A while ago I wrote an opinion piece where I wondered what will happen if the anticipated movement of advertising spend from traditional media to online media doesn’t happen. I argued that the large number of ‘free’ ways for brands to communicate with their customers makes it more and more unnecessary to spend money on advertising. Business Week’s revenue figures reported in the New York Times seems to be echoing this theme. In a piece that picked at the bones of an information memorandum offered to potential buyers of the weekly news magazine, Stephanie Clifford says that any rise in online advertising sales isn’t supporting the decline in revenue from the magazine’s traditional ad-sales efforts:
The memorandum hints at why. Though BusinessWeek.com attracts a lot of page views, 45 percent of those are from slide shows, which Web publishers consider a gimmicky way to increase hits. Only 16 percent of page views came from original articles for the six months ended in April. BusinessWeek.com also pulls in just $19.28 per thousand ad views, almost a quarter lower than what it was earning three years ago. And it sells only about 38 percent of the available ads, down from 79 percent in 2006, according to the document.
Some advertisers seem to be wondering whether BusinessWeek is still the best place for their money. When Intel, once a major BusinessWeek advertiser, recently hosted media partners at a mixer to talk about future projects, BusinessWeek did not merit an invitation.
NYT: BusinessWeek, on the Block and Ailing
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Full disclosure off the bat: I’m a full-time trade journalist working in print and online for about eight years. My problem with the undeniable and inevitable rise of free is that although vast swathes of production and dissemination have been reduced to the point of practically free, some hard costs are not. I work at a desk in a building rented by my publishing house, i’m salaried, i make calls and use a computer. Ads (and to a lesser degree subscriptions) pay for that all of course.
Can the expertise of career journalists be replaced by bloggers, citizen reporters and the like? Superficially, yes. But as someone who’s just spent weeks chasing a story and interviewing contacts, what about in-depth investigative features and hard news reporting? You know, the stories that might take six months to break, with sources nurtured over years? Can they be replaced? I don’t think so. And the problem is that they’re the stories and journalists (i’m not by even the wildest stretch suggesting this is me i hasten to add) that really matter: exposing government corruption, uncovering corporate scandals. The Fourth Estate at its best exposes and holds accountable every person and company within society, funded by what has been a very successful model, ads. Without it, who will? The accountant who moonlights as an expert botanist blogger?
The Wire writer and former Baltimore crime reporter David Simon said in an interview with the Guardian recently that with the closure and downsizing of newspapers and investigative journalism he couldn’t think of a better time to be a corrupt politician. That’s a sobering thought.
Print is dying, an expensive anachronism that other than for a vague sense of tactile nostalgia and vanity (journos have an over fondness for seeing their name on paper), i won’t miss much. But what we will as a society all suffer from, on a very serious level, is the disappearance of the institutions and journalists who uncover and hence keep in check the excesses and abuses of society.
Okay, so i would say that as a print journalist you might say, but i wonder what others think would fill that financial void? Or is there a void at all? Am i missing something? Who will fund news, in whatever medium it will be delivered? BBC-style government-sponsored news (a dicey prospect if it doesn’t have independent oversight)? Philanthropy (again at the whim of politics)?
September 16th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Thanks Ed.
I think you’re going to find the ‘new’ newspapers, magazines etc using their access to information, people and analysis to make money not only through publishing. Right now I feel that many journalists think the world of consultancy is somehow impure and that it won’t let them stay truly independent (which is a fantasy). Others aren’t contractually allowed to make money by providing advice on the information they’ve gatherered through their journalistic work (the traditional route around this is that they write a book – but that’s far too slow a process to fill the income void).
Publishers need to overcome those barriers and provide information, people and opinion to whoever wants to pay for it – whether it’s a newspaper reader or a large corporation who wants to understand something deeper. The latter pays infinitely more that the former and should support the future of publishing. And sure, there’s a ethical issue there but it will be more noticeable if someone’s writing good stuff about their client that it would be today. (Which I am sure happens, whether we like it or not).
Just my pov from my brief experience running a publishing-consultancy hybrid.
September 16th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Interesting point Piers, and your POV is absolutely apt for this debate.
I think for me it comes down to the fact that public interest is often at odds with corporate sponsorship. Serving both of those is impossible sometimes, which is why the editorial/advertising divide is so well defined.
I think a hybrid model that funds investigative journalism through other financial outlets like consultancy (and in our case industry events), would certainly make up crucial revenue to subsidize the increasing shortfall we’re going to see.
Part of that could be creating white papers/reports that study trends that are then sold. The onus here would be on impartial editorial control of what’s written about and who is covered. Journalists are not allowed to work for competitors for obvious reasons, but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t work on these kinds of papers to, frankly, have a chair to work on. This would be especially effective in niche marketplaces: the WSJ monetizes it’s content successfully because its information is extremely valuable to investors. Good point about books: they pay journalists, not newspapers in the end, newspapers should harness that as much as possible.
To your second point about ethics, there is a necessary gulf that exists precluding newspapers from accepting financial recompense or gifts from brands and people. After all, can i get past accusations of bias if i write a piece about the safety of cellphone radio waves after receiving a free phone or a trip to Sweden from a cellphone maker? Or am commissioned and handsomely paid to write a report for them. Regardless of the journalist’s best intentions, perception is reality and the paper’s analysis devalued in the public eye by the revelation.
It’s tricky ground. Newspapers have to do something, and fast, but i think guarding the age old line between editorial/sales is vital to their continued position of authority as arbiters of impartiality. Without it, they become no more than glorified PR agencies (as least in perception if not reality). If that happens the public ceases to trust them as a resource. That’s less a problem with a fashion magazine talking about fall trends (positive curated reportage with tacit criticism only by omission) than it is when you’re a national newspaper (actively promoting that a brand’s products are dangerously carcinogenic for example). Without trust, papers cease to be relevant and respected, which is the reason the public reads them in the first place and that brands wish to be associated with them. At that stage why shouldn’t brands then rightly desert papers (or substantially reduce what they pay them) and simply disseminate the information themselves, with the burgeoning tools available?
Maybe i’m overstating the role of authority. Perhaps the public doesn’t care about impartiality as much any more (i’m not being facetious, i really believe the internet has changed our idea of authority massively). Perhaps papers can blur the editorial/advertising divide and thrive, but i don’t think they can hold their moral ground on what they write if they do.
Long winded, sorry, and not entirely thought through i’m afraid. As a journalist who writes about brands and communication I’m doubly wary of their involvement in serving the public interest though. But then perhaps that’s a bias on my part!
September 16th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I think that the switch from the major companies to online advertising will continue to rise. It just makes sense in these tough economic times.
What I have noticed in website’s such as Twitter,Facebook, etc
is that the people who frequent them are only interested in stories that matter to them.
They are not interested in the force fed ram downed your throat news that you see everyday on your T.V or hear on the radio.
“If I could use myself as a example”
Five years ago I used to buy a newspaper everyday, now I buy one maybe once a week. This is a continuing downward trend that most of the big publishing companies have realized which is why they are switching to the Internet.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:39 pm