What really ended EMAP’s golden days?

October 7, 2011 By 6 Comments

There’s an interesting article on the Huffington Post UK site by former EMAP Director Colin Morrison, in which he asks Who Killed Britain’s Best Media Company, and goes on to discuss the inner workings of the leadership of the company at the time, before it was split into a consumer business which was sold to Bauer, and a B2B business which continues the EMAP brand joint-owned by Apax and Guardian Media Group.

It makes for interesting reading – the relationship between Robin Miller and David Arculus for example. By way of context, the ‘glory days’ appear to have been 80s and 90s – basically right up until around the time when I joined, which was after U.S investment went badly wrong, and the initial heavy investment in transferring brands to the digital worlds also had a major stumble.

But I do think he overestimates the brilliance of the leadership versus the problems of a traditional media company faced with the age of digital disruption that has seen the internet, mobile and tablets appear alongside a number of major digital properties which now command the attention economy.

Even now traditional media companies are still struggling and battling to make the transition to the web, whether newspapers, magazines, radio or television, and they’re all still behind where they should be. A lot of that is down to the nature of the organisational structure, and the risk averse tendencies of a middle management who are being pressured from above, and block so much potential from below.

It’s no coincidence that at the time myself and other digitally-addicted colleagues were pushing for ideas like low cost digital launches based around teams of 2 or 3 and a blog-based platform, Mashable was being launched by the then 19-year-old Pete Cashmore (2005). The same year saw Yahoo Answers launch – I suspect that was before I suggested the idea of the Ask An Expert section on MCN, but certainly we beat the likes of Quora by some way. I’d try and check, but it appears Bauer’s sites are experiencing an outage at the moment…

And funnily enough, the best time and definitely the most innovative I experienced was when for a few months a small team of us operated with barely any ‘adult’ supervision. Suddenly we were able to produce a variety of RSS feeds for starters. And initially noone paid much attention to my friend, colleague and talented video specialist Angus Farquhar starting to mess around with Youtube, establishing a channel which became a Partner channel early on, and has now racked up over 88 million views. I’d like to think that was partly down to my own appearances on the daily news show we started, that sadly petered out due to a lack of involvement from anyone else, along with the podcast Angus initiated.

I also took the chance to start playing with social media – we quickly had a Myspace page and Flickr group up and running, to be joined by Facebook and Twitter.

This isn’t to blow our own trumpets – there were lots of other talented digital people across the business, and many of them have gone onto great success since moving to other companies or starting their own businesses.

But the scary fact is that EMAP had websites for titles dating back to 1998, such as the original motorcycleworld.co.uk site, as captured by the Wayback Machine Internet Archive. That was around the same time as Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google. Since then, we’ve had Myspace (2003), Facebook (2004), Youtube (2005), Twitter (2006), the iPhone (2007), the iPad (2010), and Blogger (1999) or WordPress (2003). In addition to Mashable, there’s the likes of Techcrunch, PerezHilton, the Huffington Post itself, Boing Boing going web only, and hundreds of other sites commanding a large amount of content and attention.

And many content companies have changed how they do things, giving rise to the likes of the Demand Media content farm which is built to respond to search and advertising demand. And that’s before we get into the likes of Paper.li, or Flipboard etc.

(I actually remember bringing in the wonderful Andrew Davies from Idio to discuss the idea of personalised digital magazines on-demand to a bemused audience).

Oh, and there’s the whole world of Glam Media, Shiny, B5 and all the other content networks that exist in a myriad of sizes, shapes and forms.

And yet, the traditional organisations, structures and practices still remain. Even when they did try, they put all their eggs in one basket, and then set fire to the basket (e.g. Ditto.net).

As any blogger will tell you, bespoke quality content is incredibly labour-intensive with low margins, and the rise in content marketing is due to the fact it works extremely well for business which have products to sell.

What’s going to hurt even more…

And that’s where the increased pain is going to come. More and more businesses are realising how useful content marketing can be, which is great for me as a consultant in that field, but not good for magazines, which are going to increasingly be cut out of the loop as middlemen unless they can build their own value as arbiters of taste in a cost effective way which includes social signals and added value.

And the areas which do create bigger margins are those around social, data, analysis – all the areas which allow a small team with a lot of technical knowledge and skill to achieve far greater scale for the cost of servers and number crunching. Meanwhile we’re still in the very early days of social media and mobile, and both are still operating in a manner similar to media companies when it comes to generating revenue, which means as they’ve gained respect and interest of the advertising agencies and clients, the pot of money available for the media brands is being thinned out.

Meanwhile small independant blogs and websites are still appearing every single day, powered by the availability of self-publishing and self-promotion, and the simple fact that some of us, despite the knowledge of the economics of the media, just love to write. Hot Mod Media is the catch-all for my own network of sites, and with a total financial outlay of about £500 per year, it’s already reaching over 200,000 uniques annually (Oct 2010-Oct 2011, and that’s going to rise massively with audiences increasing 500% already this year). Most importantly, the only ongoing investment at the moment is my spare time, and that of a small number of volunteers.

