Newspapers are on the decline! A very fast decline. Readership and revenues are down and profits seem very hard to find anymore. Because of that decline agents appear to be dropping their support of print media a little bit more every year. Read the rest of this article »

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Will the recent launch of the Apple iPad mean the end of the Listing Presentation Folder or FlipChart style presentation? Will we see agents showing off their listings via the iPad? Or perhaps they’ll be using it to watch real estate training sessions or live streamed sales meetings? Either way, could it be a Game Changer? Read the rest of this article »

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Whilst Rupert Murdoch may extol the brilliance of his newspapers journalism, however his history and facts really tell a different story. Over the past decade newspapers across the globe including Rupert’s have culled journalists from their payroll amid cost blowouts and shrinking readerships. It is not uncommon these days for one journalist to have 5 roles within the one newspaper.

Meet reporter John Brinkwater, Motoring Expert, Religious Affairs Reporter, Political Correspondent, Pet Expert and Love Guru.

How funny it is that Rupert and the newspaper industry will now turn to the same journalistic stocks and plead with them to save their companies. We will now see the newspaper industry invest in generations of reporters- apparently giving you stories you will want to pay for – I just love the irony of it all.

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A war has erupted and it is being fought across the newspapers of the world and also in senate hearings. It is a war that the commercial newspapers, radio and television networks have a invested a lot of time in debating. But have they got a chance of changing the dynamic of the way we read news and watch television?

I have been spending the last few weeks researching my second article on ‘newspapers and the online world‘ but will not release this until next week now, as this issue deserves an article on its own. Lets have a little look at what this is all about. Read the rest of this article »

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This past decade we have seen many markets rocked by the digital era, none more so than the news & entertainment industry. We only have to look at our own lifestyles to know just how much has changed. The demands we place on what we read, watch and listen to – are quite astoundingly different compared to only a few years ago.

Sadly however, the people that have run these industries from the top always seem to be clueless as to what the future holds. I will read with interest the changes new Fairfax Chairman, Roger Corbett makes in his first 3 months in charge or if he just takes a ’steady as she goes’ approach. In my opinion he has to immediately show he has got something to offer and he has to get creative .

In the first of a two part series I am going to take a look at The Print Newspaper both here in Australia and also in The USA where I am currently located. In Australia we have two major real estate newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age these are both controlled by Fairfax.

The second part of this series to be released this time next week will focus on the future of online newspapers.

The Boardroom

We have a management problem, boardrooms are filled with people that have a good record of running traditional companies or companies that have made the digital transition easily. However, the majority of boardrooms today are filled with people that are not qualified to understand the digital age and the behavior of their own market in this digital age.

In the beginning it was much easier to launch a jobs, cars or houses website if you had an established classifieds newspaper to get it off the ground. Realestate.com.au was not saved by investment from News Ltd (although it helped) , it was the aggressive push through their newspapers and property guides from News Ltd (and a slack competitor) that established its success.

Today it is nearly impossibly to run a newspaper if you do not have strong jobs, cars and houses website in each of the key markets. Newspapers can no longer survive without the online world!

For an established newspaper to change, it has to start at the top. If the stories of Roger Corbett are true, then he must change his attitude or he will be remembered as the Chairman who sank Fairfax. The man has had great success in the past and I cannot see how at his age and with his bank account, he could not want more, than to make the changes needed in his own headspace to make this work.

You cannot be successful if you think that the newspaper market will get back to normal levels once the economy picks up; or if your only other idea is to wait for other Internet companies to succeed and then purchase them at inflated prices; or if you invest more in marketing and less in your journalistic talent; or think more tabloid news stories will appeal to the masses!

You have to understand that what is broken cannot be fixed in the same ways you have attempted to fix them in the past.

Yesterdays News

I love newspapers, I read them every single day. Actually, let me clarify, I read the news everyday, but I rarely buy newspapers.

The reason I do not buy newspapers is fairly simple, and is summed up in the following statement.

When was the last time a real news story broke in a newspaper, before it broke online?

You, like me cannot think of one recent event. If you are using an RSS reader (like me) and get your news delivered this way, you probably hear about the news before anyone in a newspaper newsroom hears about it. Even better Twitter (and the right accompanying application) will get it to you quicker.

Yesterdays News

Let us look at the first issue, news. The first time I really thought it was over for newspapers was when Saddam Hussein’s rein ended. I remember reading the headlines outside a newsagent in Hobart, Tasmania almost 24 hours after it happened, as if it just happened! Remember that statue coming down? This is the papers biggest problem, it cannot scoop news, so it tries to make up news.

