The Independent runs a very thorough section on the future of newspapers (ironically rather too long to digest online). They’ve interviewed various senior British media execs and asked their opinion about the future of the newspaper. Here are two excerpts of the opinions of two execs from papers we think are leading the charge: the Guardian and the Finanical Times.
John Ridding, CEO, ‘Financial Times’
There’s no doubt that we are seeing the biggest changes and challenges to the newspaper industry for a generation, and certainly for the 19 years I have been at the FT. But from where I sit the doom and gloom is way overdone.
We are seeing good momentum, we are firmly back in the black and are positive about our prospects.
In a time of industry disruption and fragmentation it’s all about defining your audience and being clear about what makes you different and essential. For us, a powerful force has been the globalisation of business. We have been in step with that trend and that strategy is paying off now.
How and when people consume news has clearly changed with online development and channels. From our perspective we have been investing in quality journalism for years and content is for us a competitive advantage. Online is more of an opportunity than a threat because it gives us new channels through which to reach our audience.
Alan Rusbridger, Editor of ‘The Guardian’
I feel broadly optimistic. There are two important things to consider about revenue. One is that advertisers follow the audience. If you’ve got an awful lot of people in the demographic that advertisers want to reach using the web then advertisers will go there. The second thing is that Google has definitively demonstrated that there’s an awful lot of money to be made from selling advertising against content and there’s no point in complaining about Google, they’ve just been smarter than anybody else. The trouble is that Google is taking 85 per cent of revenue and we have to get some of that.
There are signs that the long-term economic model could be there. The problem is to get from here to there and that’s the difficult bit. There’s nothing I can do about print. That will be largely a combination of three things: the technologies that people invent, the habits of the audience and the economics of print – none of which I can do anything about.
As an editor I have to make sure that The Guardian is available in any form the consumer wants. In the average week we distribute The Guardian on eight or nine different platforms and one of those is print. There’s nothing I can do if the trend is that people are moving away from print.
Print is important and is where a lot of the revenue is. I don’t think it’s going to disappear overnight but I think you have to be alive to whether a lot of the energy around what you are producing is actually not in print. Journalistically, the burden that we bear, which is enormous editorial costs – which no one else in the digital world is going to want to assume – is also our greatest strength.
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