A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Newspapers

Distribution is king – online and offline

Distribution, Content and NOISE is part two of an excellent piece by newspaper executive and blogger Brad Robertson, Vice President of Advertising for the Des Moines Register. I like what Brad has written for several reasons: he’s a newspaper executive NOT in denial!; his views are well thought out; he’s right to say that distribution is king online and offline; his writing is a wake up call to newsagents – if only the read it.

Like newspapers, newsagents need to invest significantly in attracting online traffic. Hang on, newsagents need to build online businesses first – now there’s a challenge.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Newsagent injunction against newspaper publisher extended by 7 days

Further to my Dec. 18 post about moves by a major newspaper publisher to take away the rights of a newsagent to distribute their product – such rights are the bread and butter of small business newsagents.

In a hearing yesterday I am told the judge in the NSW Industrial Court extended the temporary injunction another week.

It is disappointing but not surprising that newspapers will not publish this story. They’re not transparent when it comes to reporting actions they take, from time to time, against small business newsagents. I am not saying they ought to have no rights to protect their businesses but rather that they demonstrate transparency.

This is a big story – then guts of a small business being ripped apart by one of their biggest suppliers on the even of Christmas and for what, to someone looking from a distance, seem to be dubious reasons.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

The assassination of newspapers, or not

Will Bunch at Attytood reckons:

The American newspaper is being assassinated by “a lone nut.”

He names Craig Newmark of Craigslist as the lone nut. Bunch writes for the Philadelphia Daily News. H’e ignorant and biased. He’s wrong to blame falling newspaper circulation in the US on Newmark and his successful Craigslist free classified ads. Newmark is saving advertisers money, allowing them to use that money elsewhere. Craigslist is, in part, a response to unreasonably high classified advertising fees which are not based on a fair margin. Newspapers have priced themselves out of the market and now, thanks to the Internet, better broadband coverage and excellent mobile devices there are models which suit consumers better. Bunch ends ridiculously with:

In the meantime, I think every journalist who’s a threatened victim of layoffs should be sure to send Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster a holiday card this year, including a family photo, and let them know how we’re doing in 2006. After all, even a “lone nut” should see who his victims are.

Journalists threatened ought to spend their time focusing their skills on new print product which is more suited to the times and to online. Journalists are as important today as yesterday – all that’s changed is the medium.

Gee newsagents face tougher trading today thanks to supermarkets and others selling magazines. Are they to blame? No. It’s competition. We live with it by becoming smarter. This is what journalists need to do rather than moaning about someone providing a useful free service.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Real estate agents to take on News and Fairfax?

The Australian yesterday reported that the Real Estate Institute of Australia is planning to launch a website to collate property sales data and, ultimately, compete with realestate.com.au, domain.com.au and the many others. It’s a move by independent real estate agents to take control back of a key traffic generator for their businesses – online advertising. While the move is likely to be too little too late, it’s the arrogance of a major competitor which caught my eye in the story:

Realestate.com.au chief executive Simon Baker said those price rises were justified because they corresponded with the much higher rises in site traffic and property listings.

Mr Baker said the group was not concerned about the prospect of an industry-led site because it was unlikely REIA would be able to obtain enough capital to adequately fund a new sales portal.

The Australian is published by News Limited which owns 53% of realestate.com.au. Baker is wrong to justify price rises of 10% a year on traffic generated by the site. The Internet is not a place where such old school justification of price rises is accepted. Online shoppers do so because online costs are less. Price rises ought to reflect real price rises experienced by the supplier and not what they think they can get away with.

By allowing online advertising sites to grow unchecked as they have, real estate agents have lost control of traffic to their doors and this makes them vulnerable. If Australia follows the US there will be a move to cut real estate agent commissions through better online functionality. Just as happened with online travel portals taking business form travel agents. Why will I be happy to love, say, $10,000 to a real estate agent when I can use an online ad portal to take care of the main work for less than 10% of that?