Michael Jackson dies and for 2 weeks we have a different headline each day, each one trying to out do the previous. This is not news, it isn’t even interesting, you don’t create news – you find it – and you cannot find it unless you grow your journalists and give them the freedom and time to search for it.

The Classifieds

Once upon a time we read a newspaper to look for a job, a house, a car, a garage sale or a classified. You purchased the Trading Post to look for a bargain and you may have even looked at advertising for a coupon to take to Coles or Woollies.

Classifieds will never return, they will continue to shrink and someone will have to do the maths one day on whether it is worthwhile to run the wretched things in print.

Classifieds are now almost exclusively online, so there must be a conduit between the print version which should be about stories and statistics, to the online which should be the classifieds and even more statistics.

Subscriptions

The price of a daily newspaper is dirt cheap, yet fewer people are willing to pay for it. In Australia, I purchased Wired and Fast Company magazines each month. I loved these magazines, but air freighted and at $16 an issue it was ridiculous, but I still paid for it. Since I arrived in the USA and have an address here, I have subscribed to both magazines at a total cost of $19.80 for 24 issues!

Surely these companies lose money? I think you have already guessed why they do it. Their thinking is that they make the purchase so cheap that it makes common sense to just subscribe – even for the casual buyer, the losses on delivery are minimal and are offset by the increase in advertising revenues. Lifting your guaranteed monthly subscriptions, lifts your total guaranteed readership and impresses potential advertisers.

This is exactly what newspapers need to do. They can keep their newsstand price the same, but run promotions for $9.95 per annum where you can get the newspaper delivered to your door 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Anything more than $19.95 per annum is not an impulse buy and therefore will not work.

There are many ways you can offset this price, increases in advertisers, bundling other companies leaflets, flyers etc.

The Rockstar Journalists

We only have to look at the current stocks of young journalists to know just how sad a situation we are in. Gone are the days of journalists dedicating months to a story and cracking a scandal, the majority are now relegated to press releases or are so tied up covering so many stories, that they have no time to actual do any real beat reporting. Many journalists now have too many job titles and business cards that it is laughable.

Examples

• Political Correspondent James Worthy
• Youth with James ‘JimmyW’ Worthy
• Yachting Expert James Worthy
• Lawn Bowls with James Worthy
• Ask James
• Religious Affairs with Brother James

We are about to enter a new era of the rockstar journalist. These are the same journalists that we read today, but newspapers will be making them into rockstars. Even though the first stage will be shallow, I believe that the newspapers across the globe will need to get back to breeding stars, beat journalists and real local content.

Sure, we have some good journalists in the political arena, an almost endless supply of financial experts, plenty of celebrity style journalists and some that provide us with a running commentary on social issues from both sides such as Peter Fitzsimons and Miranda Devine, both of whom are excellent writers, but are more social commentators than true investigative journalists.

I am talking about beat journalists, a breed who follow a lead for months/years, who give us real gritty local and national impact stories and every now and then crack a conspiracy – journalists that know it is a mortal sin to end any scandal with the word ‘gate’.

A newspaper should provoke a discussion in the workplace and around the nations dinner tables and only beat journalism can do that!

Newspapers are facing slow death and I think only the true beat journalist can save them. Michael Moore has some interesting comments on the death of newspapers. It comes in at 21 minute mark if you want to jump straight to it.

Design

Jacek Utko, is a newspaper designer, he has had some great success in lifting circulation. Newspapers are boring and they need a re-design, it will not make all the difference, but it is all part of the new solution. You can also read an interview with Jacek here.

Watch this February 2009 Ted Talk by Jacek.

Distribution

I currently live in Boston, where you have the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, each one of these companies have their own set of delivery trucks. The cost of delivering newspapers does not have to be so high. Come together, open your network up to other local newspapers and periodicals, where you actually make money from the distribution.

Do Newspapers still matter?

I love newspapers, I think they can still survive, they will never thrive like before, that is because the classifieds ‘rivers of gold’ (jobs, cars, houses) are lost forever to the web, but they have a real relevance to a cities identity. It will be a sad day if this is lost and the blame for this will lie squarely with the owners of these media groups – who still seem to think that it is their right to control the media and not simply a time limited privilege!

Summary

It is a tough sell. I cannot see many newspapers surviving if the boardrooms just think that everything will be fine once the economy picks up. Everything from the people to design, subscriptions, distribution must change.

Next week in part two, I will talk about the future of online newspapers and provide soe great examples of what we can expect in the next generation.

