The Decline of Newspapers hits a milestone

One for my media /newspaper followers and digital/mobile advertising types. Yes, it relates to US figures, but the figures are telling. I think there's also some more thinking required about digital advertising and why that's not growing for media outlets.

Click through to the comments and further reading.

Post by Helen Keegan.

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013

The rather good Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013 is out now. It’s quite a long report – you can download a copy here and below you’ll find the PowerPoint charts that support the report.

I won’t lie, there’s a lot to read here and, clearly, a lot of work went into it and I will be taking my time to go through it all.

The short version based on what I’ve read so far is…

• News is becoming more mobile, more social, and more real-time
• Digital patterns becoming more entrenched – particularly amongst the younger half of the population
• Audiences increasingly want news on any device, in any format, and at any time of day.
• Digital revolution is not proceeding at an even pace in all countries.
• Social media take-up varies across countries
• Ever-greater competition and more disruption to business models to come
• More people say they've paid for digital news in the past 10 months so there’s still hope

Some of these points are no surprise to those of us working in mobile. And it just confirms that the pace of change is fast. Even if you’re not in the newspaper industry, I think this is worth a glance as it reveals some key trends that are relevant and of interest to other sectors.

Based on the methodology, the UK findings are perhaps the most pertinent as that’s where there were the highest level of respondents. Of course, they did only survey a limited amount people so it’s a representation but the data was weighted to targets set on age and gender, region, newspaper readership, and social grade to reflect the total population of each country. The sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet.

As if you need any further convincing that now is the time to get your mobile strategy sorted, maybe this reports will be the nudge you need if you’re not already on the case.

Interested to hear your thoughts and examples of other recent reports that back up or contradict Reuters’ findings.

 

Reuters digital news report 2013 from Nic Newman

Eve Pollard Tells It Like It Is

A few week’s back, I attended the rather marvellous Sound Women Inspiration Festival 2013 held at the BBC’s facility in London’s West End. Soundwomen as an organisation is about supporting women working in audio and radio. Their first festival was a day to celebrate women’s achievements at all levels both within radio and audio, but also other sectors too. No I don’t work in radio, although I do like podcasts and podcasting, but I figured the issues facing women in that industry are very similar to the issues facing women in mobile, broadcast, science and more. And hey, the fabulous Eve Pollard (aka Granny Bonkers) was on the line-up and the ticket price would be worth it to hear her story alone, let alone anyone else’s. I was right. Eve was witty, insightful, engaging, energetic and motivating. I took lots of notes. Here are some of them. Bear in mind the talk was aimed squarely at women!

• Be honest
• Be angry (yes, it’s ok to be angry in the workplace or anywhere else)
• Be real (as in true to yourself)
• Have an opinion (This was one of Russell Buckley’s key pieces of advice to me when we first started working together back in 2000.)
• Make trouble (apparently we’re rather good at it, according to Eve).
• Believe in what you do – yes, women do have to work harder but believe in your work and what you bring to it.
• Pay attention to detail and to knowledge. You will have to be better at this than your male colleagues and this will give you an edge.
• Don’t miss out on the networking. Seriously, don’t miss out on the networking. It’s important. Eve would go home after work and put her children to bed (broadcaster Claudia Winkleman and son Oliver Lloyd] and then go back out and hang out with colleagues in her team. The drinking with colleagues thing was really important for bonding and team-building. She also shared some tips about how you don’t have to keep up with the drinking… take your drink into the loo with you and tip it down the sink; take a big bag with you and put your drink in your bag to chuck away later (ok, your bag might be a bit wet and sticky, but better that than a hellish hangover or getting yourself into state). (My personal tip here, don’t feel you have to drink alcohol. Give yourself some rules to stick by such as every other drink being a soft drink or not drinking after a certain time. People don’t really question them. Also, buy the round then you can buy yourself a soft drink and nobody knows.)
• Don’t use the S-word. What’s the S-word, I hear you ask? It’s the word ‘sorry’. Apologies don’t figure in a man’s world. They figure too much in a woman’s world. Learn from the men and don’t use it. (For the men reading this, we’d like you to apologise now and then where it’s due.)
• Read the book 'Rich Dad Poor Dad, what the rich they tell their children about money’

. Eve highly recommends.