To compete with the power of realestate and domain, the agents need to offer new and exclusive functionality. It’s not just about price as the story in The Australian suggests – offering cheaper ads will not work. The agents need to leverage their intellectual property to their advantage.

The disruption faced by real estate agents is similar to that faced by newsagents. Both are old world bricks and mortar businesses made up of independent business people often too busy running their businesses to see the tsunami of online driven disruption which threatens to impact business as they know it. Good on the REIA for acting on this. It’s more than we are seeing from newsagents. However, their reaction will need to be faster and smarter than current reports suggest.

The challenge is that real estate agents and newsagents rely on long term big business partners who are no actively competing against them. This issue is the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about – how dare we speak ill of a supplier competing with us for fear they will go harder. The reality is that News and Fairfax are competing with real estate agents, they are a huge threat to the model real estate agents operate under. Likewise with newsagents. Fairfax and News will do what is right for their share price – meaning that newsagents and real estate agents must do only that which is right for their profitability.

0 likes
Media disruption

UK newsagents seek competition review

The UK National Federation of Retail Newsagents this week made an unexpected formal application to Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for a full review of the newspaper and magazine supply chain. The newspaper and magazine supply model has been subject to OFT consideration over the last two years with OFT positions being advisory. The review sought by newsagents, if granted, could result in changes being imposed on the channel by the OFT.

The distribution of newspapers and magazines in Australia was deregulated by the Federal Government in 1999. No review on the impact of this deregulation has been conducted. Many newsagents contend that deregulation has seen them severely disadvantaged in that new competitors to newsagents get to choose the magazines they stock and only take the top 50 or so titles – leaving newsagents, who have little control over what they stock, to carry more than 2,000 less-popular titles which account for less than 25% of retail sales.

Given the Federal Government’s involvement in driving the deregulation in 1999 I would have thought that a Productivity Commission Inquiry would be an appropriate forum in which to assess the impact on the community, small business newsagents and small publishers of the government policy change.

0 likes
magazines

Is Fairfax about to launch online news dailies in three states?

Crikey published this story today (sourced back to The Australian) – suggesting that Fairfax is about to do in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth what News did earlier this year in Perth with it’s online Perth Now news site. Such a move by Fairfax into capital cities where it does not publish today makes sense, unfortunately for newsagents.

We have been insulated from the print media disruption seen in the US and Europe because of our strong home delivery position. This play by Fairfax and the earlier by News will take the shackles off and speed up disruption.

It all comes down to monetisation. The publishers can see the income stream. Fairfax Editor in Chief of Online Mike van Niekerk said as much in his presentation entitled Cashing in on Digital Success at the Beyond the Printed Word conference I attended in Vienna last month. Fairfax has optimised its sites for financial return. They know what they will make with local editions in these new states.

News will respond to the Fairfax move into these new markets. The more the publishers compete online the less they will focus offline. They’d disagree with this if you ask them but it’s true – you only have to see what has played out overseas to see what will happen here.

0 likes
Media disruption

Reflecting on LeWeb 3 in Paris: blogging, newsagents and our businesses

leweb_4.JPG

LeWeb 3 has come to an end in Paris. It’s been an interesting and worthwhile conference. Here are my headline take-aways in my key areas of interest:

OVERALL
The world is flat.

Borders are not as important as they used to be.

Intellectual property developed in online start-ups could be more valuable to an economy than its natural resources. In Australia we’re not doing enough in this area – we’re too busy worrying about finite resources to understand that better policies can create value out of innovation.

BLOGGING AND BLOGGERS
We are behind in Australia. We need a more visible and robust fifth estate. Bloggers of Australia ought to unite and encourage more people to blog. No one else will talk up blogging if we don’t.

There is a vibrant, vocal and effective fifth estate in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the US. We have not found it yet in Australia. Here in Europe there are more bloggers per capita and they are fierce in blogging. They are using blogging to navigate to a more transparent democracy with more voices heard. In Australia we’re barely started on that journey.

