Tags: Editorial & Marketing. Transition Print to Online, case study, IDG, New York Times, Murdoch, Internet, Landing Pages
My roundtable handout at SIPA Miami Marketing Conference / 11 - 13 November 2009
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People read, in average, 30% more slowly off the computer screen than off paper. And they read less carefully. I can say they don’t read, they scan. What can you do? You need to convince readers you’re good. And you have to do it quick, to get them to stick. If not, they will go to other website. Period.
Back to 1980. Rupert Murdoch made the prediction that all news, and, of course, advertising, would someday be delivered digitally. So, there would really be no need for paper or ink. 30 years later, newspapers and magazines, newsletters and loose-leaf services are facing profound challenges with the explosion of news and specialized content available on the web.
Is print dead? Yes. Or No. It’s just in transition due to our challenging business marketplace. But, what is 100% sure: we live in the Internet World. So, nothing can be done without it.
The Internet is a wonderful place, and you HAVE to be there!
The Internet became the delivery vehicle for everything possible: information, music, videos, software, files. And the corollary is sad: every other form of delivery faces extinction. The marketing strategies changed from Direct Mailing and Telesales to E-mail Marketing and Landing Pages...
Many publishing companies will go bankrupt because they refused to accept that online is the way to go. One advice: embrace online publishing or fade away. Take it or leave it, as the coaches say in Football or Rugby.
Few time ago, The Capital Times, a 90-year-old daily newspaper in Madison, Wis., ended its print version and began publishing only online.
The mandatory prognostication:
Major print publication (newspapers, newsletters) ceases publishing in print. This is inevitable, and the probability increases each year, so it’s a pretty safe prediction. Are you prepared?
If touching the paper is into your DNA, as well as feeling the newsprint and getting your fingers dirty, then forget it... The dinosaurs dissapeared because they failed to adapt.
Print is expensive and failing; online is cheap and rising. The two are competing, often within the same media company, as if suffering from multiple personality disorder. Our industry is paralyzed with fear.
Is the transition a disaster for our business? Definetely no! This is the disaster: many of the publishers fight against online editions or ignored the World Wide Web entirely. The disaster is: lack of good management, lack of vision, and lack of initiative.
Case study: I.D.G.
"The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print - in fact, a better life after print," - Patrick J. McGovern, the founder and chairman of I.D.G.
Stewart Alsop, a journalist turned venture capitalist, was the editor in chief of InfoWorld in the 1990s,. "Technology publishing just happens to be at the point of this whole transformation of media," he said. "What’s happening at I.D.G. is a fairly accurate map for every other publishing organization. Get over it, it’s going to happen."
Like many publishers before it, b-to-b company IDG Communications announced in early 2007 that it would shutter the print edition of InfoWorld, a 27-year-old print brand which serves the enterprise IT industry, and take the brand online-only. InfoWorld had a circulation of 180,000 at the end of 2006. IDG CEO, Bob Carrigan, said the transition it was a “part of the strategy."
Of course, Carrigan was nervous months after the switch as the company awaited the reaction from advertisers and readers. But InfoWorld’s Web audience was growing and its business improved. After one year, the InfoWorld Web site generated ad revenue of $1.6 million a month with operating profit margins of 37%. A year earlier, when it had both print and online versions, InfoWorld had a slight operating loss on monthly revenue of $1.5 million.
I.D.G. has a network of 300 print publications and 450 Web sites in 85 countries. The company converted smaller magazines to online only, but InfoWorld was the big one. More will come, company executives said, as print magazines slip into the red and are left behind. But they emphasize that the print versions of some publications like CIO, a glossy twice-monthly magazine, are likely to be around for many years.
Now, Bob Carrigan, IDG Communication's President, thinks the movement from print to online is not a transition but rather a complete transformation.
Online and print are different media. Online allows the aggregation of content from content creators (including editors, vendors and marketers and the community). The challenge (and the skill in the same time) is to present all this content in a manner that benefits the user.
InfoWorld.com’s page views have increased 24 % (2007 versus 2008) to 3.36 million per month, while the number of unique visitors per month has increased 8 % to 1.16 million per month.While the IT buyer audience is relatively flat, InfoWorld is attracting a larger share of the market and getting them to interact more often.
InfoWorld.com has also added new features, including social networking tools, mobile options and a downloadable performance monitoring tool called Windows Sentinel.
Case study: New York Times
Arthur Sulzberger, owner, chairman and publisher of one of the most respected newspapers in the world (New York Times) is focusing on how to best manage the transition from print to Internet. "My newspaper is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition. It's a long journey, and there will be bumps on the road".
The average age of readers of the New York Times print edition is 42, Sulzberger says, and that hasn't changed in 10 years. The average age of readers of its Internet edition is 37, which shows that the group is also managing to recruit young readers for both the printed version and Web site.
