ideas: on media
Incompetence, not net, kills media
What I’m about to say will probably ensure I never work for a major media company again (and could get me sacked from my current position). But right now I’m so disillusioned with the lot of them it wouldn’t worry me if I never did. (Plus, I’m almost certain nobody reads this stuff.)
The recession is not killing Big Media in this country, as the sales department will tell you. Nor is the internet and digital media to blame, as the prevailing theory goes. Media companies in Australia are struggling to make a buck through a lack of imagination. Through short-sightedness. Through commercial timidity, certainly.
Ultimately, though sheer management incompetence.
The media sector seems to defy the traditional business model of employing executives who know what they’re doing. Media experience, certainly experience in the business of journalism, is never essential (in fact, ignorance is often an advantage). They are bean counters, largely; cost-cutters, the ruthless leaders of the razor gangs. But you can only cut so much. Recent history is littered with the failed management wrecks of media executives. If there’s a more bungling, inept group of managers in business circles I’d be curious to know which ones.
As a shareholder of the public media companies I’d be calling for their heads. I’d be voting against their inflated, undeserved bonuses and lavish remuneration packages and railing against their reappointments.
And if you think watching your shares plummet to a point of worthlessness is concerning, imagine how journalists must feel. Our future careers are shaped by some of these managers so clearly out of their depth. It’s becoming an utterly depressing thought.
Journalists are quick to ask the question of many failed business leaders: why didn’t you see this coming? Many reporters did, but their bosses did not. They were blind to it, and when they finally woke up had little understanding of how to fix it.
PBL Media isn’t the best example – it got out of the news business long ago (put forward any episode of 60 Minutes as evidence). But, despite being saddled with a newsstand full of magazines in circulation decline and a terrestrial television network fewer people want to watch, its private equity owners put the place deep into debt to fund a purchase well over the odds. Now the knives are out to keep up with the interest repayments. The naivety of the foreign buyers, and for that matter the management that sold them this lemon, is stunning. They are not alone.
News Limited continues to prop up its broadsheet The Australian, about the only place left for serious daily news reporting, with profitable yet declining trashy, campaigning tabloid rags. Its web strategy doesn’t extend much beyond recycling its content and other wire copy on its websites. The company globally is staring down steep profit declines and Rupert Murdoch’s only genuine new media hope in My Space hasn’t yet figured out how to make any real money.
Fairfax? Where do you start on one of the most grossly mismanaged companies on the stock exchange. Successive regimes – think the disastrous Fred Hilmer and David Kirk – have slashed editorial budgets and dumbed-down content as its print classified revenue dries up. Its websites are among the most popular in the country, with the same free-for-all recycling strategy of most news houses, yet can’t support any real investment in journalism with limited advertising revenue. It set up new online mastheads in Perth and Brisbane only to deliver the same recycled tabloid guff that nobody in their right mind would pay for. Meanwhile, CEO Brian McCarthy, having engineered the biggest purge of journalistic talent ever seen, is still sharpening the razor. As one understandably anonymous employee told Crikey of the management restructure last week:
“Fairfax’s long-touted reorganisation is much ado about nothing: mediocrity rewarded. Journos on the editorial floor are incredulous that Fairfax would even bother to put out a statement about the organisational restructure because nothing’s changed. No one in management lost their jobs despite our share price plummeting to record levels. Under-performers like Whish-Wilson, Churchill and Matthews keep their jobs. It is obvious that the prerequisite for management survival in the new Rural Press (most people realise it is ‘Fairfax’ in name only these days) is slavish adherence to McCarthy’s cost cutting mantra.”
‘New’ media?
Let’s frame the debate, because few of these management hacks have even managed to do this. Newspapers and magazines don’t need to be saved. When the time is right the life support system can be switched off; we’ll remember them fondly, like the telegraph system and black and white television, and then move on. It is journalism that must be preserved somehow, the business model that allows large groups of reporters the time and resources to go about reporting the news. I’ve written about the importance of this previously.
Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time magazine, gets it. He neatly summed up the flawed thinking in a recent Time piece:
“This is not a business model that makes sense. Perhaps it appeared to when web advertising was booming and every half-sentient publisher could pretend to be among the clan who ‘got it’ by chanting the mantra that the ad-supported web was ‘the future’. But when web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of 2008, free felt like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings.”
And economic recession has exposed this. Media management is running around screaming about how nobody wants to spend any money on advertising. Yet the thought of inverting the business model – actually charging for your content to lessen the exposure to economic markets – hasn’t quite occurred to them. There are more consumers of news content than ever before. They’re just reading it in a different form. Primarily on the internet, where entire newspapers from all around the world are freely accessible. The argument that in the future we can support large-scale reporting through online display advertising alone has been lost. It’s time consumers paid up.
Big media in this country baulks at charging for its online content because, they assert, readers will go elsewhere. It exposes the clear belief in management: that their content isn’t worth paying for. A quick thumb through any of the daily tabloids around the country and it’s hard to argue. It’s an insult to readers, an insult to hard-working journalists, and will ultimately spell the death of mass media around the world.
Murdoch actually got this right in America. Despite talking up the prospect of pulling down the pay wall on the Wall Street Journal website, he back-flipped and kept charging for some content. Online subscriptions are increasing. The paper produces valuable stories and people pay to read them. It really can be that simple. The New York Times, meanwhile, blinked first and dumped its paid model and now seems locked into giving away its outstanding content for free.
Nobody in Australia is blinking. As a consumer, it’s the best of all worlds. But how long can it last?
I’d pay for an online subscription to The Australian. I’d set up an iTunes-style account (as Isaacson suggests in how to make the revenue model work) to read articles from The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. I’m prepared to pay for original, in-depth news reporting and compelling profiles and analysis. A lot of people would, I’d suggest. Enough so when the printing presses are finally closed these companies can support the investigative journalism, albeit probably in an entirely different form on an entirely different scale, any democracy so desperately needs.
Because as a journalist, I question who will employ me in the future. I question who really cares about journalism; who will allow me the opportunity to write about some of the issues that matter. Seriously, I’m asking. Who? I question who will be around in five years, ten years, to do it. I question whether I could ever keep my mouth shut should my future bosses continue their narrow-minded, fatalistic attitude to media in the 21st century. The death of their companies and mainstream media as we know it will be on their watch and they will be entirely to blame.
Needless to say, my resume is available on request. I won’t hold my breath.
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Tags: broadcast news, channel 9, fairfax, new media, news limited, newspapers, pbl media, tabloid journalism, television Discussion
28 comments for “Incompetence, not net, kills media”
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i agree. the analogy for me (because it’s more my sector than media is) is the music ‘industry’.
the energy and resources that are spent on resisting the switch to digital formats is seriously wasted. a lack of imagination + an unhealthy obsession with physical instore product = incompetence at a similar level to what you have described.
the reality is, at this juncture digital music (including bootlegs, leaks and bittorrents believe it or not) assist sales figures, even perhaps boost them. sueing piratebay or youtube just makes people angry, and lessens the probability that they’ll buy stuff legitimately.
like the ‘traditional’ media you speak of, ‘traditional’ musical formats will die a natural death anyway. shit happens. it is not in our interests as either producers or consumers to either expedite or attempt to hold up this process.
‘free’ music, filesharing and P2P is only a threat to commercial music if the companies piss us off. otherwise, they will live side by side and eventually settle into completely different niches, and live happily ever after.
[...] Writing in his blog, Importance of Ideas, Jason Whittaker says: “The recession is not killing Big Media in this country, as the sales department will tell you. Nor is the internet and digital media to blame, as the prevailing theory goes. Media companies in Australia are struggling to make a buck through a lack of imagination. Through short-sightedness. Through commercial timidity, certainly. Ultimately, though sheer management incompetence.” [...]
Extremely well put, Jason.
I suppose the only question I’d ask though is whether the newspaper managements of this country are any worse than elsewhere?