Bloggers are constituency to politicians and garner respect – well during a campaign at least.

Blogging is not for geeks. Well, they do it, but so many others do and on all manner of topics. We’re not hearing these voices in Australia.

NEWSAGENTS AND THE MEDIA
The world as we know it has been disrupted. Our (newsagents) dominant traffic generator, newspapers, are not what they used to be. News is being delivered and consumed anywhere and at anytime. There is a movement to reduce filters, like mainstream media companies, and to provide more direct and diverse access to news and opinion.

Newsagents need to find relevance in this new world and find it fast. We need traffic and from that sustainable revenue.

The Internet is a supply chain game. Newsagencies were created by publishers to be a supply chain game. They need us for the next few years so they can access profits while people transition from over the counter to online access of news and information. My feeling is that there will be a tipping point, for newspapers sooner than later, where our model is no longer viable. We should see that before our suppliers.

FIND IT, 3LOVES AND OUR NEW ONLINE BUSINESSES
I won’t list all take-aways here because it suits me commercially not to.

In this conference on 1,000 delegates I heard about more than 150 Internet start-ups and I didn’t network that much. The start-up world is noisy, companies and countries are scrambling to build IP which will be the natural resource of the next generation. There is some very exciting innovation.

Web 2.0 is about social interaction. Games, virtual worlds and many other traction-gaining innovative online businesses are more about social contact than anything else. Social connection is the game in town.

The customers in control, genuinely in control. If you do not allow this they will not support your business.

Traffic must be two-way including in news and information models.

Free is the price point target if you’re building an online business.

My final take-away was not presented by anyone but it’s one which has grown with me over the last few months and hearing people talk so much about monetization over the last few days it became more important to me:

Our mission is more important than profit.

Our mission is to help individuals and businesses spend less on more effective advertising so that they can pass on the savings to consumers who can in turn use the savings to create a better world.

0 likes
Blogging

LeWeb 3: newspapers in passing

The conference started with a conversation between host Loic LeMeur of Six Apart and Skype’s Founder Niklas Zennström. It was a valuable 20 minutes about Internet businesses. What I’ll comment here about is a question put by LeMeur. He asked whether the newspaper was dead after Zennström said that anything that can become digitised will become digitised. Zennström said no, the newspaper is not dead. LeMeur asked if he read the newspaper. Pause. Sometimes Zennström said. Around me, in the body of the hall, several delegates said they can’t remember the last time they read a printed newspaper. And a few second later it was forgotten as if it were yesterday’s news.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Le Web 3, newsagents and finding a future online

leweb1.JPGTake 1,000 IT people involved in online businesses from around the world – from developers to venture capitalists – and you’re bound to get reality checks on a range of fronts. Le Web 3 brings these people together in formal conference sessions, informalk networking and a fascinating, compelling and intimidating start-up room. I’m here learning for the Find It online classifieds business being rolled out in partnership with newsagents. But there are more take aways than those which relate to Find It. Here is a summary of my key take-aways today.

First up, every second attendee is sitting in the conference hall laptop open and reading and writing during the sessions. More male than female. I’d guess the average age at early 30s.

Newsagents are getting left behind. I know I go on here like a cracked record about this but you onle have to come to a conference like Le Web and see how disconnected we are with the new worl in our bricks and mortar businesses. We must get this to survive.

They are generating content as they go – participating in live and relevant polls which speakers comment on from the stage.

Newsagents have no conection with the world of user generated content.

We’re hearing that user generated content is key. Quality content. A chap from yahoo said driving quality content was the holy grail. But then he said that while there;’s crap at YouTube, that there is some quality makes the site compelling.

The newspapers and magazines we sell in newsagencies deliver, in the main, quality content. There’s some, short term, comfort in that.

There was talk of a big impact of Web 2.0 on middlemen and in particular TV networks. IPTV is about connecting content producers with consumers. The TV stations are the losers in this. Consumers are proving they want content where and when they want. TB networks work against this. In an IPTV world the TV program is replaced by an a la carte menu.