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Rupert Murdoch has been throwing off protectionist rants of late to pretty much anybody that will listen. On the one hand I admire the guy for building an empire and embracing the digital era, but on the other hand I wonder if he is losing his marbles.

In case you have not read my some previous articles about current day media moguls, I will repeat it here for you. Having a market share or a semi monopoly is a privilege not a right and this privilege/right is not exclusive, if you cannot adapt simply move on!

Rant One – Public Broadcasting

Rupert rolled out his son James on centre stage to deliver the MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival and launched into the BBC with an argument whose motives were was so transparent that the majority of comment outside his own networks were a collective ‘rolling of the eyes’ .

The BBC in the UK and the ABC in Australia are pretty much the only news sources (aside from perhaps SBS) that are free from commercial indulgences and interference, and for the majority of the populations of both countries, an indispensable part of our lives.

James other argument was that the private sector left to their own devices would be more innovative as the BBC. Murdoch added that the BBC stifled innovation as it made it difficult for the private sector to compete.

Would we have seen classics such as Faulty Towers, Black Adder, Top Gear, Chaser, Frontline, Summer Heights High, Kath & Kim without public broadcasting?

I am sure you ca think of dozens more classics that have come from the BBC/ABC over the years. I also consider the news and current affairs on these networks so far above that of the commercial networks that for the past few years on Australia, I rarely ever watched a commercial station – if not for sports!

James also attacked the news reporting of these networks with “Dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it,” he said.

State Sponsored? You lost me there James.

In my opinion the attack is the first in a few deliberate stages and is aimed at the public perception of these organisations.

However, Rupert and James are seriously deluded if they think this attack will have any effect on public perception. The BBC in the UK costs the taxpayer around $140 pound per annum and I am sure the Australian taxpayer is slugged even less per person. Now if you look at local content in bothy countries, it is almost exclusively provided by these networks.

Rant Two – News Aggregators

Rupert has come out and continued his attack on the search engines and news aggregators, telling them the time has come to pay for News Ltd’s content. This shows a complete lack of understanding of how actual search engines and news aggregator sites work. Here is a little primer for Rupert.

Lesson- Search Engine/News Aggregator Primer

Rupert, please sit down and listen to me, no not in my chair, on the little one to the right of you. That’s right the one that is the same color as the Fire Engines.

Once upon a time there was a web page, and on that web page there were little snippets of code called ‘meta-tags’. These ‘meta-tags’ carried snippets of content to make it easier for search engines to find a page. Most programmers gave the page a ‘title’ and a ‘description’ and clever software like www.wordpress.org actually automate that process.

The really clever people with coke bottle glasses at search engines and news aggregator websites created little things that we called ‘crawler bots’ that crawled around and around the Interweb to grab the billions of new or updated articles/pages and indexed them on their sites and allows this content to be found by the millions of users each day.

If your content got selected by the user they clicked on the link and they got to your website and read that article or page. Your website had advertising on it and you made lots of money from those advertisers. The more popular your website got, the more money you made. It was like magic!

What if I don’t want to play?

Now Rupert, this is where all the incredibly gifted programmers out there on the Interweb came in. If you did not want your content indexed in search engines or on news aggregator companies like Google had a standard method by which you could prevent the ‘crawler bots’ from indexing your sites content. This way of you were not happy, you didn’t have to have your content indexed.

Now go out and play with all of the other media moguls in the pay tv tent.

Overarching Strategy

Rupert and friends perfect world would see no free public news, all bloggers discredited and everyone forced into paying for everything we read. Again after more than a digital decade we have a leader of one of the most successful companies in the world bereft of any idea on how to make the same kind of money in an almost exclusive online world.

Rupert, I like you mate, you have built one of the most successful organisations of the 20th century and for that you are in an elite minority, you have success and wealth beyond any of our wildest dreams but if bullying and protectionism is the only answer you have, then please step aside and let the next generation of digital companies take over.

Later this week I have the first of a two part series on Newspapers and how they can be saved.

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When Telstra paid AUD $636 million for he Trading Post in 2004 many questioned yet another wasted acquisition for the Telco giant (the list is long). Today those questions have been vindicated as Telstra has now shut down the 22 print versions of the Trading Post to concentrate on the online edition. Another hit will come as many visitors to the website would have come from the print versions and the final blow maybe the poor structure of the Trading Post website – as only last year I attempted unsuccessfully to post a product (a free trial offer – that wasn’t actually free) and gave up after I could not work out how to post (it kept directing me to pay).  So I missed out on saying the phrase ‘tell him he’s dreaming’ all because a special offer I clicked on didn’t turn out out be that special after all.