Obviously in News Ltd, we’ve the same parent company that dominates the UK and has a major presence in the US.
But in America, other papers are already closing.
And in the UK, we’ve got Trinity Mirror which is in chronic trouble, the morally bankrupt Express Group which gave up on journalism long ago (Google the words Express and Dunblane for their latest outrage), and the Guardian group which despite its online achievements, this month axed 100 journalist jobs.
It’s not much comfort, but I don’t think the quality of management is actually any worse than that here.
Cheers,
Tim Burrowes – Mumbrella
Absolutely no difference, Tim. But I can’t pick on everyone.
It’s a good point though. Australian companies will only move when they see it work overseas, probably. So we will wait for their lead…
Its a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Murdoch trivialised news and made a fortune doing it. But the air heads who want to read about princess di or kylies tit dont make for a very dedicated audience. Murdoch knew that he could sell them opinion because they were not a deep thinking lot but by doing that he white anted his base. People who think have given up on being told what to think. They get their news from a mix of websites and TV. Journalist should be worried because for too long they have been treating us like mushrooms. Expose the stories that the editors bury, create a website called buried by the editor or something like that. Tell us the real other side of a story rather than what big business or the government want us to know. But your right, its a quality thing and you journos have very little of it at all.
I like the argument, but wonder how far it can be taken. Can the subcription model be applied widely or only to a few select areas?
I pay for Crikey, but would not pay for a whole version of The Australian. I would pay for some of the Fairfax stable, or for Geoffrey Barker … but not for the Age or the AFR…
A subscription model would be the most cost effective means of online media distribution, but I think such a scheme would rely on a few of the following things:
1) Low cost, flat rate subscription model. No tiers of service, no elite gold standard access, none of that. One price, which is reasonable and fair, and allows full access to articles back to the last few years. Old issues may have an additional cost associated.
2) Lose the ads all together. People are already paying for the product, don’t make them also pay with screen real-estate and wasted time. As mentioned, online advertising is in decline, so cut the ads and lose the associated advertorial screening overhead (there goes another management job…)
3) Good product and reader loyalty. It’s easy if you’ve already got a dedicated reading base, if not then you’ve got a serious marketing job on your hands and may need to overhaul the content you provide.
4) A lack of low cost competition, or some differentiating factor that adds perceived value to your site/service. Perhaps you market the hell out of the fact you have no ads on your service. Perhaps you provide a free reader client for computers and phones. Perhaps you engage in full depth media coverage by linking to cross-media services and providing relevant links and references in the articles (literary journal style – make those journos earn their keep ;D). Either way, you need the reader to feel that by paying for your service, they’re getting a better deal than going to a free site.
Mr. Whittaker, you may soon find yourself out of a position with one of these media giants, but good riddance. You may find yourself uniquely situated to found a truly internet-based news and current affairs service that lets you maintain that journalistic integrity.
This is a great piece, Jason.
But hasn’t the horse already bolted on the pay-for-content front? If the Fin couldn’t make it work, it’s hard to see the more general interest papers managing it. I’d like to think people would be prepared to pay for what we do, but the evidence isn’t really there. (The Wall St Journal is in a different category from most media outlets, I think.)
Maybe there is some innovative way of bundling media subscriptions with other online services that people ARE prepared to pay for?
As you say, we need to find a solution to this, not just to protect our own incomes, but to safeguard democracy. It’s very sad to watch the Fairfax papers destroying their brands with their lowest common denominator approach to online content.
[...] Jason Whittaker has blogged on this and clearly, he’s got a career death wish: [...]
I agree that this is a well constructed piece but I wonder, why is no blame being cast on the consumers of media? Perhaps if the audience, not the shareholders, took a stand against the executives turning journalism into the bile produced on 60 minutes, we could return some integrity to the media. Sure, decent choices are disappearing, but they are not yet completely gone – they just need a little TLC.
We could switch off, we could chose to click elsewhere, we could be wiser in spending our disposable incomes.
