Hundreds of global experts in the media industry gather each year in
Perugia, Italy, to talk about the past and future. Some of the items on
the schedule look particularly interesting, so I have started putting
together my personal agenda.
PAMPLONA, Spain -- For the past five years I have been buying my newspapers on the weekend at a neighborhood newsstand. The owner and I, Jesus Erro, got to be casual friends, and we talked about the politics and culture of our respective countries. He is a big reader.
Sign in the window announces the owner is retiring and closing the shop.
This weekend, I found out he is closing his doors and retiring after 27 years at that location. Nobody wanted to buy the business, and he had reached the legal age to retire, 62. His son is a teenager, and his wife works for the local government, and he plans to focus on them. But beyond that, he isn't sure what he will do.
Three years ago, I interviewed him to get his perspective on the newspaper business in Spain. All the dailies were suffering at that time. It had been in a steady decline since 2008, first because of the financial crisis and then because of consumers' switching to digital platforms to get their news. Lately, it has gotten even worse.
Erro loves books, and his original idea when he bought the shop was to sell books. Newspapers were just a sideline. With the crisis, he also took to selling bread since lots of cafes and bakeries opened up nearby and also sold the local newspapers.
Below is a video of our 2016 interview, with subtitles in English.
On Tuesday, Nov. 19, Erro will close for the last time. He had a clearance sale going on. I bought an armload of National Geographic specials on science and archeology.
There are few nearby places to buy the national press, so I'm not sure what I will do. I still like the printed editions, especially on the weekends when there is a lot more to read.
How should a media executive manage the business during a time of disruptive technological change? Alfonso Nieto
attempted to answer that question in his book "Letters to a newspaper
publisher," written in 1987 when newsrooms in Spain were moving from
typewriters to computers. His comments have acute relevance today.
In this letter to a fictitious newspaper publisher, titled "A Shameful Scandal", Alfonso Nieto criticizes media executives who are focused only on the bottom line without paying attention to the quality of the content in their own publications. (The scandal is a defamation lawsuit against a reporter.)
Nieto also emphasizes the importance of hiring journalists with high ethical standards. "This profession is so prominent that it should exclude those of mediocre character who are untrustworthy, resentful, or selfish" (p. 58).
The top executives of the media organization have the responsibility to communicate clearly the editorial standards of the organization, Nieto says. Without that, there is disorder in the newsroom. In the absence of clear direction, each section editor creates their own fiefdom, and "this disorder is the key that opens the door to misinformation and mistakes" (pp. 59-60).
How should a media executive manage the business during a time of disruptive technological change? Alfonso Nieto
attempted to answer that question in his book "Letters to a newspaper
publisher," written in 1987 when newsrooms in Spain were moving from
typewriters to computers. His comments have acute relevance today.
Alfonso Nieto, University of Navarra portrait
In this letter to a fictitious newspaper publisher, which he titled "The dwarf and the giant", Alfonso Nieto criticized media owners, managers, and journalists for failing to take into account the problems and the needs of their readers. Nieto saw the media industry as arrogant, looking down on the public and their viewpoints.
Beyond that, the media viewed their audiences as merely market segments to be lumped into groups based on age, gender, income, occupation, or other attributes that they could monetize.
The arrogance
The media used a language, he believed, that emphasized their superior education and social position rather than trying to create a more intimate connection with their readers. This could very well describe the traditional media today, which have been losing readers and TV viewers because they focus much of their attention on the conflicts among political parties rather than finding solutions.
How should a media executive manage the business during a time of disruptive technological change? Alfonso Nieto attempted to answer that question in his book "Letters to a newspaper publisher," written in 1987 when newsrooms in Spain were moving from typewriters to computers. Nieto was one of the pioneers in the discipline of media economics, and his writings have acute relevance today, when the media world has been disrupted again by digital technology. He was rector of the University of Navarra 1979-1991, where I now teach.
