead up to the Olympics next year, also according to the Guardian. This is due to the closure of the News of the World and the impact of this on the partnership contract, according to the report.

Team 2012, the Visa-backed project supporting potential British Olympians, had signed up News International as its official partner.

But Team 2012 has said in a statement, that “as a result of the closure of News of the World the contract can no longer be fulfilled as originally envisaged”.

According to the Guardian Team 2012 “is now looking for potential new media partners”.

BBC Cojo: Journalists and the new UK Bribery Act

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At the beginning of the month the UK Bribery Act came into force, and while it is largely aimed at business corruption, according to the BBC, the provisions of the Act could also impact on the activities of UK journalists.

So this useful post on the College of Journalism website, by the BBC’s Kevin Steele, is a must read. In the post, he explains exactly how reporters could be affected and “fall foul” of the act, such as when using local fixers.

… what happens when your fixer says they can make the local bureaucratic wheels turn faster – and you can meet your deadline – if they make a payment or other ‘consideration’ of some kind to a third party who is in a position to expedite your request.

It is in situations like this that a journalist, and their employer, can fall foul of the new UK Bribery Act.

According to Steele the “wide-ranging” legislation can also affect non-British journalists from foreign outlets “with a presence of some kind in the UK”. And the employer is also at risk, he says.

One of the new provisions of the UK Act is that of corporate liability – so a media organisation can be held responsible in law for the individual actions of its employees, including freelancers or agents (such as fixers) acting on its behalf.

However, there is a defence if the employer can show that it had in place ‘adequate procedures’ to prevent an infringement of the legislation – even if evidence of a bribe can be shown.

The Act can be seen in full here.