Don’t iron. If you have a baby, put the baby clothes under the sofa cushion and sit on them. They’ll be nice and flat. When the child gets a big bigger, fold them in half and then put them under the sofa and sit on them. Seriously, life is too short to spend it ironing.

Marry the right partner. She was very clear on this. You need someone who will really share the home tasks with you and be able to support you in your work and your life as much as you can support them in theirs. Sheryl Sandberg says something similar in her new book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead.

Live near work. Eve was adamant about this. Don’t waste your life commuting. Little children don’t need leafy suburbs to thrive, they need time with their parents. They’ll get that if you live near work. Of course, Eve did add that that may be more difficult these days in central London…

You need your running away money. Don’t tell anyone about it. Don’t tell anyone else where it is. This is more about knowing that you have the stash and could run away if you had to than actually having to do it. It will mean you feel less trapped.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Life is too short etc.

Stop being judgemental about other women. Even if you hate them. Women get a hard enough time without other women judging them. Sometimes it’s hard but do your best with this one.

Worry about your salary – this buys you time. Women typically don’t negotiate their salaries. Men start negotiating their salary from their very first job. Time for women to do this.

Don’t feel you have to be moving forward all the time. Things sometimes take a bit longer. Eve stayed in the same job for 10 years before making the leap up the career ladder. Don’t feel you’re lagging behind if you do this. You’re not. You’re just taking your time.

Decide early on about your uniform. It will save you masses of time in the mornings plus you’ll always know you look good and you’ll feel comfortable. One less thing to worry about.

Eve also noted that she’d dealt with both Murdoch and Desmond during her career and had some tips on how to deal with very rich, very powerful men.

• Be straightforward
• Be charming
• Be well read (so you can tell the multi-millionaires something they didn’t know. She suggested reading the Wall St Journal for this.)
• Be yourself.

On asking for more money… Murdoch once told her that no woman had ever asked for a raise when Pollard first started the Women in Journalism organisation in 1994. One of the most popular sessions the group ever ran (and now run regularly) was the one on how to negotiate for more money. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for that one. Eve told us:

• Be cool
• This is what I am doing and what I’m bringing to you.
• It’s not about you.

So there you have it. The notes really don’t cut it compared with being there in person but I hope you found them useful.
A big thank you to the Sound Women crew who put the event on. It lived up to its name of ‘Inspiration Festival’ and the speakers certainly inspired me. The stories I heard will stay with me for a long time to come.

FT.com and its latest thinking about mobile

I attended a very interesting event this morning where Rob Grimshaw, MD FT.com, shared some details of their current mobile and technology strategies. I’ve known the FT.com mobile team for many years and they’ve always been ahead of the game when it comes to new formats and paying for content. (I’ve always kept a close eye on them as advising media owners is a large part of the consulting work I do.) Some argue that it’s because they have a niche that they’re successful. Others think that it’s because they deal with financial information specifically. it could be said that their audience is particularly tech-savvy having a higher than average income and fond of their new gadgets. I’m sure that some or all of those will play their part. Rob was asked about why other newspapers are trailing behind when it comes to technology and he felt it was as much to do with confidence and culture change rather than anything to do with technology. Maybe that’s easy for him to say since they have a long heritage in offering digital services and so have probably been through that culture change some time ago. That said, the confidence is a different matter. Rob cited The New York Times as a paywall success story as it now has more digital subscribers than print ones in just 12 months. Not bad going. I guess the point is that if your customers wouldn’t pay for your content, maybe it’s not good enough anyway. Or the flipside of that is if your content is good, then your customers will pay for it. Glass half-empty vs. glass half-full.