Alfonso Nieto worked as a consultant to media executives in addition to teaching, and in this book he wanted to go public with his advice without violating any confidential information. So he created a fictitious news executive to whom he wrote a series of letters with some down-home advice. He wanted publishers to think not just of their business results and their investors but also of their publication's impact on employees, the audience, and democratic society as a whole.
(It is interesting to note that the Business Roundtable, an organization of business leaders in the U.S., recently advocated a major change in management philosophy in line with Nieto: take into account all stakeholders--employees, customers, suppliers, and community--not just the shareholders.)
Money talks. Put your money where your mouth is. Show me the money.
We have lots of expressions that equate money with crebility and trust. How people get and spend their money is often the most credible expression of what they value and who they are.
We attribute so much value to money and to the way it expresses our true beliefs that historian Yuval Noah Harari declared in his bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind:
"Money is accordingly a system of mutual trust, and not just any system
of mutual trust: money is the most universal and most efficient system
of mutual trust ever devised."
By extension, this belief in money as the best measure of value of everything in modern society -- the loss of a loved one (insurance payouts), the salary of a teacher or a CEO, a barrel of oil -- has led us to trust markets too much.
In fact, many studies have shown that the media marketplace puts great value in misinformation, disinformation, sensationalism, gossip, and entertainment (Pew, Reuters Institute, Science Advances), as measured by revenue and profits generated from advertising. This is how social networks like Facebook and Instagram make their money.
The following text is a translation from the Spanish version of a lecture I gave at the University of La Sabana in Bogotá, Colombia, on Aug. 22.
My lecture, in Spanish, starts at the 6-minute mark of the video.
Journalists today have the opportunity to create the future of the industry. But to do so, we have to change some of our long-held beliefs and attitudes. We have to create new business models (O, those awful words!) and learn to say some words without blushing.
This need to change comes about because of the nature of our profession, which for most is a vocation. As journalists we have to keep our distance from political and business interests to maintain our credibility. Still, as a group we can be arrogant, self-righteous and holier-than-thou (I include myself in this criticism). We tend to view ourselves as high priests of an exclusive profession and bearers of a special ethical standard that few others can live up to. We see ourselves as purer, more objective, less affected by the prejudices of the mere mortals we cover.
That is at least part of the reason we have trouble in the new world of entrepreneurial journalism, where we can start and run our own news operations. If we want to go out on our own, we have to recognize for the first time that journalism is a business and that someone has to pay the bills. All of this involves getting our hands on the first dirty word: money.
1. Money. The very word makes us cringe because we associate it with dirty things like influence peddling, lobbyists, bribery, corruption and other topics of our investigative journalism.
But money is the fuel that drives any journalism organization. Without money, journalists can't be paid a decent salary. They can't buy a house, clothing, food, medicine. Without salaries for talented, experienced people, there is no high-quality journalism.
It is not just journalists who are under attack in the digital world. Scientists have to deal with their own conspiracy theories hatched by the ignorant and malicious.
Online, science competes with fluff and bluff
When science enters the sphere of politics, religion, and business, the battle is on. In the 17th century, Galileo was convicted of heresy by the Catholic Church for teaching that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Charles Darwin was heavily criticized by the Church of England in the 19th century for his theories of evolution. And the teaching of evolution is under attack today in U.S. schools.
The tobacco industry for decades successfully discredited science and scientists whose research linked smoking to cancer. The National Rifle Association has successfully lobbied Congress to prevent the Centers for Disease Control from doing research on firearms injuries and deaths.
And the New Republic recently chronicled how the new leaders of the EPA are discarding established scientific findings on air pollution, which pleases the coal and petroleum industries.
Climate change and vaccines
Today social media are an important battleground for science, although scientists don't always seem to know it. The increasingly popular online video format represents a powerful challenge to science credibility, particularly on the controversial issues of climate change and vaccines, as investigated in a series of studies edited by Bienvenido León (a colleague here at the University of Navarra) and Michael Bourk: "Communicating science and technology through online video: researching a new media phenomenon", (Routledge, New York, 2018, 140 pp.).
