By Adam Wakefield
Senor, whose company specialises in the re-invention of editorial models, strategies, and workflows for the digital age and counts the likes of the New York Times among its clients, took the stage at the Future of Media Conference in Johannesburg on Thursday, 21 July.
As the key note speaker for the day, Senor immediately exuded a confidence that caught the conference’s attention.
“I am here to talk about transformation. Mediamorphosis, something that has already begun and it’s happening around the world,” Senor said.
In assessing the print business, Senor said it was a great business in the past but the rise of the Internet has put paid to that, with it suffering “terrible dislocation” as a result.
“We need to reflect on the single problem within the news business today, and in the last 20 years in particular, and it is this: peanuts,” Senor offered.
Peanuts, as explained by Senor, are by definition free. In bars, they are used as an entry point to you buying something more expensive, “something associated with price, something associated with value”. This lies at the heart of what has happened to the news business in the digital age.
From Senor’s vantage point, the current news business is 80% commoditised content and 20% “caviar content; content that intrinsically has value”.
For the media to transform, it needs to invert these numbers, and stop giving away peanuts.
“Free is very expensive. It has been incredibly expensive for newspapers to do digital free and that is coming to an end,” Senor said.
“We’ve reached the apex of second-hand journalism, recycled news, charlatanism. Many of your brands are still associated with this kind of content, that which has no value. We are in the age of voyeurism, not journalism, and this mediamorphosis begins by reclaiming journalism.”
This cannot happen without challenging click-baiting culture, and moving from “volume to value. From selling information to selling intelligence”. Newspapers and publishers will never make money from commoditised content with “the new proposition”, the how, why and what’s next, being where the money is.
To illustrate his point, Senor then brought up a slide which stated that by the end of 2016, more than 300 American newspapers will be charging for digital content compared to practically none three years ago.
“Newspapers are migrating from selling news space to selling audiences, which means you need to migrate from buying space to buying audiences, which now newspapers and magazines can sell to you across all digital platforms. We must sell audiences, not brands,” Senor said.
The audiences that newspapers have are not fragmented slices of different demographics or groups, but instead a specific block of a certain demographic. Through the information provided by subscription, newspapers have a very good idea of who their audience is, and it is this knowledge that is of tremendous value to advertisers.
This hinted at one of the four new revenue drivers for newspapers in the digital age; branded content. The other three are reader revenue, event revenue, and marketing solutions.
In the past, newspapers were able to collect revenue on the Dollar, but the Internet has led to a fragmentation of this dollar into cents and dimes, and herein lies the solution.
“The challenge for newspapers is that now they have to sell and not just collect that dollar. They have to fight for every one of those cents and dimes that make up that dollar,” Senor said.
“You have to disperse your content so it’s present across those cents and dollars so you reach an optimal audience. The fixed cost needs to adapt in the new market reality. We are optimists when it comes to the future of newspapers, optimists who worry a lot.”
Senor said it is healthy to have that worry and that should reflect on publisher’s businesses as well. What does concern him is that while there are “very clear and profitable signs” and business practises available, publishers are not being bold and embracing the necessary steps that they should have embraced a long time ago.
In part 2, Senor talks about how newspapers must embrace mobile-first and video, as well as print being a bridge to a digital future.