Media Hag

So, how about this paywall that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has built around its Times and Sunday Times titles?

The general mood seems to be gleeful schadenfreude at the inevitable demise of the Dirty Digger. Apparently, by cutting off access to content to all but those prepared to pay for it, Mr Murdoch will remove his content from the public debate. RIP The Times.

Not so fast, reckons Peter Preston in this Observer article. The current newspaper model has been brutalised by the internet. Giving it all away for free and hoping the advertising numbers will stack up has seen newspapers haemorrhage profits. As Preston rightly points out, so what if Murdoch loses 95% of unique users? The 5% remaining are committed readers and are actually prepared to spend money to access the offering.

The problem with monetising online content is translating those huge readership figures into revenue. The best way to do that is to have a readership that engages with your content, with whom you can build up a relationship and whom you can offer up as a valuable advertising proposition.

Maybe you can achieve that with a thriving community on online forum (think Mumsnet), or through creating a relationship on a social media platform (think Vodafonenz on Twitter). Equally, sifting out the tightwad chaff from the prepared-to-part-with-money wheat has got to be worth a shot. So far it seems to be working for the Wall Street Journal.

As an aside, I can’t help feeling that any debate involving Rupert Murdoch or News Corp loses often gets a bit irrational. This is particularly true of the U.K., where journalists have deeply personal views on his way of running his empire.

Last year, I read the biography The Man Who Owns the News by Michael Wolff. (The review is also by Peter Preston). I went into it with the impression that he was some sort of devil on horseback who used media ownership for his own ends. I came out of it pretty much with that impression confirmed, but also with a grudging respect for the old battleaxe.

What struck me the most is that he loves the newspaper business. He bought the WSJ against all the advice and, it seems, almost against all reason. Ironically for his detractors, maybe the newspaper business will survive because of him.

Jessica, author of the wonderful Something Changed has made a list on another of my favourite blogs, So Much To Tell You.

Hi twin! (We are born on the same day.)

This is an interesting comment on the continuing print vs digital debate. Call me a luddite, but I don’t ever think that an iPad or a Kindle will replace a book or a magazine.

I consume a lot of digital media but I don’t consider that digital media (blogs, twitter, online news or fashion) cannibalises a valuable print product. I have four year’s (and counting) worth of British Vogue stacked neatly in chronological order in my front room. Being able to hold and keep (and refer back to) a print product is big part of why the digital age doesn’t spell the end for good magazine. (At the other end of the spectrum though, are the trashier gossip rags. I think you’ll see these publications going into rapid decline on the back of blogs that are less restricted by *ahem* lawyers telling them what they can’t write and websites that can be quickly updated.)

While in London I worked at IPC Media, right in the thick of escalating hysteria about the End of the (Publishing) World As We Knew It. I remember a recruitment agent telling me I shouldn’t take the job because I’d be out of work within a year. (Just one more reason, in case you needed it, never to take advice from recruitment agents).

In reality, a LOT of my work (well over 50%) was about driving our readership across multiple media platforms and leveraging the “anchor” brand of the print publication into the digital space.  

Take NME - an iconic music title that now supports a tv channel, a radio station and Europe’s biggest commercial music news site at NME.com. Kind of to be expected I guess, with the Gen Y hyper-connected target audience?

Then you look at www.horseandhound.com.uk I doubt their digital readership is as high as NME’s. But they had a thriving and engaged online community. These people were horse mad and cashed-up - a saddle manufacturer’s wet dream, and an example of why maxing out the readership numbers isn’t always necessarily the be all and end all.

Nice work Hazel Phillips for calling out Next magazine for this bizarre timewarp of an article.