For those who could not attend the annual convention of the Spanish Journalism Society (SEP, Sociedad Española de Periodística, in Malaga, Spain, May 24-25, below is a summary of my keynote address. (Here are slides of the English version, presented Sept. 22 at the Creima Conference in Oporto, Portugal.)
The talk focused on two major trends in digital journalism that are taking place in many places around the world. The slides highlight examples of media from France, Holland, Mexico, the U.S., Germany, Peru, England, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil, among others.
Photo by José María Legorburu
1. Publishers are pivoting toward users and away from advertisers and investorsas their main source of financial support. The business model that depended on advertising to support journalism is moribund and nearly dead. The automated buying and selling of advertising is controlled by the duopoly of Google and Facebook, which have more and better data about news publishers' users than the publishers' themselves. Publishers have no way to compete with that dominance of programming and targeting of ads. It's time to burn the ships and not look back.
2. Amid the flood of junk, misinformation, clickbait, and false information, the added value of a news organization will spring from its credibility. News media need to build credibility and trust by interacting more directly with their audiences, listening to their audiences, adopting transparency about their owners and investors, detailing their funding sources and spending practices, and, above all, doing investigative journalism that holds political and business leaders accountable for their actions.
Alfredo Triviño has worked largely behind the scenes on some of the biggest digital media projects for some of the biggest brands in the world. But you might not have heard of him.
Alfredo Triviño: users will own the media, in every sense
He spent seven years in senior management roles at News Corp., ultimately as director of innovation, where he worked on development of a pay model for digital journalism and on long-term editorial and commercial growth strategies. (He is a 1999 graduate of the University of Navarra School of Communication, where I teach.)
He was invited to give the closing keynote address last week to the annual conference of the Spanish Journalism Society (SEP, Sociedad Española de Periodística). He ruminated casually about trends he sees in the worlds of digital journalism and digital commerce, mixing some English terminology into his Spanish presentation. Among the shifts he sees:
A shift from journalism and commerceto journalism vs. commerce. That is, the two will operate in separate worlds. Journalism will depend on the support of user communities rather than advertising. Brands will create their own digital media rather than publishing their messages on TV, radio, and in print.
A shift from paid editorial (subscriptions) to shared ownership. By this Triviño meant that groups of users will form around a topic of shared interest--local news of a community, a social issue, or a shared cultural interest, for example. They will be active participants rather than passive consumers. They will interact with the journalists, suggest topics to editors, share their knowledge, create content, contribute money, and support the mission of the publication because they feel they are part of it and it speaks for them. "This is ours; we own it".
"You have to practice the values of independence and honesty." University of Navarra photo.
An icon of Spanish broadcast journalism, Iñaki Gabilondo, delivered a message last week designed to inspire and challenge 400 students and professors of journalism.
"The future hasn't been written yet:, he told them. "The question, 'What is going to happen?' is irrelevant. What will happen will be determined by what you do, what you don't do, and what you allow to happen."
Gabilondo, 73, was speaking at his alma mater, the School of Communication of the University of Navarra (class of 1963), where he also was a professor for several years. His eloquent baritone voice is well known to Spaniards after decades of presence on the morning radio news program Hoy por Hoy, roughly equivalent to NPR's Morning Edition.
He recently asked Martin Baron, executive editor of the Washington Post, how journalism can survive amid all the problems we face, including the collapse of the economic model, the loss of credibility with the public, and the misinformation, disinformation, and junk published everywhere.
The key, Baron replied, lies in practicing the values at the heart of the profession: editorial independence, credibility, honesty, and commitment to quality. "These are not just romantic ideas," Gabilondo said. "They are the essential elements of journalism. With these values you can move ahead. They are going to last."
These days Gabilondo does a brief commentary on the news via a video blog carried on the website of El País, the country's leading daily newspaper. But he recently did a series of video interviews titled "When I'm not around: The world in 25 years", with leading scientists and technologists around the world. So Gabilondo is more interested in looking forward than in looking back.