Newsagents are middlemen for the most part. We make money from selling product people can get individually elsewhere. We need our own reasons to exist.

Free is the game in town. Free broadband. Free online software. Free content. Monetisation comes from advertising and other less obvious revenue models.

If you look at the change in newspaper cover prices in Australia over the last ten years compared to the change in advertising rates over the same period and you can see that publishers agree. In real terms, Australian newspapers sold in newsagencies are closer to being free today than ten years ago. Niche titles – foreign language newspapers – price their product as if the content is valuable.

More than this has been covered so far but I’m not about to blog about take-aways which will benefit Find It and my other businesses.

So far Le Web 3 has been exciting, challenging and very enjoyable.

0 likes
Citizen Journalism

Sunday Age Hicks campaign gains traction

The campaign started by the Sunday Age and maintained with solid coverage this week to build support for bringing David Hicks home is gaining traction with readers – a couple of customers mentioned it today, saying they had emailed support to the newspaper as requested. It’s campaigns like this which are important to newspapers. Sure they polarise – but they also show a heart and help drive a story.

0 likes
Newspapers

Newspaper promotions lose money for newsagents

hs-encyc.JPGThe encyclopedia promotion with the Herald Sun of almost two months ago was a huge success. Lack of stock meant we took more than 300 backorders. The backorders finally arrived late last week and it took three and a half hours to sort and label everything. We will make $30.00 gross profit from the sale of these promotional items. The labour cost of sorting the goods was $77.00, counter time in taking and following up the orders $100.00 and follow-up phone time and costs an additional $50.00. We’ll lose close to $200.00.

These promotions are fantastic in that they support the newspaper brand. Newsagents are paid too little for the work involved and newsagent cots escalate out of control when publishers underestimate the success of the promotion. Throw in the customer anger hurled at newsagents who have no choice but to blame the publisher and you begin to wonder about the overall benefit. To my mind it begins and ends with scale out. Publishers need to work harder at getting this right. Newsagents ought to be given a fairer commission by the publisher as well.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

INMA Newspaper Outlook 2007

blog-inma.JPGNewspaper Outlook 2007 in an excellent report by Earl Wilkinson, CEO International Newspaper Marketing Association (INMA). It confronts issues some newspapers have difficulty reporting in their pages (especially Australian newspapers) – the process of transitioning their revenue model from one based purely on print to one based primarily online with some print model. The US$195 report is compelling reading for newsagents as it 75 pages of evidence that the foundations on which newsagencies were created in the 1800s have shifted. As Wilkinson writes:

Unfortunately, the transition will be most painful for the people who are least informed about the over-arching trends in media industry: the editorial community.

I’d replace “editorial community” with “newsagents”. Newsagents don’t feel the change, certainly not to an extent to accept it as real. Not here in Australia yet at least. Newspaper sales are strong. Enough are experiencing growth for newsagents to be confident.

As this report indicates, the future for newspaper publishers is away from paid for copies and the traditional model. Wilkinson says that the “destination is clear”:

Internet-First
Local Journalism
Always On and Interactive
Core Product Smaller
Lower Profit Margins

Wilkinson sees a newspaper outlook in 2007 based on publishers moving more investment from traditional product to online and achieving more profit from online. Newsagents must listen to this message. While I don’t expect them to stump up the US$195 for the INMA report, they must take note that here is a respected executive from publisher circles saying that the game we have played for decades is over, it’s a new world and investment in your business must reflect this.

0 likes
Citizen Journalism

Newspaper home delivery prices: US vs. Australia

I found this announcement from the New York Times from February this year, advising of a home delivery increase to US$8.00 for 7 day home delivery. It was their first increase in ten years. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age are the closest newspapers we have to the Times here. Their seven day home delivery fees are, by my reckoning, 40% less than those for the Times. The Times charges more the further you are from New York. I’m told that delivery charges for a year are US$255.00, making the daily cost 70 cents – between seven and ten times the Australian home delivery fee. There’s some more discussion about the New York Times figures here.

