Independent Journalism: Doing good and doing well

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Are you suffering from IOS?

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Are you suffering from IOS?

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“Between the birth of the world and 2003, there were five exabytes of information created. We [now] create five exabytes every two days. See why it’s so painful to operate in information markets?”

from an interview at Atmosphere 2010 conference

Photo by Charles Haynes, Some Rights Reserved

Eric Schmidt of Google

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1 exabyte = 1 million terrabytes

photo by Ray Tsang

An exabyte is 1 million terabytesThe entire printed collection of the US Library of Congress is 10 terabytesSo an exabyte is 100,000 Libraries of Congress

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Library of Congress = 10 terrabytes

photo by Ray Tsang

An exabyte is 1 million terabytesThe entire printed collection of the US Library of Congress is 10 terabytesSo an exabyte is 100,000 Libraries of Congress

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1 exabyte = 100,000 Libraries of Congress

photo by Ray Tsang

An exabyte is 1 million terabytesThe entire printed collection of the US Library of Congress is 10 terabytesSo an exabyte is 100,000 Libraries of Congress

5Photo: Joi Ito, quote from News.me

Mohamed Nanabhay, former head of Al Jazeera Online, on the competitive challenges that news organisations face in an age of almost limitless content.

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We’re competing with everybody who puts up a webpage on the internet. And everybody who tweets, or posts on Facebook, or anything.

Photo: Joi Ito, quote from News.me

Mohamed Nanabhay, former head of Al Jazeera Online, on the competitive challenges that news organisations face in an age of almost limitless content.

The battle for attentionAverage Local US Newspaper New York Times Facebook

Source: The Newsonomics of time-on-site, Jan 2010 by Ken Doctor

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The average news reader spends little time on newspaper-owned sites, from a 20 minutes a month or so on the New York Times site to eight to 12 minutes on most local newspaper sites. That’s minutes per month. Those numbers, as tracked by Nielsen and reported monthly by Editor and Publisher, are steady at best, showing, in fact, some recent decline. They are, literally, stuck in time.Then, take the number of minutes Internet users spend on social sites. Nielsen’s January tally showed seven hours of usage a month on Facebook alone, in the U.S., blowing away all competition.And of course, that doesn’t even come close to the four hours a day(!) that Americans spend watching television.

The battle for attentionAverage Local US Newspaper New York Times Facebook

Source: The Newsonomics of time-on-site, Jan 2010 by Ken Doctor

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The average news reader spends little time on newspaper-owned sites, from a 20 minutes a month or so on the New York Times site to eight to 12 minutes on most local newspaper sites. That’s minutes per month. Those numbers, as tracked by Nielsen and reported monthly by Editor and Publisher, are steady at best, showing, in fact, some recent decline. They are, literally, stuck in time.Then, take the number of minutes Internet users spend on social sites. Nielsen’s January tally showed seven hours of usage a month on Facebook alone, in the U.S., blowing away all competition.And of course, that doesn’t even come close to the four hours a day(!) that Americans spend watching television.

The battle for attentionAverage Local US Newspaper New York Times Facebook

Source: The Newsonomics of time-on-site, Jan 2010 by Ken Doctor

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The average news reader spends little time on newspaper-owned sites, from a 20 minutes a month or so on the New York Times site to eight to 12 minutes on most local newspaper sites. That’s minutes per month. Those numbers, as tracked by Nielsen and reported monthly by Editor and Publisher, are steady at best, showing, in fact, some recent decline. They are, literally, stuck in time.Then, take the number of minutes Internet users spend on social sites. Nielsen’s January tally showed seven hours of usage a month on Facebook alone, in the U.S., blowing away all competition.And of course, that doesn’t even come close to the four hours a day(!) that Americans spend watching television.