As for another ‘dreamer’ Ron Walker is trying to paint his tenure at Fairfax as a savior telling ABC PM, “If we had continued to rely on the cash flows from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Financial Review, the company wouldn’t have existed today, so, it’s paid off for us”. Yes Ron, paying $700 plus million for a ‘New Zealand only’ classifieds site saved Fairfax! Fairfax has some great opportunities but the window is closing very fast and buying up expensive digital assets that do not even cover the interest on the loan to buy that same asset is not the answer. I have no idea what Ron Walker has done in his time on the Fairfax board, but I can assure you he will not be remembered as a savior!

It truly dumbfounds me how large organisations such as Telstra, Fairfax, PBL or News Limited rarely ever create a unique product from scratch. They are all very good at buying assets at the height of the market and selling or getting out at the bottom of the market. These companies already have huge traffic to their major sites and massive databases in the classifieds arena, be it in cars, jobs, houses or general classifieds., so it should be relatively easy for them to create successful new products and increase shareholder value.

They need to get out of the habit of buying up websites for 100’s of millions of dollars and invest a few million each year in a ‘Black Ops’ style tech team to come up with new and exciting products from existing databases/systems they have.

This team should be able to tap into (read) any database and should be able to create new products from scratch without someone telling them ‘no you cannot do that, this will affect this or that’. The idea is that you create new products and test them in markets across your digital assets. This team should be able to go and meet with any division of the organisation and be granted access to any data. Yes, you must have some oversight, but that is at the end of the process, not at the beginning – if a product doesn’t fit – or is too risky – it gets shelved.

The alternative is to continue dying a slow death and live in denial. There does come a time when banks will abandon these companies or their money will run  out and for some of them the only way to survive will be to do what Telstra is doing and selling off or closing down assets.

This is the digital era and web/mobile based products will be everything to these companies in less than 10 years.

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As a part of connecting with real estate agents the Gold Coast Bulletin recently invited Gold Coast agents from different real estate groups for a Seminar with Tom Panos, the Real Estate Advertising Director for News Limited.

Now these seminars were a little different. They were held in a boardroom atmosphere and each real estate group had their own session with Tom and other Bully representatives. For reasons that I wont get into we did not get the rah rah seminar that was probably on the agenda. Instead we had a more open discussion of how Print fits into our offices and I for one got a lot more out of it that way.

As you would expect they were justifying Print’s as a major partner in the Real Estate industry and the agents on the other side were pointing out that Print is playing a lesser role than it ever has.

Now this is where it gets interesting. I asked Tom Panos when News would be rolling out the ability to charge sellers for real estate print advertising direct rather than charging the real estate offices for the advertising.

A part industry owned real estate print publication on the Sunshine Coast called MyPropertyReview has rolled out a seller direct payment system and had used it as the cornerstone to capture a massive market share in very short time. They really use real estate salespeople as booking agents for the newspaper rather than as the client.

The system is a really a win win for everyone concerned.  The property sellers enter into a payment system that spreads the marketing over many payments and for a lot of owners they only need to pay when the property settles. Real Estate agents can get on with the job for marketing, promoting, selling  and negotiating the sale without having to be a debt collector, a job that is notoriously hard if the property has not sold.

MyPropertyReview has decimated the real estate sections in the local newspapers. In typical style the established players responded very slowly but once they lost a large slice of their business they have had to slash their price trying to entice clients back and introduce similar billing systems.

Tom Panos confirmed that News is trialling such a system in at least one marketplace and it is up for review and consideration for a much wider release.  I got the feeling that Tom himself was not too keen on the whole concept  and he quickly offered problems with the system. His main objection was the fact that the newspapers were not geared to collect thousands of payments that this sort of system would create.  This really seemed a bit of cop out  as the classified departments would take far more credit card payments than any real estate section would create.

The biggest problem I see with implementing such a system is the mates rates deals being offered for certain real estate groups would cause even more problems in the marketplace than they do now.  If some agents are on a higher print rate they can effectively mask their higher cost by only providing a total figure for all marketing costs.  But if two agents provide a booking sheet with the same ad size in the same publication on the same dates and one is nearly half the price of the other, its not that easy to hide, or to explain away.   The huge differences most newspapers have in their tiered charge system would be working against  this sort of model.  the need to have a flat rate, or something close to a flat rate to really get the most of it.

