Innovation’s Senor on newspapers of the future
October 13, 2009 by marek.miller
There actually are optimistic voices considering the future of newspapers. Famous for his optimism in that topic is Juan Señor from Innovation Media Consulting Group, who will be one of the speakers during the next week’s INMA Outlook 2010 conference. Forum4Editors decided to talk to him and ask him precisely, what helps him see the future of newspapers in bright colours.
Juan Señor
Forum4Editors: Juan, you are well known for your optimism considering the future of printed newspapers. Please tell our readers why do you think, against most of the opinions, the printed newspapers are not doomed for extinction?
Juan Señor: I am very optimistic and confident considering the future of newspapers, provided that newspapers companies realize they are in the news business and not in the paper business. I believe no medium in history has ever replaced another medium: cinema didn’t replace the theater, television didn’t kill the radio. Perhaps the only medium that has ever died must have been a telegraph or a fax machine.
The internet will not kill newspapers. But they will not survive as mass media products the way we think of them today. I believe newspapers have a great future as premium products. Products that offer something entirely different rather than being a newspaper record of something from the day before.
Today, some publishers’ strategies are so differentiated that it is hard to even call them strategies. Mass firings are often the only way for publishers to deal with the crisis, but the product itself remains the same. What are the newspapers’ attributes that publishers should focus on, in order to help their newspapers survive?
Newspaper in my opinion has to go premium. It’s price should increase, as from the economic point of view, newspaper executives can make as much money if they sell fewer papers at doubled or trippled price.
Of course it means having something to say that is not commodity news. If their content proposition is being the newspaper record of the day before (like the typical New York Times model of all the news that fit to print), then they are destined for extinction because people can get same content from somewhere else much faster.
While working on a newspaper, journalists and editors should be answering three questions: why something happened, what it means, and what’s next. It is something we call “Why” newspapers or “What’s next” newspaper, or in other words “a forward journalism”. It means a totally different product in print, and a totally different product online. And always it has to be high-high quality.
Newspaper executives should realize that in print, they are not in breaking news business anymore. The newspapers should be telling not only what happened, but also what it really means to the reader. For instance, if Chavez is buying weapons in Russia the newspaper should be telling what it means fot the balance in the Latin America, for consumers, inhabitants and so on.
From a business point of view the paper should become haute couture. Think of it as the fashion industry with brands such as Armani. Armani makes money by selling jeans to a mass audience who aspire to own a little piece of Armani but obviously cannot afford it. Haute couture is something you do that hardly ever makes money. It can make money if you are successful but you sell fewer dresses to a specific targeted audience. But without Armani main brand it would be hard for the company to sell something from a subbrand such as Armani Collecione for example.
The paper product will always be needed for the news organization to sustain the relationship with the clients. It’s going to be the niche, quality product.
When news publishers think online, it means they have to start to charge for content. I am not talking about the paywalls, and I believe this word should be banned. It’s not about creating the wall and closing the doors. It’s about creating new spaces, it’s about showing people what they can pay for. It’s something that could be called service journalism. It’s about leading people to all the kinds of content that may be interesting and relevant to them.
The commodity news is not the right direction. I look at the front pages of newspapers from all over the world. One of them had once a headline saying that the King of Pop is dead, nearly 30 hours after this news had been confirmed! In that case, newspaper publishers cannot expect people to walk by the newsstand and say “wow, Michael Jackson died!”. It’s impossible to gain reader’s interest that way, unless they live in a cave. This is what’s killing newspapers – the lack of innovation, the lack of imagination, the lack of understanding of what people really want from the newspaper. Then, on the other hand, a journalist at another newspaper writes the following headline: “Michael Jackson died 20 years ago”. And that’s an interesting point, interesting journalism, something that makes you want to grab that newspaper and learn what the author had to say.
I know it can be done. We have experienced it with two newspapers in two European cities with tight, mature market. One newspaper is “i” in Portugal that was launched by Innovation from the scratch. It is growing 16% since its launch and it costs 2 Euros per copy. The other one is “Liberation” which we relaunched in Paris in early September, its growth has been 12% in Paris. It’s all about finding new purpose for print. That’s how we see it. Same thing will happen with books, it’s just another print product. They’ll go hard covered, they’ll go premium, same as newspapers. To give the readers different experience.
The great advantage will have those newspaper executives who will make the transitions quickly. They can still reconnect their brands with their new audience. Newspaper execs need to stop milking the same cash cow all over again. If they really want to milk the same cash cow, it’s their choice, but they should stop complaining then. They should stop pointing their fingers at Google, as Google is not a threat, rather a part of the sollution. I worked with Google and they know newspapers have exactly what they want. They have got the content proposition, and they’ve got the credibility, it’s what they call the last mile to reach the audience. You can search everything in Google and still not understand what it really means, when you put it through the journalistic filter, all af a sudden everything seems clear.
Please tell me your list of 5 best newspapers in the world and explain shortly why do you think they deserve this title.
1. “i” in Portugal: 16% growth this year. It is a quality premium content proposition.
2. “Liberation” in Paris. It is a brand that was pretty much tired, angry and now has become a very cool paper and is chic again. It has a great deal of credibility in France.
3. “Correio de Bahia” in Salvadore, Bahia (Brazil). It is a very popular quality daily newspaper. And it is very relevant to its audience.
4. “El Tiempo” in Colombia. Organized perfectly as a multimedia operation.
5. “La Vanguardia” in Barcelona – a very relevant content proposition.
Thank you very much for this interesting conversation and I’m looking forward to meeting you in Liverpool.
Tagged: future, INMA, innovation, Liverpool, online, Outlook 2010, print
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