In a blog post earlier this year, I wrote about the importance of Credibility as the new currency of journalism, its significance in an era of distrust of the media, and its economic value for high-quality journalism.
A big thank you to Christine Schmidt of Nieman Lab who has just produced a helpful list of news credibility projects. Among other things, it shows how the Knight Foundation is giving help to many of them.
Below is an abbreviated form of Schmidt's list, with a few details on each project.
Trusting News Participants/partners: Mainly local newsrooms, such as
WCPO, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, St. Louis Magazine; also A Plus,
Religion News Service, CALmatters, Discourse Media, USA Today
The Trust Project Participants/partners: News outlets like the Washington
Post, The Economist, the Globe and Mail, Mic, and Zeit Online; tech
companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Bing; Institute for
Nonprofit News
News Integrity Initiative, Based at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Participants/partners: The following groups received grants from the initiative’s first round of funding:
Arizona State University’s News Co/lab, Center for Investigative
Reporting, Center for Media Engagement, EducationNC, Free Press,
Listening Post Collective, Maynard Institute, OpenNews, Public Radio
International, The Coral Project; Internews and the European Journalism
Centre have also received funding
"The new journalism specialties". The graphic shows that 56% of the Spanish journalists surveyed work in media that have community managers, and 30% employ data and traffic analysts. Click to enlarge the graphic.
Where will the jobs be for graduates in journalism and communication? The results of a survey of journalists in Spain give some indication. The urgent demand is for people with digital media skills, but more on that in a minute.
The Press Association of Madrid's (abbreviated to APM in Spanish) 2017 survey was sent to 13,500 professionals, and the overall response rate was a respectable 13%. A little more than a third were working in journalism while another third were working in other professions or were retired or semi-retired. The remaining 30 percent were working in communications, mainly advertising and public relations. (News articles about the survey are here, here, and here in Spanish.
Disconnect in training
The survey results show that the respondents to the survey are not the ones who are filling the new digital media jobs in their newsrooms. For example, 56% of the respondents said their publications had digital community managers--the people responsible for interacting with users in social networks and other channels--while only 13% of the respondents said they were working in those jobs.
An organization I work with that promotes development of independent media in Latin America, SembraMedia.org, recently asked me to make some predictions for 2018.
I really had just one: Credibility will be the new currency of journalism in 2018 and the years to come.
But to explain, here are that prediction's corollaries:
1. Independent media--those based on serving the public rather than turning a profit---will grow in importance through revealing corruption and holding authorities accountable. There are many examples. In the U.S., organizations such as ProPublica and Texas Tribune; in Spain, eldiario.es; in Peru, OjoPúblico; in Colombia, Connectas and La Silla Vacía; in Mexico, Aristegui Noticias and Animal Político; in Argentina, Chequeado; and hundreds of others around the world.
2. These independent media that serve the public first rather than political or economic interests will gain credibility by challenging the powers that be. That credibility will have economic value that will be monetized through support from NGOs, foundations, consumers, wealthy donors, and service-oriented organizations.
3. Journalism will continue its transformation from a business to a public service, and traditional media that view journalism as a business will accelerate their own decline. The traditional media's focus on maintaining profit margins will cause them to continue gutting their staff, their products and their services. They will have neither the will nor the means to make the needed investments in personnel and technology to transition to the world of multimedia, interactive, multiplatform, interactive journalism. (There are a handful of exceptions.)
Forget about the big numbers of total page views per month or unique users per month.
Fans are engaged and willing to give their time and money.
Those numbers are misleading and meaningless. They had meaning only in the days when the media business depended on mass media, massive audiences, and products aimed at the masses.
That was when the news media depended on advertising.
Today the business of media is all about touching potential customers with personalized, customized messages. It's about identifying the small number of people who are truly fans of your publication or the stars on your team. It's about strengthening the emotional attachment people have to your brand and its mission.