However… I think the real problem with this concept rolling out everywhere lies with the fact that for many markets they simply don’t have to… Sadly it has been a long long time since an old media company has come up with anything even close to being innovative for the Real Estate industry.

I know in our market place this sort of billing system would be very welcome by many agents.

I would like to think News is trialling this for serious consideration for a national roll out but I fear that its a very localised response to a competitor. Maybe I am wrong but I reckon the major newspapers will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to release this without a competitor doing so but if your local newspaper were to introduce such a billing scheme would you welcome it? Would this cause your yearly investment in print advertising to increase? and would you offer newspaper advertising as an option to owner when previously you might have held back?

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Much has been written about newspapers and their demise. We have all read stories of how newspapers are bleeding all over the world and in cases like the Los Angeles Times (and The Chicago Tribune) filing for bankruptcy in the United States, not to mention that our own traditionally profitable newspapers are slowly losing profits and revenues.

Change
However, Rupert Murdoch had gone on the offensive and has spoken of the possibility of newspapers charging for access to online content, he has also flagged the possibility that newspapers could be delivered only in digital within 10 years.

In the last few weeks the heavyweights of the newsprint world gathered in Chicago to come together to launch a group offensive against free content.

Today newspapers only push a certain amount of information directly to their websites and hold back on unique investigative information and journalism until after it has appeared in the print versions, I can understand this, but it is not sustainable.

Newspapers have to return to their roots to survive, they have to understand that the reason the majority of people read their content, is because it is unique not because we want to hear a, (we can get that anywhere).

Organisations like Fairfax and News Ltd over the past 20 years have invested more in sales and marketing and less in investigative journalism and this will end with the digital newspaper revolution.

Skepticism
Newspapers believe people will pay for this content but I am skeptical for a number of reasons. The first being that newspapers have invested less and less over the years in investigative journalism and more and more in marketing and sales. Secondly the classifieds have been bleeding to death because online just kills it in so many ways (content, days on market, accessability). This has been one of many factors in the demise of print and many newspapers have just resorted to tacky journalism trying to reach a younger audience whilst alienating their base.

Light
However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The Kindle device has proven that even an ugly little black and white wireless reading device can be popular and profitable. All it needs is for a company to enhance this offering and take it to another level (cue Apple and its touted color reader) and we have something that all newspapers need – a vibrant competitive wireless newsreader market.

Real Estate
This is your digital newspapers, so digital newspapers will allow agents to deliver targeted listings with branding, digital newspapers will give you a canvass to work with and allow you to brand your agency around your listings (you hope), unlike traditional newspapers – digital newspapers will allow you to carry a wealth of property information and local sales data alongside those listings.

Subscriptions
So why would we pay for this? You still buy magazines don’t you? Wireless Readers will demolish the gossip/celebrity magazine industry but it will revive the newspaper/unique content industry because we WILL pay for this – but only to a level.

Wireless Readers will be thin, light, color and black and white and have 6 – 10 hours battery life, they will serve a number of purposes but digital newspapers/ebooks, email, web will be the primary market.

The price? $9 a month? That’s about the money, it is all about volume – and newspapers will actually see a revival and in the cases of companies with quality journalists, a good news reputation and content like Fairfax (Sydney Morning Herald – The Age) will thrive, whereas papers like the Telegraph and the Herald Sun will stick to the print versions longer and die a slow death (blue collar)

Fairfax will eat News Limited in Australia for breakfast for another reason, classifieds. News Limited pretty much owns the tacky side of print in Australia and only has one newspaper it can be editorially proud of, The Australian. As for online classifieds, it has realestate.com.au and even that has a limited shelf life given its damaged reputation amongst the industry and agents.

Summing Up
The future of digital newspapers will be all about journalism and content as we can get all the other stuff elsewhere. It has to be about what made it successful in the first place- quality journalism – quality investigations, matched with quality content.

Throw in online classifieds and a brilliant interface and you have a winner. I pay for content today (software design website) , but they only own me only as long as the provide quality unique content ($7 per month).

So sit back and enjoy your newspaper with your coffee because it is nearing its end. No? You might think this, but just imagine if print newspapers lost just 10% of its readers to digital, now think about the fact they are already bleeding $ on print as of todays readership. Now you see it :)

It may take 5 – 7 years but it is coming! Your thoughts?

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A great read and a moving story of a newspapers demise. After 149 years and 311 days, the Rocky Mountain News published its final edition on February 27, 2009.

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

The people who put this together should be commended as it is a very thought provoking piece.

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