Editor&Publisher reports Michael Wolff’s keynote speech at the E&P/MediaWeek Interactive Conference on Thursday:
“…[Wolff] again predicted the ‘death of newspapers’, adding that he’d been having ‘fun’ pushing the proposition in recent months to the point of being considered a ‘Dr. Doom.’
“Newspapers ‘not only will go away but they should go away,’ he said, adding that today’s talk would ‘cap’ his statements and then he would ‘never speak of the death of newspapers again.'”
Yesterday at the FIPP World Magazine Conference, William Kerr, board chairman at Meredith Group suggested that ‘being 12 per cent down is the new up’.
The wider economic downturn and the gap between online and traditional offline advertising revenues in the magazine industry have been referred to in every panel I’ve attended so far (though more often than not it’s referred to as ‘challenging times’). But has the mag industry faced facts?
Dylan Jones, editor of GQ, doesn’t seem to think so:
“When we come out of this recession many industries will be the same, but the mass market motor industry and the newspaper industry will be changed forever,” Jones told delegates.
“There are many people in the magazine industry who think it won’t effect them, but we could equally be having these conversations in two or three years time about the magazine industry.”
There will be more cost-cutting, in particular staff reductions, as the industry realises the impact, he added. (GQ’s publisher Conde Nast reportedly axed five per cent of its US magazine staff last October)
For other’s the downturn is a huge opportunity for innovation and restructuring. Google’s UK MD, Matt Brittin, predicted that the current climate would accelerate certain types of user behaviour online. For example, the use of search and free technologies to create their own content.
The challenge for publishers is to monitor these changes and respond to the consumers’ changing needs online – often by embracing new, free technologies themselves, but also by finding new ways to serve up their content that will be found through specific search queries, for instance, or relating to niche topics.
According to Brittin, opportunities exist – with Google’s help of course – within the ‘first downturn in a truly digital age’.
Journalists at Grazia are experimenting with a host of real-time reporting tools and techniques, the magazine’s editor-in-chief explained at today’s FIPP World Magazine Congress.
Jane Bruton told delegates of her excitement that reporters were twittering live updates from fashion shows and filing web copy from events.
“We can talk to our readers on a minute-by-minute basis. We get instant feedback if we want to test out a story for our magazine – we can go online, we can go on Twitter,” said Bruton.
“Our fashion teams now – rather than sitting and taking notes – they’re Twittering from the front row, they’re running to the car, typing up instant web reports.
“The readers love it because they’re seeing everything through our eyes.”
Certain elements of the magazine are now web-first, for example, the pictures from the Style Hunter section, which attract hundreds of comments a week from readers.
“They [readers] feel involved, feel closer to the brand and feel closer to us as personalities. We’ve never been afraid of exposing the inner workings of the magazine,” said Bruton, who said the same exposure had been created offline when the magazine spent a week operating in a shopping centre.
“In the current climate the fact that people relate to our personalities and trust our brand is really crucial.”
For fellow panelist and GQ editor Dylan Jones, the key to online success is capturing the same luxury of the print magazine online, he said.
Being online has not changed the editorial stance of the magazine, which has remained central to the design of the website: “I think we’ve cracked it,” he added.
Read: BBC Good Food editorial director Gillian Carter on why the web hasn’t affected print sales.
There aren’t enough ad dollars on the planet for everyone, Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future, said, in her opening remarks for yesterday’s session at the 37th FIPP World Magazine Congress that looked at ‘what advertisers want’.
Magazines are ‘all having to fight much much harder to grow our share of media spend,’ she added. So, she asked, just ‘what the hell’ did advertisers want from magazines?
Nikolas Talonpoika, worldwide media director for the Gucci Group said that he thinks online will see a decrease in advertising spend from the luxury sector.
Magazines are still the most important part of the Gucci Group’s print advertising spend, Talonpoika told delegates.
While acknowledging that this year is tough and ‘lots of titles will disappear this year, Talonpoika was optimistic for the role that print magazines will continue to play.
Unilever’s CMO, Simon Clift said that for his company the ‘lion’s share’ of advertising is in television, and only 13 per cent of its overall advertising budget is spent in print – but said the magazines accounted for 90 per cent of that print spend.
Clift said that his company – which, with its £41 billion turnover, is seeing three quarters of its growth in developing and emerging markets – is thinking about different ways to promote its products via print.
For example, one Greek newspaper was once printed entirely on aromatised paper for one particular washing product campaign.
Clift said that consumers were not beginning to ‘define the agenda’ and that Unilever was looking for new ways to promote brands via editorial or advertorial content.
Clift argued that these methods ‘can build integrity rather than compromise it,’ he argued. Joking that advertising was something editors have to put up with, he said advertisers don’t want to see a publication damaged by the advertising. ‘A successful parasite doesn’t kill its host,’ he quipped.
It was about creating interesting content, he said ‘whether it comes from an editor or an advertiser’ “When those things [editorial and advertising] are parallel it magnifies and develops our message,” he said.
Dove is the Unilever brand which is most advertised in magazines, and a product which is an example of a cross-media promotion: online, in magazines and on television.
In the previous session, Maurice Lévy, chairman and CEO of the Publicis Groupe, spoke of the world ‘the ad agencies have to live in now, where a couple of words on a search engine page is sometimes considered by our client as more effective than a wonderful TV spot.’
