New ways to finance quality journalism

During the World Editors Forum in Hamburg, the other face of content monetization was discussed. John Yemma (Editor-in-Chief, Christian Science Monitor, USA), Olav Bergo (Editorial advisor, A-pressen, Norway), and David Cohn (Founder, Spot.us, and Knight News Challenge winner, USA) spoke about new ways to finance quality journalism

John Yemma, Editor-in-Chief, Christian Science Monitor, USA

Christian Science Monitor has 3 primary channels (instead of 5/7 print as before)

• website
• daily news briefing email
• weekly in print (paid-for)

Reasons behind CSM’s move from daily print to online:

• Daily print was losing money.
• It was tying up human resources (80% of staff’s time was moved to web)

The effects of moving from print to online:

• web traffic has tripled
• retention has doubled
• email signups: from 0 to 50.000
• weekly subscriptions rose to 70.000

How Christian Science Monitor plans to survive:

• build loyalty of the audience
• want to stay strong and relevant
• aggregation of information, not acquisition
• they want to grow the network not the staff

Christian Science Monitor thinks about the paywall, but not in the way New York Times does. Sponsorships are another source of income.

They are looking for Kindle, and iPAd application, so CSM despite moving totally to online 2 years ago, thinks about online expansion. CSM is a business not relying on one source of income only.

Olav Bergo, Editorial advisor, A-pressen, Norway
How and where do we find the money to pay journalists to find news in the future?

Money has always been the power in media. Advertising has become more and more important for the newspaper business. The growing ad income made the income from readers relatively less important. New media plantforms are still sat early stage.  Local newspaper is still a superior reading experience. This is why readers and advertisers still pay more for news and ads on paper than for the same content in the digital format.

Global media revolution moves forcefully, kills quickly and rebuilds slowly. Just as in the past, readers will have to pay for the content. Paid-for model is a matter of time.

Norwegian media policy

• all newspapers have a 0% rate
• 138 newspaper titles (out of 225) get government grants based on the competitive position and the circulation
• journalism needs the daily challenge from a competing editorial staff to be challenged to do their best
• as many newspapers and as few newspaper monopolies as possible

David Cohn, Founder, Spot.us:

Why should we experiment? Rule of the internet: it is easier and cheaper to do something than to debate about it.
On Spot.us, reporters can post story pitches and ask for pledges to pay some part of the cost. It is a community funded reporting: art of distributing the cost of reporting across many people. Transparency and participation in the process of journalism are required for the community funded reporting.

Principle of spot.us is not throwing money over a wall, but knowing where you spend your money on. It is a community focused sponsorships. The community decides where the money should go. The reporters write for the public and they see the public. There is no writing for the editor on spot.us.

Editors are optimistic towards the future (Newsroom Barometer)

Eric Hazan from McKinsey & Company, spoke during the World Editors Forum in Hamburg about editors-in-chief foresee the future of their job and how journalism will evolve in the upcoming years.

40 key questions about newsroom strategies, new business models, editors’ leadership and the future of news in the digital era required four weeks of deep survey. The 2010 survey is the third edition of the Newsroom Barometer.

Editors and newsmedia companies around the globe see the future of their publications optimistic, but the revolution in the editorial offices concerning the multimedia adaption has no end. Editors are more optimistic than ever (about 84%). Most of them believe, that the changes they are going through will lead them to the creation of the paid-for information model. Implementation of the multimedia newsroom is much further in North America than in Europe (81% of North American editors say their newsrooms fully multi-media integrated compared to 56% from editors elsewhere).

There is a clear push towards digital revenues around the newspapers. In the United States, already 20% of revenue comes from online initiatives. Elsewhere, online counts on average as 11% of the revenue in total. In 10 years almost half of the revenue is expected to come from digital sources. 47% of editors think that majority of their content will be paid content in the future. But they don’t know yet how to charge. Publishers in developed countries also consider e-commerce as a part of the business model. One third of publishers believe the majority of news will be free in the future. Majority thinks that essential parts of news business will be outsourced in the near future.

Today it is a challenging time for editors, and all surveyed admitted to this fact. Newspapers in Europe continue to face declining revenues (18 percent in 2 years). In all emerging markets, staff and cost reductions are at the norm. The main threat to the future of newspapers nowadays is the declining readership among young people, and, of course, the digital media. What is interesting, digital media is considered by publishers as a threat, but social media is an opportunity, according to the Newsroom Barometer.

The 2010 Newsroom Barometer questioned 525 senior newspaper editors in all geographies between April and June. The 40-question survey covered newsroom organization, journalism, threats to the newspaper sector, digital performance and newspaper economics. Editors were contacted directly through the World Editors Forum or through national newspaper editors associations.

Long live the print media

Giovanni di Lorenzo, the Editor-in-Chief of Die Zeit, Germany spoke during the World Editors Forum in Hamburg about why he still believes in print.

In his keynote speech, Giovanni di Lorenzoe defended the print newspapers in the tablet era. Most of his arguments against the tablets were that it is nort yet clear how to earn from the tablets. He called them the new wonderful resources people talk about and at the same time stressed they cannot help make money from journalism.