Grimshaw tell us other newspapers may be struggling as it’s more to do with confidence in your offering and thinking about culture change rather than technology change. There was a lot to take in, but since it was partly a press event, there were some journalists there who took more notes than I did. Well worth a read.

There were a couple of other points that I found particularly pertinent. Firstly, it was recently reported by New Media Age that FT.com reckons 60% of its revenues will come from mobile by 2020 and Rob confirmed this figure at the session. This is probably just as well since it’s expected that print newspapers will be irrelevant in the UK by 2019 [links to a pdf]. Rob also went on to say that he wasn’t sure how much of a business they would have in print circulation in 10 or 20 years time (cost vs. reward being the issue alongside declining overall print readership in news generally). If that’s the case, then I wonder if that figure is too conservative. Friend and colleague, Russell Buckley, certainly seems to think so and I have to agree with him. His article explaining why its too low is well worth a read.

The other interesting point was about Google+. It’s often dismissed as a desperate attempt by Google to join the Social Media Revolution. But maybe it has legs? Social Media is as important as mobile to FT.com and often comes hand in hand. FT.com amassed 500,000 followers on their G+ page in just six months and currently standing at over 860,000 at the time of writing. This compares very favourably with their current Facebook Page following of 325,000 and FT.com’s Twitter followers numbering 668,000 over a longer period of time. Is this simply down to the power of the suggested user functionality on G+ or are G+ members avid newsreaders? I don’t know. It’s worth further investigation I guess.

And finally, on technology and platforms and tablets… HTML5 is at the core of the company’s products. By building in HTML5, it means that for both Android and Windows 8, 90% of the code is written so making the native app isn’t so arduous. There was also a big thumbs for Windows 8 by Rob. He feels that the tablet space is still in its infancy and that there is scope for there to be 2 or 3 strong players in the sector. Although Apple currently has this sewn up with the iPad, Rob thinks the Windows 8 launch towards the end of the year will be very interesting. This is because Microsoft has put thought into the relationship between the tablet and the desktop and built that into the design and UI. I must admit, I have a tablet with Windows 8 installed on it and I like it. It feels more grown up than the iPad somehow, and certainly you can have more clout when it comes to memory and speed as there will be more choice with specs. And actually, more consumer choice is a good thing overall. One device does not fit all no matter what the Apple fan boyz and girlz say.

A lot more was covered in the session – APIs, internet TV, new advertising formats and more - which, happily for you dear reader, two journalists attending wrote up. Links below for you.

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/ft-com-expects-half-its-audience-to-be-mobile-within-three-years/s2/a549415/

http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/archives/2012/05/ft_mobile_event_analysis_life_in_api_tim.html

CNN Mobile site... any good?

I was planning to do a bit of a recce around a few mobile news sites to do a compare and contrast job in relation to something I'm doing for a client. So having heard a month or so ago via MocoNews that CNN was doing an all-singing all-dancing wap site with help from Ericsson, I thought it was worth a look. And I was also reminded about it in the latest CNN email newsletter which popped into my inbox yesterday.

Anyhoo, I head off to CNN on my 'puter to see what the service consisted of. It seems there's breaking news, video and also the wapsite which was the bit I was interested in. I type in the address http://m.cnn.com on my phone browser (Opera Mini) and get 'Forbidden. Your client is not allowed to access the requested object.' So I try again on my operator browser (T-zones) and get the same message. And indeed the same message on my PC. Hmm, maybe they're updating the site or something?

Err, it seems not. It seems that unless you're on a network with one of CNN's preferred partners you don't get access. Except, that with Opera Mini, of course, I can just go to CNN.com and see everything I want to see, albeit in a not as nice format I expect as the made for mobile site. So much for CNN 'making mobile news easy'! So I have to agree with Denis at WapReview... CNN really doesn't 'get' mobile.

Doh!