Interesting to see this getting discussed across the Tasman, see here-http://www.nbr.co.nz/opinion/david-cohen/the-death-newspapers-contd
(THe writer seems to disagree with Jason here and there
)
“It is journalism that must be preserved somehow, the business model that allows large groups of reporters the time and resources to go about reporting the news.”
Why do you blame the “business model” for the failure of journalism? Or am I just naïve in thinking that the problem is at the coal face of journalism?
What is quality journalism? My immediate instinct is to think oxymoron. This is lazy. Journalism or the idea of journalism, which is taken to mean reporting of the facts independent of interpretation and/or ideology [Bring back ideology!], has eclipsed the idea of intellectual engagement/debate in society. We journalize instead of think and engage with the world. Does anyone think it odd that expert panels on TV, radio, etc, are, more often than not dominated by media personalities/workers. Such journalists always know and speak about what is happening today and know how they feel or have reacted to it. To think critically about this issue is not in their brief. But it seems, it is in no one’s brief. To talk about today by bringing in yesterday as a context is to bore people with old news!
Media personalities are divided into opinion makers/ reporters of the facts: the latter are real journalists and the former are what help sell newspapers. This is in accordance with the old worldview of journalism: The new version is simple: we do not need opinion makers anymore because there is nothing to sell. It’s all free on the internet. Opinion makers by the way only cook the raw news for the reader in a way that suits the digestive sensibilities of the reader. We have I believe reached a critical mass in understanding media: People no longer need others to read newspapers for them nor do they need someone to pre-digest their information. The internet provides through blogs, etc enough free opinions to kill a self-conscious teenager.
So the obvious conclusion would be that we should only have “real journalism”. If I believed in Santa Claus then I might end there but unfortunately I have grown up since watching the Press Club Gang. If “real journalism” means to report the facts in an objective manner then there is no such thing. The word fact already tells us this. Fact comes from the Latin word facere which means to make or do. A fact is not something independent of the purveyor or compiler.
This is why I’ve provided a heuristic of what I think is quality journalism.
1. You cannot report ‘just the facts’. There is no such thing. Don’t kid yourself. Even if you report exactly what someone said you must recognize that you are the one choosing which quote to pass on to the reader…
2. Thinking through the consequences: I will isolate Michelle Grattan. She is a incredibly uninteresting writer and thinker which makes her a great political journalist! She reports on some events in parliament and then muses on possibilities that might arise.
3. The motives behind decisions: What has made X do Y? Yes that right, human beings are not pure as the driven snow; they have motivations that conflict and accord. There can be more than one motive for any one action. E.g. Is Labor’s sole motive for the stimulus package to save the economy, or does it dovetail with the purchasing of votes…
4. I’m sorry Ms. Journalist, but I don’t trust you. When you report that 186% of thieves are new migrants, I want to know that the research is produced by the National Front. I want to know who conducted the research. Don’t just quote statistics. Tell us who they are.
5. As an addendum. Try to give an indication as to the quality of the research design. Jeff asked Fred what he thought and he said “Yeah I reckon”. = According to a recent survey 100% of poll responses backed the government’s decision to reduce the levy… Or “Do you hate left wing faggot, muff-muncher lefties?” The survey found the majority of those surveyed were conservative.
6. This is a little ephemeral: Intelligent criticism/ opinion. The business papers are filled with this. Why is it that in economics of all the pseudo-scientific fields, should generate quality opinion and engagement. They actually provide reasons for and against a particular standpoint. Why does economics seem to have a monopoly on this (sorry, except for sports writer’s of course)?
7. The old made new, again and again and again… DO NOT Add new spin on an old (popular) story by adding new spin -“The bushfires were caused by the flood”- or the ever trusty new subjective viewpoint -“Chef in Paris who has nothing to do with bushfires feels sorry for victims when told of the event”. I’m getting tired of finding out about how everyone else feels about the bushfires: I can’t feel anymore, my limbic system is all out of serotonin. I’m not allowed to feel or react to events because everyone else’s feeling are on the telly bombarding me with the correct emotions. [I’ve always secretly believed that A Current Affair is designed, as a corrective, to modify the behaviour of the severely autistic, that is, those who don’t know what the correct reaction to social situations…]
Do we really need a “business model to achieve this?