The battle for attentionAverage Local US Newspaper New York Times Facebook

Source: The Newsonomics of time-on-site, Jan 2010 by Ken Doctor

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The average news reader spends little time on newspaper-owned sites, from a 20 minutes a month or so on the New York Times site to eight to 12 minutes on most local newspaper sites. That’s minutes per month. Those numbers, as tracked by Nielsen and reported monthly by Editor and Publisher, are steady at best, showing, in fact, some recent decline. They are, literally, stuck in time.Then, take the number of minutes Internet users spend on social sites. Nielsen’s January tally showed seven hours of usage a month on Facebook alone, in the U.S., blowing away all competition.And of course, that doesn’t even come close to the four hours a day(!) that Americans spend watching television.

From mass to relevance

The evolution from numbers to relevance by Mahendra Palsule

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Advertising overload. Online there is simply too much ad inventory. CPMs not just in the US but in markets around the world are declining.

During recession, online ad rates plummeted due to oversupply of content Source: PaidContent

Society knows how to react to scarcity.” We know how to ration, save, and preserve when we need to do so. It’s much harder to set priorities and find our path when information abounds. We may drown. We may get side-tracked. We may shut down. But, in any case, abundance confuses and distracts us more than scarcity does.

Abundance breaks more things than

scarcity does

Photo: Clay making a point by Joi ItoSource: Shirky at NFAIS: How Abundance Breaks

Everything by Ann Michael

Society knows how to react to scarcity.” We know how to ration, save, and preserve when we need to do so. It’s much harder to set priorities and find our path when information abounds. We may drown. We may get side-tracked. We may shut down. But, in any case, abundance confuses and distracts us more than scarcity does.

US papers failing to capture dollars

� Digital ad revenues increased by more than four times from 2003-2011 to $31.7 bn.

� Digital newspaper ad sales increased from only $1.2 bn to $3.2 bn during the same period.

� Newspapers capture lower percentage of digital ads now than in 2003

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It is not that there isn’t money to be made from digital advertising, the problem is rather that newspapers aren’t the ones capturing that value.

From Alan Mutter, Reflections of a Newsosaur.

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Photo from Dan O’Brien

Real-time bidding. This is already putting further downward pressure on CPM rates.

From Lewis Dvorkin at Forbes:

Programmatic buying: Welcome to the newest zone of concern for publishers. Think of a Wall Street trading desk manned by advertising agencies or their representatives. Those display ads I talked about above can now be bought at auction on computer exchanges — and all it takes is milliseconds. Real-time bidding, as it’s often called, is fast, efficient — and cheap. The biggest challenge for publishers: display ads that are sold by sales people for, say, a $15 CPM (cost per thousand impressions), often trade on the exchanges for a few bucks.

Lloyd Dobler: The patron saint of journalists

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Just like Lloyd, we don’t went to sell anything.

Lloyd Dobler: The patron saint of journalists

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Just like Lloyd, we don’t went to sell anything.

The business of journalism is often seen in opposition to the mission

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The business of journalism is often seen in opposition to the mission of journalism. It doesn’t need to be so, and the belief often holds us back from legitimate, ethical ways to support the mission of independent journalism.

The business of journalism is often seen in opposition to the mission

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The business of journalism is often seen in opposition to the mission of journalism. It doesn’t need to be so, and the belief often holds us back from legitimate, ethical ways to support the mission of independent journalism.

14Photo by Sourcefabric

Entrepreneurial sustainability. MDLF is passionate about the mission of journalism and committed to helping support robust independent media in emerging democracies. That’s why I say that I help news organisations not only do good but also do well. It's why I love my job at MDLF.

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Media cannot be truly independent unless it is financially viable.

Photo by Sourcefabric

Entrepreneurial sustainability. MDLF is passionate about the mission of journalism and committed to helping support robust independent media in emerging democracies. That’s why I say that I help news organisations not only do good but also do well. It's why I love my job at MDLF.

Source: thinkpublic from FlickrRaju Narisetti, the managing of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, said on Nieman Lab at the end of last year, “Advertising innovation from media companies should become as critical as content innovation”.

During the first phase of the digital transition, we focused almost entirely on editorial innovation. Now, commercial innovation is just as critical if not more critical to a sustainable future.