So as much as the leadership changes and struggles may make for good reading, and there’s undoubtedly some elements which affected the company as a whole, I wouldn’t say that it’s ultimately what ended the golden days of the big British media company…

Filed Under: Digital Publishing, Magazine Publishing, Media, newspapers, Print Publishing, traditional media, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

All the news that’s fit to Tweet

July 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

Yesterday I wrote about how great journalism should be impartial rather than neutral, and today it’s the related subject of distribution mediums – in this case, what should and shouldn’t be reported on via Twitter.

It was sparked by an article by Matthew Ingram over at GigaOm, who is definitely someone worth reading if you’re interested in journalism and the media. I originally tried to leave a comment on his article ‘Are there some things that shouldn’t be tweeted about‘ but when it vanished into the ether upon submission, I figured it made more sense to blog a full response here.

Matthew’s article was sparked by recent outcry in the media community in Boston, due to a sports reporter tweeting from the funeral of the wife of New England Patrios’ owner Bob Kraft, and also references other notable incidents when people have tweeted about personal experiences, such as sexual assault or the death of their child to try and ask whether Twitter is a suitable medium for these topics.

Twitter and suitable content:

I think that perhaps there are a few different issues being rolled into the one question here, and seperating them out might be helpful:

  • Is it fine to be tweeting on your smartphone during a funeral, for example?
  • Does Twitter differ to reporting on the same event for print or TV?
  • Should it be the media community judging as gatekeepers on what is the right medium?

 

So, the first issue is fairly easy to discuss, as it’s really a question of how an individual reporter is handling themselves at an event – I don’t think many people would necessarily have a complaint about a reporter making notes on paper during the funeral of a prominent public figure, and the comment on Matthew’s article which equates using a smartphone to using a Nintendo DS or playing Angry Birds is pretty disingenuous, as it presumes that the method of reporting is less serious if it’s using technology, rather than a reporter doodling in their notepad. Whether reporting is being done with paper, smartphone, laptop or TV camera, it’s about using the right level of respect and decorum to be able to avoid detracting from event itself – for instance, if proceedings have to stop due to the incessant click-clack of keys being pressed, that would be worthy of critiscism, or if there’s a bank of reporters in the front pew all waving phones around in front of mourners.

Is reporting on Twitter different?

So the mechanics of Twitter are different to those of an article published elsewhere, due to the fact that it’s possible to update in real-time, and the 140 character limit.

The real-time nature of Twitter can be used as an excuse for sloppy spelling and punctuation when you hurry to get a tweet out, but that’s a reflection on the skills and accuracy of the reporter, not the social network itself. If you’re reporting on an event, why would you take less time to craft a tweet than to craft an article headline or your first sentence?

The second critcism is the perception that reporting via Twitter lacks the gravitas of other formats, as if reading ‘Singer Amy Winehouse dead at age 27′ has less impact if it’s not accompanied via a full opinion piece, photos and a byline. That’s quite blatantly a load of old rubbish, as underlined by coverage of the recent tragedy in Oslo, or the Mumbai terrorist attacks on Twitter, for example. If we believe that a well-crafted impactful headline covering an event can stop people in their tracks and perhaps lead them to buying a newspaper when they’ve scanned it on the newstand, why would we believe that a well-crafted impactful tweet would not have the same effect, unless digitising words makes them meaningless?

The last gasps of the media community as gatekeepers?

The process of print publishing with limited space and limitations on who can afford to print or broadcast mass media led to journalists, subs and editors as gatekeepers who made judgements on the right way to present the news in those formats. And that’s completely changed with the availability of formats for news consumption.

As a reader, I can choose print, TV, radio, websites, social networks, podcasts, photo sites, audio microblogs. And that is right which I’m far more empowered to exercise now that I can select from such a range of formats and outlets. Much of my general news information comes from social networks, and without going into the debate over echo chambers and filter failure now, I have yet to see any concrete evidence that has damaged by general news awareness or any serendipity in finding out about events.

However the media community thinks their debate and decision about formats may make any difference to me, I’m not really sure? As digital tools and technology democratise news production and coverage, the odds are that someone somewhere will be covering events and publishing on the format I choose to enjoy, and the decision of my preferred format comes down to my choice, not that of the journalist elite.

So what could be improved in Twitter journalism?

Having said all of that, there is one glaring error which can occur in digital journalism, and which is pronounced in certain cases – consistency. If I follow a reporter for sports updates on scores and transfers, and suddenly it switches to funeral coverage, that can be jarring, as it is when someone switches from general daily updates to discussing the loss of their child or a physical attack.

In the later cases of personal events, that jarring shock and the resulting upset is something that we as readers need to realise is our personal response, and those tweeting shouldn’t feel obliged to hide their thoughts or responses from the network which they may rely on for emotional support (In one of those cases, the local police did have legal reasons for curbing their output, which is understandable).

In the former case of professional journalism, then it’s probably advisable to seperate those reports which are out of context of the general daily output of your account – to allow those who wish to follow to choose without necessarily offending those who would rather not.