Newsagents in Australia get between 50 cents and 70 cents a week for a seven day home delivery of a newspaper. We’ve had one increase in ten years. We are worse off today in real terms than ten years ago yet wages, fuel and other costs have risen in real terms.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Worker injury risk with heavy newspapers

Further to my post, Overweight newspapers make for unsafe work practices according to OH&S study, two delivery drivers for newspaper publishers have contacted me about their concerns with overweight newspapers. Once has commented at the above entry. I’ve also heard from several newsagents, one of whom told me about a driver who went on sick leave last week with shoulder injuries. The problem with the weight of newspapers is not new. What is new is that there is now a respected report which provides evidence and demands action.

0 likes
Newspapers

Newspaper future?

Thanks to Jeff Jarvis’ BuzzMachine I read this article by Michael Hirschorn writing at The Atlantic. He tells it how it is for newspapers and lays out a future for journalism. It’s good seeing a newspaper publisher give space to his balanced view. Here is someone from the inside acknowledging that newspapers as we know them are fading yet outlining how the future can be bright. Now, how do we get newsagents to engage with this?

0 likes
Newspapers

The masthead ad addiction

Another day, another post-it type ad on the masthead of The Age. What is odd is that not all copies of The Age in Melbourne yesterday had this ad. I wonder if they are targeting certain areas?

age1.JPG

Here’s today’s ad. Three this week. It will take more than 12 steps to break this addiction. I note that a work colleague bought The Age elsewhere and his copy did not have the post-it ad. More geographic targeting?

age2.JPG

I bought this copy at a 7-eleven. As I was leaving I realised there was a free magazine which was not inserted. I went back to the paper stand and hunted around. There it was upside down on the floor. I know that by 7am in newsagencies across Melbourne the Melbourne Magazine will be either well displayed next to the newspaper or already inserted. The 7-eleven counter person asked what the magazine was – thinking I was stealing something.

Publishers need to understand the value newsagents bring to the table through better compliance and service. Newsagents need to be loud and proud of their service levels rather than bowing to publishers all the time.

0 likes
Newsagency challenges

Newspaper publishers poorly represented by their new body

newspaper_works

Newspapers are incredibly profitable enterprises.

Tony Hale, CEO of The Newspaper Works – a coalition of newspaper publishers created earlier this year to talk up newspapers – was speaking earlier today at the Media and Broadcasting Congress in Sydney. In his speech, Hale flippantly and without real context derided respected commentators including Jay Rosen and Michael Porter. An easy target was anyone talking down newspapers. Hale reminded us of Bill Gates’ prediction in the 1990s that newspaper and magazine publishers would close. He relied on Gates being wrong to ‘prove’ that today’s naysayers will also be wrong.

Hale took us through an amazing set of numbers covering circulation, readership and advertising. He left off cover price – I guess because in Australia we have seen below inflation rises. While Hale indicated that circulation growth came primarily from the free commuter dailies, he did not present data to address problem the migration of classifieds online. By not talking about this he ignored the elephant in the room.

Hale will need to lift his game if he is to get advertisers believing that newspapers have as bright a future as he suggests. Making fun of commentators may get some laughs but it will not address the impact of the Internet on the print product. While Australian publishers are dong well with their online models, significant costs in their businesses are tied to print and this will have to be addressed as sales of the print product in its present form decays.

As one who relies on newspapers for traffic and revenue for my businesses and for enjoyment to read, I would prefer Hale to take a smarter and, dare I say, more accurate, approach to talking up the medium – especially when speaking at a conference so focused on new media.

0 likes
Newspapers

Newspapers to become bit players in media shake-up?