Die Zeit believes they do everything to be digital friendly. Zeit Online has 3 applications for iPhone and iPad. They also get contributions from the print version of Die Zeit. Die Zeit on tablets is sold from the very beginning, they don’t want to make the same mistake as with the start of the web. Audience has to pay for what they create. Their applications cost from 4,99 to 8,99 Euro. They don’t want to make the same mistake twice.

Publishers, according to di Lorenzo need paid content. iPad is now the best possibility to monetize quality journalism. It doesn’t matter if publishers earn money from print, online or tablet. The debate print vs online is no longer fundamental. What’s more fundamental is that good, quality journalism costs money. Without that money it will stop exist in the democratic society. And so far, only printed media help earn money from the journalism.

If we cannot earn money from extra platforms, we need to concentrate on print media. He believes in the future of print media and feels lonely with these predictions.

Di Lorenzo says readers should not know the future is somewhere else than in print media they are reading at the moment. If they do, they will stop to pay for it because what’s the point of paying for something that is free elsewhere.

He notices the two-fold crisis of the newspapers:
1. structure crisis – print vs online vs tablets
2. economic crisis – declining advertising revenue

Newspapers have strong assets and this is quality journalism. Without that, not only newspapers but also the web will fail. There’s nothing wrong in being slow if newspapers continiue to provide quality journalism with full background and complete information. On the other hand, what are the strenghts of the internet is something Die Zeit readers’ never cared about. They wanted depth and analysis. Short, quick information is not a quality journalism worth pages of Die Zeit.

The relation between readers and journalists changed thanks to the internet. Journalists, editors have to understand the reader, they can do so thank to the web. But publishers should never forget about quality journalism, even if this is the era of the tablets.

Giovanni di Lorenzo predicts however 50% of readers abandoning paper edition by 2020.

Google believes in the mutually beneficial partnership with newspapers

Philipp Schindler, the Vice President of Google for Northern and Central Europe is another Google representative (right after Carlo d’Asaro Biondo) who believes in the mutual partnership with the newspapers. Philipp Schindler spoke about how he sees this partnership with newspapers during the World Editors Forum in Hamburg.

First words of Philipp Schindler during the conference were “We come in peace” – a statement that was widely commented on Twitter, for example: “Yeah right, take me to your readers”

Philipp Schindler points out 5 main trends that happen in the web nowadays:
1. Search.
Schindler noticed, that during the past 7 years, the user has moved from the browser-centric use of the web, to the search-centric usage. Consumers have found out there is a very simple way to navigate within the billions of information on the web, and the sollution to it is search. Luckily, Schindler admits Google did not invent the search. But numbers are tough: 4 billion searches are conducted every day. Over 50% people using the mobile web, do it because they want to search. The trend is to evolve the search to be based on the recommendation of the others.

2. Richer Media. We are witnessing a fundamental shift towards richer media. 2 million videos streams are watched on YouTube every single day. 2 million YouTube downloads a day is a symptom of a less word centric web. Gaming industry is leading.

3. Mobile Revolution. 4 billion applications were downloaded from App Store. In 2015 – more mobile web based traffic is expected than traditional web traffic. Mobile web is growing 8x than traditional web grew, and everyone (publishers as well) are underestimating this trend.

There are 2 important features of mobile trend:
- connectivity
- hub computing – access to most powerful devices one can imagine.

Mobile is the triangle between device, connectivity, and a supercomputer. What should it mean to publishers? don’t bet against mobile anytime.

4. Data. Everyone should learn to love the richness of the data. Always in a privacy respecting way. How to monetize it? There is no silver bullet, no single monetization model. According to Schindler, the winning models will be al advertising based.

5. Translation. It’s high time to imagine a web browser that translates everything into the langauge of one’s choice. Philipp Schindler imagines a world where mobile phones translates between people on the fly. It will let medias reach a larger audience. And it’s not far from where we’re at this very moment.

Philipp Schindler believes there can be a mutually benefficial partnership with newspapers. Google ’sends’ 1 billion people a month to news sites just from Google news and pays media 1.7 billion US$ a month via ad clicks. It is a huge number that shows how Google and newspaper could work together, to grow that reach. Newspapers are not a competitor to Google. The no.1 competitor to them is every group of talented people who are innovative. Not facebook, not Apple, but the next startup. Google would never give away nor sell any private information unless they are obliged to do so under the law.

Introduction to the European Conference 2011

Introduction to the European Conference 2011. Video by Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom Group.

Interview with Koen Meeusen

Interview with Koen Meeusen – manager sponsoring & promotie, De Standaard, digital content director/Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso. Video by Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom Group.

Interview with Grzegorz Haftarczyk

Interview with Irene Fogarty, research and customer insight, The Irish Times, Ireland. Video by Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom Group.

INMA poll 2010: Agnes Sekowski on balance between print and media

Agnes Sekowski from Krakow Post answers the question about what’s the recipe  for balance between print and online media. Video by Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom Group.

INMA poll 2010: Anna Spysz on balance between print and media

Anna Spysz, Editor in Chief, Krakow Post, UK answers the question about what’s the recipe  for balance between print and online media. Video by Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom Group.

INMA poll 2010: Marta Bradshaw on balance between print and media

Marta Bradshaw, Publisher, Krakow Post, UK answers the question about what’s the recipe  for balance between print and online media. Video by Media Regionalne, Polish part of Mecom Group.