But in all cases, readers carry the ultimate decision of what they may or may not find acceptable, and have the choice on social networks to follow or unfollow accounts as they wish – and although stretching the boundaries may carry risks at the moment, the changing opinions of society and readers measured by what they actually do (following, clicking links, rubbernecking at accidents when they drive past), is a good way of seeing what people actually find acceptable, rather than presuming that as the media, we might know readers better than they know themselves. And as much as you may believe society and readers have become more salacious over time, the response to the Huffington Post’s ill-advised Amy Winehouse and small business lessons article is just one example of how readers are more than willing to let you know directly if you’ve overstepped the mark.

Filed Under: journalism, newspapers, Privacy, traditional media, twitter, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

Implications of the News of the World phone hacking…

July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There’s obviously been a lot of in-depth intelligent analysis of the demise of the News of the World due to the phone-hacking outcry. So rather than attempt to add to that, I just wanted to throw three quick thoughts out there:

  • People still read print newspapers? Recent research has claimed around 50% of the UK population no longer read a daily paper, and that number is only growing – the demographic for the News of the World is likely to be one which embraces smartphones as later adopters, but closing the print product now is only likely to have pre-empted what would have happened in the future, and a digital title may or may not have succeeded, but given the content and the transitional chaos of mainstream news online, it’s not assured that a digital version would have been guaranteed to continue.
  • ‘Hacking’ has probably skewed so far to the negative connotations of the word that any positive associations will fade pretty fast, whether that’s the idea of improving an inefficient program, hacking together software for a positive outcome, or lifehacking etc. I’ve overheard several conversations recently from people way outside the computer literate world, all concerned with hacking, and all referencing phone-hacking and recent Lulzsec and Anonymous activities. That’s what the word ‘hacking’ means to most people now.
  • Journalism is likely to go the same way – the negatives get massive press coverage and analysis, whilst the good is rarely commented on. For many years bloggers have aspired to be accepted on the same terms as journalists, while some journalists have attempted to maintain an occupational gap even to this day, without clarifiying much except academic qualifications as a barrier. But now, maybe we’ll all have to put that to one side and become writers, when the stories of journalists using phone-hacking, or pestering people via email, social networks and in person are becoming widely spread online. I’m holding two training sessions as part of a journalism training course this month, and I wonder how, in the UK and U.S at least, the term ‘journalist’ is being perceived – I can only suspect it’s in a similar place as ‘banker’ except not paid as well.

Filed Under: journalism, newspapers Tagged With: , , , , ,

Bloggers suing the Huffington Post – the outcome for UGC?

April 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

You may have seen a few reports about the class-action suit brought against the Huffington Post after it was acquired by AOL for $315 million. It was filed by Jonathan Tasini, who calculated the content created by volunteers should be valued at a third of the sale value, $105 million. There’s been a fair bit of commentary on the case, which seems to hinge on a moral obligation rather than a legal one for the Huffington Post (here, here, and  here), as it concentrates on ‘Unjust Enrichment‘ , and it will probably hinge on whether the payment in exposure etc is a fair trade for the work involved in creating articles.

Personally I have no problem with sites soliciting, accepting and publishing content supplied for free by volunteers who know the terms of the deal upfront in a clear fashion (i.e. no hiding behind 20 pages of legalese that they no longer have rights to their work – spell it out and then link to the legalese terms!)

The argument that many paid writers make is that this devalues their profession, which is a disruption being felt across various specialisms, whether it’s creative, technical or manufacturers competing in a global market. And as someone who writes for at least part of his living, I agree that the rates for writing have dropped, but it’s down to the writer to decide what will benefit them best, and how to differentiate themselves and maximise what they can earn.

But what will the legal case do?

As someone without a legal education, but with an understanding of the legal departments of large media companies, I can’t imagine the legal case will result in any significant financial reward for Tasini.

But what probably will happen is that most publishers will revisit their terms and conditions for user-generated content and tighten them up even further in any possible way to preclude similar actions. So if you want to submit something for a major site, you’ll spend the first few hours electronically signing your rights away – and it might end up limiting any existing possibilities of rewarding UGC as that could end up muddying the waters between just and unjust enrichment. I suspect the legal view will be that to offer any amount of financial reward would be riskier than none at all.

It might also lead to complications for smaller sites – if they’re accepting content without the ability to offer large amounts of proven exposure, do they then end up falling foul of ‘unjust enrichment’? Do sites need to start publishing their monthly user figures to everything who might send in a guest post?

It seems to that rather than furthering the cause of quality writing (which is more affected by the likes of Google’s Panda search update than by hitting out at the HuffPo), this could just end up limiting the outlets which are interested in accepting user content, and that lack of competition makes it even less likely that rates would rise for those willing to pay.

So have you submitted content for free anywhere? And do you feel like you were rewarded with enough exposure/other benefits?

Filed Under: Digital Publishing, journalism, Magazine Publishing, Media, newspapers, user generated content Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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