Looking ahead: Strategies for 2010

According to SFN's Publishing to Targeted Audiences report, the SMART Publishing strategy requires publishers to understand their audiences better by conducting more reader research, and to tap into the infinite consumer databases available to them in order to get a detailed picture of media habits, consumer spending and other valuable indicators that will help bolster the newspaper company's relevance to audiences and advertisers.

Download the executive summary here:
Publishing to Targeted Audiences.pdf

2. The power of print. As platforms on which to consume news proliferate, newspapers continue to delight, inform and enlighten billions of people around the world every day. Newspapers possess unique characteristics that are desirable for the ages: they are tactile, portable and packed with information to enhance the reader's quality of life.

As case studies and data detailed in SFN's Power of Print report show, print newspapers in   some parts of the world are seeing only growth, while in other, more developed markets, the power of print is growing in a different way, as publishers care out spaces in niche markets and better tailor print to the needs of their communities. Around the world, newspapers that value and strengthen printed products in the most appropriate ways to serve their specific audiences and locales are seeing success, brought about by continued dedication to newspapers' goals: to inform and delight.

Download the executive summary here:
The Power of Print.pdf

3. Mobile. There is no question that mobile, although currently a small slice of the digital pie, will increasingly be a key platform audiences turn to, and newspapers must be there to meet them.

Mobile usage on a global scale is soaring, with some markets reaching saturation. In 2004, there were 1.74 billion mobile subscribers worldwide. That number is expected to reach 3.9 billion by the end of 2009 - just over a week away - and 4.9 billion in 2012, according to Portio Research, which provided data to SFN's Winning Mobile Strategies report.

Monetization strategies for mobile are plentiful, ranging from advertising, to micropayments to barcoding. And although each market has its own variables, they all have one thing in common: each day, the number of people who cannot live without their mobile goes up. This means newspapers not only have more opportunities to reach audiences, but also to engage them and understand them like never before.

Mobile phone applications are also building up speed in late 2009, and will be an important space in 2010. Just this month, the Daily Mail & General Trust announced its intention to be "the leading mobile publisher of applications in Europe," and will launch at least 15 new ad-supported Apple iPhone applications over the next six months. And as of last week, the Guardian iPhone app, which charges £2.39 for the download, was listed as No. 2 on the top news apps for the iPhone, earning about £20,000 in its first 24 hours.

Download the executive summary here:
Winning Mobile Strategies.pdf

4. Outsourcing. As economic challenges escalate, many newspaper companies are seeking new ways to reduce costs, create efficiencies and earn new revenues. Newspaper companies have found that outsourcing various company functions can save an estimated 10 percent to 50 percent of in-house costs. And if the outsourcing partnership is well managed, it can produce as good or better results in quality and efficiency than if the functions remain in-house, according to the 2009 World Association of Newspapers' Outsourcing Survey.

A popular theme resounded in the survey and follow-up interviews by the SFN team: Newspapers must focus on their core competencies of advertising and editorial in-house, and many of the rest of the company functions can be outsourced cost-effectively if these situations are managed well. The least likely department to be outsourced is editorial, with 52.5 percent of respondents saying they had no plans to outsource editorial functions - the same as when the study was conducted in 2005.

However, ancillary advertising and editorial functions ripe for outsourcing and offshoring are typically administratively and technically focused, such as ad production and call centres for ad departments, page makeup, sub-editing, listings compilation and online forum moderation.

Download the executive summary here:
Outsourcing Revisited.pdf

5. Relationship building with advertising agencies. As advertising budgets shift away from newspapers and into digital media in many parts of the world, agencies are changing their organisational structures, strategies and objectives. The interdependency of the agency's role in the ad creation and placement business and the newspaper's role in the ad delivery business sometimes creates friction, differences of opinion and even inspires agencies and newspapers to jockey for dominant position.

Among the thousands of newspapers worldwide, each depends on agencies for a certain percentage of ad revenues. In the United Kingdom, for example, national newspapers receive about 80 percent of non-classified advertising revenues from ad agency clients, while regional newspapers receive just 20 percent. In the United States, meanwhile, that ratio is 90 percent to about 10 percent, according to SFN's Building Relationships with Advertising Agencies.

Download the executive summary here:
Building Relationships with Advertising Agencies.pdf 

6. New technologies. Technologies power newspaper companies, from the development and management of journalistic stories, to advertising department workflows and billings, to the pre-press, press and distribution process. Technologies also hold promise for automation, cost reduction, quality enhancement, improved communication, better view of the customer and money-making capabilities across the value chain.

New technologies important to the future, according to SFN's Publishers Guide to New Technologies report, include:

• Editorial content management systems that make cross-media publishing easier
• Advertising department technologies that integrate account management, advertising production and accounting, and make possible self-service advertising online
• Blogging, social networking, digital sharing, video and other multimedia technologies
• The monetization of newspaper archives
• Mobile phone content and monetization technologies and strategies
• Pre-press technologies, such as computer-to-plate (CTP), which creates efficiencies and greater quality in page production
• Press automation technologies, including robot-powered automated plate loading,
which more than doubles the speed of newspaper plate swaps from manual loading
• Digital inkjet printing, which in the future will enable the delivery of more targeted

Noticeably absent in this list is e-readers. In 2009, e-readers didn't take over the world, as some expected. However, just days ago Sony Corp. announced it will begin to offer exclusive News Corp. content on its Sony Reader device, and yesterday it announce 19 new newspapers and periodical partners, including U.S. publisher Tribune Co. titles the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Download the executive summary here:
A Publishers Guide to New Technologies.pdf

7. Going social. Over the past year, Twitter has shot to the top of the list as a major platform on which to break news, and journalists everywhere use the micro-blogging service.