Fuck the corporate media. They were parasites in the time of scarcity and now in the time of abundance (in terms of content) we the people will no longer tolerate them interfering in the service of distributing information. We will get our state, national and global news from public broadcasters (paid for with our taxes) and local news from citizen journalists and local bloggers. Advertising is dead. There is no new business model and as a result commercial media will die. Good riddance.
I picked through this from the NBR. What you’re talking about here Jason is really interesting.
The issue here is – the internet is rapidly changing the way we value things. Look at open source software like LINUX. That model of free software has spawned $30 billion of related business, and all the contributions were free.
We are prepared to pay for music for example, because we can listen to it again. (But out of how many people that consumer music online actually pay for it?) We are prepared to pay for a Newspaper, because we understand it’s printed on something, its a physical object. We don’t want to buy content online because its always been free, its of hard to stuff the genie back in the bottle when the bottle has been smashed, look at the music industry.
It’s the business model that has to change. The business model of how you as a professional writer is enabled to write and discuss current events. See everyone can do it now, so why should I pay for you, when there are thousands of people contributing all the time to an online dialogue. It’s time you Jason, figured a way to charge for your services that isn’t dependent on an industrial business model.
Everything is open source now, everyone is contributing. It’s difficult to formulate ideas for a new paradigm, but that is what we have now. I’m gradually getting my head around Twitter!
You wouldn’t be my favourite journalist if you didn’t tell it like it is.
Excellent blog post, as usual.
I stopped buying the SMH, for a while, when Fairfax sacked Mike Carlton. For a long time, he was my starting point for a Saturday morning read.
I tried the Oz for a while. I cannot agree that it bears any resemblance to “quality” journalism. I might read it if I was paid to do so. But probably not.
At this point I paid for a subscription to Crikey to give me another source of news and opinion. I will probably renew next year.
I began buying the SMH again, because I like something to read at lunch time and I don’t like lugging a laptop to a restaurant or cafe. I agree it has gone downhill.
One suggestion to the broadsheets: If they think extreme, outrageously opinionated columnists sell newspapers, how about balancing the current crop of right wing ratbags with a few left wing loonies? Too many important ideas never get an airing in any of our daily newspapers.
Hi Jason,
I enjoy your blog, and you raise some interesting points for debate here in this particular post.
I would argue that thoughts of inverting the model have very much occurred to many people in the media industry, from journos to executives and everyone else in between.
Whether or not the management of the media in this country is incompetent is neither here nor there, the competency of “managers” and “management practice” across the globe is under question in the banking, finance, insurance and auto industries just to name a few – particularly in the USA and Europe.
There’s a pretty strong argument that “employing executives who know what they’re doing” hasn’t been happening in all those industries listed above.
As to who really cares about journalism, fundamental market forces will provide the answer to that.
There is an excess of supply of “content” of all types (not to be confused with quality journalism) and the costs of creation and consumption of all that content are low. It’s the commercial models that will determine what types of content are produced and how they are distributed. No matter how many “free” tools are available to anyone these days to create, publish, share or whatever – those tools are “paid” for in the sense that the folks that passionately dedicate time to them make their livings elsewhere. Whether the model is taxation based, advertiser-funded or otherwise, in the end, *someone always pays somewhere* – it has to be that way or the free stuff goes away.
Maybe the pendulum will swing too far and we won’t know what we had until it’s gone, but that’s what “markets” do – they get it “wrong” before they get it “right” again – and that’s debatable from a social perspective til the cows come home! This argument is every bit about economics, finance and management practice as it is about journalism, consumers and choice.
I look forward to continuing to enjoy your blog!
*Disclaimer: I am an employee of News Ltd but the comments I make here are entirely my own personal observations and do not in anyway represent the views of my employer.