How the big numbers mislead us
In their very successful campaign to reach 1 million paid subscriptions for their digital-only edition, the Washington Post learned that the users most likely to subscribe came to their site three times a month.
Recently I was invited to give a lecture at the University of Malaga--"The audiences are in charge: Are publishers listening?" The audience had students in their doctoral, master's and bachelor's programs, as well as a number of faculty.
Below is a summary of the presentation.
1. The marriage of convenience between advertising and journalism is over. For proof, look no further than the graphic below, which shows that newspapers in Spain have lost more than 500 million euros in ad revenue since 2009, and that includes the revenue they get from digital. (The U.S. is very similar.)
In the future, news media will need to develop a deep relationship with their users. The important thing will be not the quantity of eyeballs reached, as measured by page views and unique users, but the quality of the relationship with the users.
Over the past several years, I have written a number of blog posts about how journalists can get involved in sales and marketing without violating their ethical standards or damaging the credibility of their publication. Here are a few of them.
When I was going through the transition from editor of a business publication to the role of publisher, I dreaded sales calls with clients.
"It meant I had to ask clients for money, which was a new and uncomfortable experience. The hilarious irony of this is that, as a reporter and editor, it was my job to ask people much tougher, more-intrusive questions, and I did it with no problem -- grieving parents about the death of their child, a political candidate about his sexual escapades, a business executive about her salary.
How tough could it be for a former reporter to ask an advertiser for money?
Robert Picard speaking to class at University of Navarra.
Robert G. Picard is one of the founding fathers of the academic discipline known as media economics. The field has attracted more attention lately as news outlets, ravaged by digital competitors, have gutted their reporting staffs and slashed public-service coverage.
Policy makers, media executives, investors, and journalists themselves look to experts like Picard for answers about how to deal with the industry's financial crisis and the diminishing supply of news.
Picard admits that he is unsure of exactly what the future holds for the industry. What he does know is that the people who are running media organizations--TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and even digital outlets--know far too little about their readers, viewers, listeners, and users.
Publishers need to invite these consumers into the processes of creating and distributing content, he said. They need to think about how to create value that will satisfy the needs and solve the problems of their users.
A new study by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) confirms what I have suspected for a long time: when publishers rely on Facebook for distribution, they are making a deal with the devil.
"Reality Check: Making Money with Facebook" was based on a survey of an "expert group" of 150 publishers. On average, Facebook was contributing only 7% of their revenues in spite of the fact that much of the publishers' content was being consumed on that platform.
And Facebook is stingy when it comes to sharing revenue with publishers, compared with Google, Spotify, Twitter, and others. It "seems to share proportionally less revenue with content creators than other platforms do."
Loss of branding power
The WAN-IFRA findings are also troubling because studies by Pew Research (see paragraph 4 of the study) and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (see p. 16 of the study) have shown that users think Facebook or Twitter produced news stories that were actually produced by a news organization. In other words, news organizations are losing their brand identities in social media.
If news organizations are going to have a chance of survival in the new digital economy, they will need to rely on the power of their brands as trusted sources to persuade people to pay for their content.
As a professor, I often wonder what effect my class presentations are having on the minds of my students. Honestly, is it really possible for any human being to pay attention completely to a class for 45 minutes? Or does the mind wander?
While I am explaining the theory of market externalities, every media company in the world is fighting for the attention of those students. These companies are desperate to attract eyeballs for their content and their advertisers' messages.
They have developedever more powerful tools to distract people from what they are doing and look at their smartphones. They use pings, vibrations, badges, flashing lights, lock-screen messages, and who knows what else.
What human being could pay attention to me when they receive a notification on their smartphone that their ex has commented on their new profile photo? Or that there is breaking news about the latest silly statements by a president? It's no contest.
I wondered how this affected my students. So I did a simple survey in my Media Economics class at the University of Navarra. I asked the students to keep track of how many notifications they received from all of their apps and news sources during one 45-minute period.