Also, the Times signed a deal with Microsoft to distribute the paper through a software program called Times Reader, Sulzberger says. The software enables users to conveniently read the paper on screens, mainly laptops. "I very much believe that the experience of reading a paper can be transfered to these new devices."
Can New York Times compete with blogs? Sulzberger answers: "We are curators, curators of news. People don't click onto the New York Times to read blogs. They want reliable news that they can trust."
"We aren't ignoring what's happening. We understand that the newspaper is not the focal point of city life as it was 10 years ago. "
"Once upon a time, people had to read the paper to find out what was going on in theater. Today there are hundreds of forums and sites with that information," he says. "But the paper can integrate material from bloggers and external writers. We need to be part of that community and to have dialogue with the online world."
Flight 1549, Continental crash. The newspaper took advantage of the Web’s interactivity, inviting witnesses to call in and be interviewed and to submit photos. In less than one hour, editors posted 17 pictures taken by the public, including a dramatic shot snapped with a cellphone at the moment the plane hit the water. The Times also linked to video from MSNBC.
In fact, the New York Times has doubled its online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition.
***
What of the subscribers who prefere a print newsletter or who can’t connect to the Internet?
Well, there are two types of people: those who use the Internet, and everyone else.
Online publishing is the new way. However it requires a completely change of mind-set from print to online.
Bill Keller, editor at New York Times: "Editors don’t often speak directly to readers in newspapers. When they do, it is usually about serious matters. But the Web, is a culture that encourages more of a relationship with readers, a more informal, personal voice. For better and for worse, I guess."
The link to the business is direct. When a person views a Web page, ads are automatically presented on the page and the publisher collects a payment.
There are three forces at work that are hurting print newspapers: the shifting tide to online, the recession, and over-leveraged newspapers and chains.
"You never want a serious crisis go to waste… It’s an opportunity to do things you did not think you could do before." – Rahm Emanuel
In 2007, 48% of the average person’s leisure time was spent online. "On average, online broadband users devote 27 percent of their time online to leisure/entertainment, 27 percent for communication, 9 percent on information searches, 15 percent on personal productivity, and 12 percent on shopping." - Marketing VOX
New people aren’t looking in the yellow pages anymore... They are searching online for information. They are looking online for jobs, cars, tickets. More people are reading articles online rather than picking up a newspaper or a newsletter. Face it! The Web is winning in terms of grabbing readers attention span and holding it.
Moving to online cuts many costs (ink, paper, delivery) and makes your business more profitable.
But if you decidet to make the transition from print to online, you have to change your writing style to fit how online readers use and interact with media. You have to write for readers, and for Google, too.
Online success requires writers to use community building tools. Newsletters that want to succeed need to emulate rather than denegrate online communities and services like HI5, Twitter or Facebook. Specialized information industry needs to believe in cell phone applications, text messaging and online communities.
Internet is a new kind of landscape of advantages and disadvantages.
You have to determine how to differentiate yourself in a world of search and aggregation. One of the most important differences is the publishers ability to help in the creation of a rich environment where the community is front and center.
And... back?
October 2009: Bakchich.info, a satirical (anecdotal) portal, launched 4 weekly magazines, based on its online content. The portal had no profit, but the magazines seems to help the company to survive and make some money.
30.000 copies sold each week, each magazine, could be a strong reason. Nciolas Beau, the Editor-in-Cheif, is close to prove that Rupert Murdoch is wrong.
Latest news!!!
<< News Corp chairperson and chief executive Rupert Murdoch said on Wednesday that a plan to begin charging readers of his newspapers online may be delayed.
Murdoch had previously outlined plans to erect pay walls around his vast newspaper empire by the end of News Corp's current fiscal year in June, but he indicated that was now unlikely.
"We are working all very, very hard at this but I wouldn't promise that we're going to meet that date," he told reporters in a conference call after releasing News Corp's first-quarter results.
Asked what was causing the delay, he said: "Everything."
"It's a work in progress and there's a huge amount of work going on not just with our sites but with other people," Murdoch said.
The Wall Street Journal is currently the only newspaper in the News Corp group to charge readers for access to all of its content. Other News Corp properties include the Australian, the New York Post and the Times of London.
A slump in newspaper revenue was offset in the first quarter by strong results from News Corp's movie, cable television and book publishing divisions as the company posted an 11% rise in quarterly net profit.
Murdoch welcomed what he called "exceptionally strong results" despite "continued macro-economic challenges".
"The strategic steps we took last year to ensure stability during the downturn have proven successful, with significant cost reductions offsetting much of the revenue declines in our television and newspapers and information services segments," Murdoch said.>> (Mail Guardian)
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