Multi-platform sustainability

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Source: Dan Taylor from Flickr

We need to move towards multi-platform sustainability - Many of MDLF's clients still have strong traditional businesses. I realised that when we were talking about the digital transition, they thought we were not only calling on them to be digital first but to be digital only. In many places where MDLF works, print still has a powerful business model. We realised that the shift was really about multi-platform sustainability.

El Faro: A digital brand does print

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Case study on Kbridge.org

The power of AND - Multiple platforms enhance reach, impact and commercial opportunities. El Faro - the power of multiple platforms. El Faro is an independent digital news service in El Salvador that focuses more on long-form investigations than a daily digital news service. In 2011, an El Salvadoran ad agency came to them wanting to explore the relationship of the the people and the media and government through the lens of social media. This helped launched a novel social-media digital campaign to generate ideas to improve El Salvador and give Salvadorans a voice. They leveraged the power of their political cartoonist and created not just cartoons on their site but a book. They sold out the first print run, and then they took that book to El Salvador’s leaders as representatives of the people. The ad agency helped deliver a sophisticated multi-channel marketing campaign.

El Faro: A digital brand does print

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Case study on Kbridge.org

The power of AND - Multiple platforms enhance reach, impact and commercial opportunities. El Faro - the power of multiple platforms. El Faro is an independent digital news service in El Salvador that focuses more on long-form investigations than a daily digital news service. In 2011, an El Salvadoran ad agency came to them wanting to explore the relationship of the the people and the media and government through the lens of social media. This helped launched a novel social-media digital campaign to generate ideas to improve El Salvador and give Salvadorans a voice. They leveraged the power of their political cartoonist and created not just cartoons on their site but a book. They sold out the first print run, and then they took that book to El Salvador’s leaders as representatives of the people. The ad agency helped deliver a sophisticated multi-channel marketing campaign.

.týždeň: Charging, yes. But what for?

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Kbridge.org: More about Piano and Tyzden

Paid content, yes, but what to charge for? .týždeň - Slovakian news magazine with a reputation for cutting edge photography. Wanted to create a web presence that was consistent with their brand of high impact visual journalism. Rebuilt their website, added a blogging network and translated their visual stills style into a video style. They now produce a programme in partnership with Slovakian public TV. They have refined their approach to blogging by having staff and select members of the public blog, and they have become part of Slovakia's national paid content platform Piano. With paid content 2.0, we're seeing much more sophistication and nuance than paid versus ad-supported (It was never 'free'. Someone paid. It was just advertisers not consumers.) You're probably all familiar with metered paywalls due to the New York Times and now Andrew Sullivan. Piano works with clients to analyse their audience behaviour and helps answer: What should news groups charge for?

Malaysiakini: Partnering on paid content

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Kbridge.org: An interview with M-kini CEO Premesh Chandran on his strategy

One of the news organisations that we work with is Malaysiakini. Just as with Dijonscope, they used their independent journalism as a selling point to readers, but a challenge to attracting advertisers in the years immediately after the site launched. Early online advertisers were government-linked companies and would hardly be willing to support an independent news site like Malaysiakini.In 2002, the company realised that it needed to explore other forms of income. “Subscribers, they are the ones who want this independent news so let’s start charging a fee,” he said. Staff were initially sceptical, and the site faced unique challenges, including having to provide an anonymous payment system because the site was seen as “politically sensitive”. They developed their own pre-paid card and were able to convince a convenience store chain to sell it.Burma anecdote.

Dijonscope - selling independent journalism

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Source: Sustainable Business Models for Journalism

Piano Media, the New York Times will all tell you how important marketing is. Dijonscope, whose tag line is “the price of freedom” moved from advertising to subscription only charging (90 euros for two years, 50 for a year or 5 a month.

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Kevin Anderson, kevin.anderson@mdlf.orgKnowledge Bridge editor and digital strategistKnowledge Bridge http://kbridge.orgTwitter: kevglobal (my account) and kbridgeorg