News outlets are also using social networking sites, especially Facebook, to reach out to audiences. With the launch of Facebook Connect, which allows readers to log in to a site through their Facebook accounts, next year might be a bigger one for news outlets linking up with readers via Facebook. In fact, The Economist this week announced its intention to acquire 750,000 Twitter followers and 500,000 Facebook fans in the next six month. It is also planning to implement Facebook Connect on its Web site, which it hopes will help drive more traffic to its site.

Interaction through technologies like Facebook Connect allows virtually instant access to a comment field, and cuts out the need for users to have to fill out a new form for each news site they visit or want to comment on. The users' privacy settings continue over to third-party sites, but once someone logs into a third-party site through Connect, the site can gain information about the users, such as names, locations, ages, genders and even photos, depending on that user's privacy settings. So, this clears the way for users to instantly access, comment on and drive traffic to news sites, while also giving news sites a chance to better monetize that traffic through targeted advertising.

8. New content models. The content game is changing, and trends that began emerging in 2009 are expected to blossom in 2010. For starters, local and hyperlocal are becoming increasingly valuable, as evidenced by MSNBC's buyout of Everyblock, created by Adrian Holovaty using a grant from the Knight Foundation. Rupert Murdoch is also betting on the value of local, as Dow Jones yesterday announced two of its U.S. newspaper publishers in the Dow Jones Local Media Group will put up a paywall around local content.

"People will pay for convenience and scarce content. But I don't think they will pay for everything. Mobile advertising is very new but is now something that people are starting to take seriously," Richard Titus, chief executive of Associates Northcliffe Digital (DMGT's digital division), told the Financial Times last week.

As budgets were slashed and newspapers began cutting bureaux and being unable to pay for expensive, high quality journalism, a new way of covering important issues and events became more prominent in 2009 - cooperation, content sharing and help from non-profit content providers, such as ProPublica. The end of the year also saw the launch of Associated Reporters Abroad, a Berlin-based journalism agency, which aims to connect editors at English-speaking news outlets to a network of correspondents across Europe.

9. Going green. As the global economic recession climbed to the top of the priorities list, the issue of becoming more eco-friendly was pushed to the back burner. But in 2010, newspapers will have the opportunity to see that the two go hand-in-hand, making for healthier budgets, happier audiences and a cleaner environment in which to read our newspapers.

News outlets are covering environmental issues and helping readers better relate. In June, for example, Northcliffe Media announced they would introduce a new environment section. A survey last year also pointed out that green issues are important to readers, who want more specifics about what companies are doing to lessen their impact on the environment.

10. Online content: To pay or not to pay? One of the key questions facing newspaper publishers in 2009 is whether to charge for content, and if so, what content should be free, and what should be behind paywalls?

Helping to inform decisions was information from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which announced that people are willing to pay for online news, according to a recent survey. When asked the question, "If there are no free alternatives, are you willing to pay for an online newspaper?" consumers said they are willing to pay 62 percent of the price of a traditional paper.

"This means there must be a possibility for newspaper companies to develop a proposition for your audience that is economically viable. Of course, if there are still free alternatives, it will be quite hard to do so. But if you have a good proposition, it certainly is possible to get paid for an online proposition," Marieke van der Donk, senior manager of entertainment and media at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Netherlands, told the World Newspaper Congress earlier this month.

When it comes to financial news, the value proposition is even higher. The same survey found that people are willing to pay 98 percent of what they pay for a traditional paper, or 98 cents on the euro or dollar. For sports, the number is 77 percent, she said. "If you have relevant premium content, and it's not available elsewhere, consumers are willing to pay for it. Our research has proven that," she said, adding that hard news is very difficult to charge consumers for.

Leading the charge for paid content was Rupert Murdoch, whose holdings include the Wall Street Journal, which has successfully charged a subscription fee for valuable financial news and information online for years.

Les Hinton, CEO of Dow Jones & Co., told the Congress that charging for online news is a must

When the Internet was in its infancy, "a lot of newspaper people were taken in by the game-changing gospel of the internet age. It was a new dawn, we were told. A new epoch, a new paradigm. And we just didn't get it. Like an over-eager middle-aged dad, desperate to look cool, we ended up dancing obediently to other people's tunes. For a while. You can almost hear the music - an algorithm and blues soundtrack - accompanying the harbingers of the new economy with the new rules of the new age. Their rules. These digital visionaries tell people like me that we just don't understand them. They talk about the wonders of the interconnected world, about the democratization of journalism. The news, they say, is viral now - that we should be grateful. Well, I think all of us need to beware of geeks bearing gifts," Hinton said. "Free costs too much. Good content is valuable. That hasn't changed. It never will."

Throughout 2009, news publishers have been testing how and when to charge for online content, from the efforts by Journalism Online to give newspapers a platform on which to charge, to publishers who decided to consider roping off all or some of their content that they deemed was unique and had value. A sampling includes Variety, Newsday, the Dow Jones Local Media Group, The New York Times and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Considerations that began in 2009 will be enacted in 2010, with the outcome expected to be more paywalls around more content.


2010 Image: FreeImagesLive.co.uk