Jason,
you say: “The media sector seems to defy the traditional business model of employing executives who know what they’re doing. Media experience, certainly experience in the business of journalism, is never essential (in fact, ignorance is often an advantage).”
But the reverse is sometimes true. Yake Michael Gill and Glenn Burge at the Australian Financial Review. They persist with an online subscription model which has failed repeatedly to attract a paying audience. They have tried to expand by purchasing magazine titles here anmd in Asia only to pay too much for dud mastheads that soon go bust and were never worth a cent anyway.
And yet somehow, both are now the longest serving executives in Fairfax – Gill as head of FBM and Burge as editor of the Fin. Two less successful journalists-turned-businessmen you would not find… except for maybe John B Fairfax these past 2 years!
trashy tabloid rag doesn’t begin to describe the news-limited dross dressed as a ‘news’paper that unfortunately dominates the australian major cities…
in our major city sydney…the fact that the local media is dominated by one simplistic , jingoistic low-brow tabloid rag ..one wonders serves no -other purpose than shamelessly serve its own commercial interests and prop up and be the marketing arm of its love-child ..a struggling local provincial ‘footy code’…
sydney ‘global’ city…my a*se..
Jason it seems to me that you’re writing for a sense of martyrdom.
If you want to earn a dollar as a journalist you need to come to terms that the consumer is the one in control.
We can act as righteous as we want about “quality journalism” but at the end of the day sensationalism sells papers. And why does it sell papers? Because deep down we are all warped individuals thriving on human tragedy. And unfortunately, there is a direct correlation between paper selling and making money as a journalist.
The Internet has become a great platform to publish (credibility issues aside) but you are never free of constraints if you want to earn money doing it. Charge subscription on your blogs, have advertiser links or be commissioned and there is once again that inherent need to please the reader or advertisers. And the other part of the internet… why pay for something you can get for free? In most instances, people will source a free blog first or look for the article recycled on the Internet.
While your integrity sounds great in theory buddy, applying it in practice might just do yourself out of a job – brings a whole meaning to starving artist.
It seems the US is taking the situation with its newspapers in particular quite seriously…
Quote from Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.
“This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat,” said Senator Benjamin Cardin.
A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.
Cardin’s Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.
Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.
Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible.
Full story:
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE52N67F20090324
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/daniel_hannan/blog/2009/03/25/my_speech_to_gordon_brown_goes_viral
Jason, have you noticed that aside from the shouting, you don’t seem to have indicated any real alternative.
One possibility, of course, is that social media, blogs, web-based news and so on is not actually a threat to good journalism?
I quote Kate Jennings, Quarterly Essay 32, page 7:
“Communities on the web are, by and large, disastrously narcissistic,
eye-crossingly moronic, and don’t give a tinker’s damn about piracy or plagiarism or fact-based editing. On these sites, truth is extremely relative.
“Qualms about this vast, ever-growing mosh-pit of noxious mediocrity are usually shrugged off by web true-believers……it’s impossible for
cream to rise when communication channels are clogged with half-baked opinions, illiterate rants and skateboarding dogs.”
[...] doesn’t really ‘get it’, and I made a lot of noise about this recently. I have also written in the past about the fight not to save newspapers or [...]
there isn’t any decent engaging critical mainstream media in australia that is well rounded and balanced any more – zip, zero, none….
Fairfax is f*d by its management; abc and sbs are pretty much dumbed down (the former after being constantly defunded); and the australian – don’t get me started on that climate-change denying, racism and war-pushing, vehicle for neo-liberal think tank spin….
the rest is commercial pap, talkback rant or tabloid sensationalism…
[...] bleated about this before: on why blogging is merely new-age op-ed, and on the lack of vision and courage by traditional media owners in preparing for an inevitable digital-only future. It’s so fundamental to the ongoing debate [...]
[...] pays #2 I keep going back to a piece Jason Whittaker wrote in March. He argues that the hope that ad revenue will support online news has been dashed [...]
[...] Incompetence, not net, kills media [...]