Future-proofing Print Media: Q&A with Mathew Ingram

Newspaper readership has been slipping for 40 years. (Full data here.)

Yet, consumers and business people seem to need and want information, news and commentary more now than ever. We thought we'd turn to some experts to get their views on how to future-proof print media.

Mathew Ingram is a technology reporter and columnist for the Globe and Mail.com.  Mathew has been a journalist for 20 years and has been an online journalist for six years. His blog focusses on work and technology.

What do you think of those readership charts?

I hate looking at charts like that  :-)

It's interesting that newspapers have seen the same decline in readership -- about 10 percentage points -- over the past seven years as they did over the previous 30.  that's kind of a scary number.

Warren Buffet says the business is in permanent decline. Yet he owns some newspapers.

I bet he owns local newspapers. That's one area the web doesn't do well in, local news.

True, he owns the Buffalo News. As a starting point, to construct a future-proof media company, what might be the elements to consider?

That's a good question, Mike -- because it makes you look at all kinds of assumptions that are made about the media business today, and whether those things are core competencies (as business types like to say) or whether they are things that could disappear without changing the essential nature of what a newspaper does.

One of those things, obviously, is paper. Is it important that news comes printed on paper? Is that something fundamental to the business? Not really. As someone said recently, the important part of the word newspaper is the word "news," not the word "paper." I think smart media organizations are realizing that they have to find ways of extending their skills into other media, in order to reach their audience wherever they are.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Web is one of the biggest growth areas, and one that news organizations of all kinds
need to find some way of working with. Not that people won't continue to read newspapers, because they will -- in the same way people still go to the theatre to see plays. There are just a whole lot fewer people doing that than there used to be, and anyone in the theatre business or the play business has had to deal with that change somehow.

To me, a news organization has to focus on what its core skills are -- whether it's breaking news, investigative journalism, social and cultural coverage, opinion and analysis, political coverage or local news, or some combination of all those things. If anything, people need the kind of filtering and aggregating and analyzing function that newspapers bring to the table even more now that there is a firehose of information coming at us on the Web. News may increasingly be a commodity, but context is more important than ever.

What are the attributes media consumers value and pay for today?

That's a much tougher question to answer, in a lot of ways. Media consumers don't actually seem to be interested in paying for very much in the way of content -- at least not typical media content -- and I would argue that organizations such as the New York Times that have tried a  "pay wall" are making a mistake.  That may translate into short-term income, but I think over the longer term it sacrifices one of the key attributes that a media organization is going to need in the future and that is openness -- because openness encourages interactivity, and interactivity encourages relationships, and relationships are what the Web 2.0 is being built around (I would argue).

As for what attributes people value (not in monetary terms, but in other terms), I think that is somewhat easier to answer. I think they value media that is independent of existing power structures -- which is part of the appeal of "user-generated content" -- and media that tells them things they don't know (and things they didn't even know they wanted to know). And I think they value media that gives them the context and analysis and opinion that I mentioned above, which I would argue is part of the appeal of blogs.

A couple of long-winded answers -- I am getting paid by the word, right?

You're getting paid by the click... That’s the new way! What are the sociological trends that will drive consumer needs and values for next 10 years? Or in plainer language...how are people and their needs changing with respect to media and information needs?

I think it's very difficult to say exactly what the world -- even the online world -- is going to look like in 10 years. After all, 10 years ago there was no Google, and even that is already difficult to imagine because of the ways that Google has changed our lives, not to mention mobile communications and wireless and so on.

But I think it's safe to say that people are going to continue to want media, information, content -- data of all kinds -- to come to them wherever and whenever they want it, and that means mobile and configured in ways that make sense based on the time or device in question. And I think increasingly they are going to need ways of sifting and filtering and making sense of all that information.

That's where a company like Google comes in, since it is not only aggregating information but trying to make it all searchable as well, and it's also where traditional news organizations can play a role, in trying to help people find their way through the clouds of information that are coming at them all the time.

What parts of the newsroom or newspaper business should be stopped because customers no longer value it? (ie: what processes are like buggy whips, just no longer necessary.)

I think that's a a pretty easy one -- anything to do with time-sensitive information, or listings of any kind is a natural. That would apply to stock listings (which many newspapers are already cutting and moving to the Web) as well as movie listings, and any similar types of info. Classifieds are another good example, but that's a whole different kettle of fish, as Craig Newmark of Craigslist knows.

If you were to create THE news organization of 2011 what would it be doing and how would it earn its keep?

I think a smart news organization in 2011 will be doing pretty much what smart news organizations right now are doing -- only more so. In other words, they will be getting information from wherever they can (including their readers) and distributing it in as many different ways as possible, both print and broadcast -- to the extent that those terms have any real meaning any more. That means podcasts, video-casts, blogs, email alerts, alerts sent to cellphones, and so on. And they will likely be getting their revenue the same way they always have -- through advertising, although it will be in different forms than newspapers have gotten used to in the past.

Who comes closest to the target?

I think the BBC is probably the closest to being what I would consider a model for a forward-looking media organization, in part because of the vast resources they have at their disposal.

Thanks for some stimulating questions, Mike.

Comments

[mark evans]

i'm - naturally - with mathew on how newspapers need to evolve but how are they going to make money if wall gardens don't work and companies such as craigslist are grabbing a lot of the lucrative classfied market?

that's as big a question as what role newspapers will play as news organizations because you have to pay for staff, etc.