Newspapers and magazines could not expect to retain their share in the advertising market, despite analysts’ more optimistic predictions for 2011, he said.
“We have to change and we do change each day. You have to adapt yourself to this new world,” he said.
“It’s not yet time for obituaries,” he claimed. “I’m a little bit shocked when I see print media forever discussing their own death,”
“Please always remember the small guy in the digital world – Bill Gates. He repeated loud and clear ‘content is king’ (…) and you [the magazine industry] own it.'”
“Would you go as often on the internet, if you could not find newspapers and your favourite magazines online?” he asked. “I don’t think print media is dead, quite the contrary,” Lévy added.
“Think what semantic can do when combined with marketing. Now is time to innovate.”
“You have to look at this as an opportunity to leverage new opportunities with the strength of your brand and your audiences,” he said.
Colin Myler, News of the World, was up in front of a House of Commons select committee today, as part of an inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel.
Unsurprisingly Myler and News Group Newspapers’ lawyer Tom Crone were questioned about the Max Mosley case – though, as a new writ has been issued against the paper by Mosley, some responses had to be curtailed.
Nevertheless, some good nuggets from Myler and Crone on the consequences of publishing the story and why the NOTW broke it:
“Mr Mosley made quite a case that he’d never sought publicity, that he was a private person. I disagree with that fundamentally.
“For a man in his position (…) who so wrecklessly put himself in the hands of five prostitutes (…) you have to say you played some part in your own downfall.”
“It doesn’t mean to say that you shy away, it means that you have to be equally diligent, efficient and careful and get very good legal advice.”
Myler also went on to discuss the issue of ‘celebrity stings’ by the NOTW, saying that while journalist Mazher Mahmood was widely known as the ‘fake sheikh’, he is also ‘one of the most professional newspaper journalists in the world’.
“He has been responsible for convicting and jailing 232 criminals. This is a man that puts himself in great danger and does so with such a professional aplomb that any media organisation would be proud to be associated with it,” he said.
Mahmood’s talents, said Myler, as increasingly being used for stories on immigration and religious radicalism: “There is some serious journalism within the News of the World.”
Suzanne Breen, Sunday Tribune Northern editor, has been threatened with sanctions under the Terrorism Act 2000 if she does not hand over to the Northern Irish police (PSNI) notes, papers, photos and other material relating to an interview with a Real IRA army council representative.
“All the information with which she was provided – anonymously – by the Real IRA member she interviewed, was published in the Sunday Tribune. Nothing has been hidden, nor has any agenda been pursued. The Real IRA interview was a basic job of journalism and one Suzanne achieved, in the public interest, because her independence and ethics are unquestioned,” reads an op-ed in the Tribune.
“It is a cornerstone of journalism that sources be protected.”
Index on Censorship awards
This year’s winners of the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards were named in London last week.
The Sunday Leader received the journalism award. Its editor Lasanthe Wickrematunge was murdered earlier this year, shortly after publishing an opinion piece in which he predicted his death.
The award winners were selected in five categories: books, films, journalism, new media and law and campaigning.
Mind Journalist of the Year
The prize, which honours excellence in covering mental health issues, will form part of the charity’s annual Mind week in May.
The winner of journalism award will be named together with winners of the Student Journalist, Book of the Year and Champion of the Year awards on May 14.
The journalism nominees include: Patrick Cockburn from the Independent, Toby Wiseman of Men’s Health and Eleanor Harding from the Wandsworth Guardian.
Paul Foot Award re-opens
And last but not least, this year’s Paul Foot Award is open for entries for its fifth year.
Sponsored by Private Eye and The Guardian, the prize rewards investigative or campaigning journalism in the UK.
Entries to the award written by individuals or teams of journalists must be submitted by September 1. To be eligible, material must have been published either in a newspaper, magazine or online between September 1 2008 and August 31 2009.
The prize money this year is going up to £10,000 (from £5,000) for the winner, with £1,000 each for the runners-up.
US newspaper websites recorded a total average of 73.3 million unique users in Q1, according to new figures from Nielsen Online – a 10.5 per cent rise year-on-year.
“Enough already. Partial facts and misinformation about newspapers are distorting the view for everyone, including readers and advertisers,” writes Donna Barrett over at Editor&Publisher.
“(…)The crisis facing newspapers is not an audience problem. It is a revenue problem.”
Also related: Nieman Journalism Lab: ’80 per cent of newspapers gone in 18 months. Not likely.’
Following on from last week’s City University study, which suggested that traffic drops when a news title goes online-only, Editor&Publisher reports on a decrease in unique users to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer since it abandoned its print run.
The site was not among the US’ top 30 newspaper websites last month, according to data from Nielsen Online and posted a 23 per cent year-on-year drop in unique users.
It’s local counterpart and former online collaborator before it went online-only, the Seattle times, posted a 70 per cent year-on-year gain in unique users last month to its own website – recording 2.2 million.
However, according to a spokesman for the Seattle PI’s owners, in an article on the Puget Sound Business Journal, the Nielsen data is flawed and internal data suggets the site actually showed a 10 per cent growth in year-on-year traffic last month.