Graeme Samuel, Chairman of the ACCC, delivered an interesting speech at the Broadcasting and Media Congress this morning looking at the flurry of changes in media ownership. Much of what he discussed was about distribution. He started talking about how it was (is?) with the newspaper landing on the doorstep but quickly moved to the smorgasbord of options we have today. He is right to observe that the “Internet has turned distribution on its ear”. He said Australia will get a faster broadband service. This will increase the pace of change. Toward the end of the speech, Graeme Samuel asked a question which goes to the heart of newsagent concerns – “How relevant will it be to have two major newspaper publishers?” While he was talking in the context of media regulation and ownership changes, my interest was more one of how much the question sounds like game over for newspapers – certainly in terms of diversity and relevance.

It’s another reason newsagents need to plan today for this world where newspapers are not the habit they are today. Newsagents need to sit at the table with newspaper publishers with this perspective of a dramatically changed world and to have business plans which pursue traffic and margin outside the sale of newspapers (and magazines).

As Samuel told the audience this morning, the ACCC has published a discussion paper which provides guidance as to how future cross-media merger proposals might be assessed.

0 likes
Media disruption

Irish Echo – the worst newspaper

Irish Echo is the worst newspaper according to many newsagents. We lose money on this every week of the year bar one – the week of St Patrick’s Day. While it is supplied on a sale or return basis, Irish Echo takes up real-estate and requires labour – these are costs to newsagencies. Either newsagents need to be paid a handling fee or they are provided much better terms. The current situation disrespects newsagents.

0 likes
Newspapers

Media disruption forecast in 1931

Thanks to Rob Curley, speaking at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna last week, I discovered this quote from William Allen White, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and publisher, in 1931:

“Of course as long as man lives someone will have to fill the herald’s place. Someone will have to do the bellringer’s work. Someone will have to tell the story of the day’s news and the year’s happenings. A reporter is perennial under many names and will persist with humanity. But whether the reporter’s story will be printed in types upon a press, I don’t know. I seriously doubt it. I think most of the machinery now employed in printing the day’s, the week’s, or the month’s doings will be junked by the end of this century and will be as archaic as the bellringer’s bell, or the herald’s trumpet. New methods of communication I think will supercede the old.”

William Allen White, April 21, 1931
in a personal letter to Lyman B. Kellogg

White is right. How we access news and information will change. That it is published will not. This is why the goals of publishers do not match those of their distribution network. We are in different businesses. We must understand that if we, newsagents, are to make our own future. Not today or tomorrow but sometime soon our network will lose its value and, I suspect, be cut loose. We must pursue new customer traffic generating models for the future while ensuring the maximum return from the newspaper generated traffic we enjoy in the meantime.

The best connection I can see with the next generation of news and information distribution is through mobile access recharge. These are transactions of fractional value compared to newspaper sales. Today, we make between 18% and 25% on the sale of a newspaper and 5% on the sale of mobile device recharge. I’d expect the mobile device recharge to fall to 3% within the next year. While recharge generates traffic such customers are not loyal and we cannot therefore rely on them for traffic. So, in reality, mobile recharge is no replacement for newspapers.

Core to our challenge is that our channel was created by publishers. For our entire history we have looked to publishers to lead us by providing new products and partnering with us in their own innovations. This cannot continue given that mobile and other non-print distribution models do not require out network. Hence our need to find our own future.

I’ll have more to say on this at a future time. For now, I wanted to share the prescient quote from William Allen White.

Source: Rob Curley, VP New Products development, Washington Post, Newsweek Interactive.

0 likes
Media disruption

News and Fairfax contemplate sharing logistics and more

On the surface it makes sense, Fairfax and News sharing trucks for newspaper distribution. It would be good if newsagents could unlock similar rationalisation so that they too could drive costs down and thereby achieve a better return. For example, it would be good is the rules of the newspaper distribution system allowed newsagents to include other products in a bag delivered to a doorstep with a newspaper.

Newsagents in some states have just been permitted their first delivery fee increase in years – these fees are set by publishers. Data suggests that in real terms newsagent compensation for each newspaper home delivered is considerably lower today than prior to deregulation. With newspaper cover prices – a key determinant of newsagent revenue – showing less than CPI increases, newsagents scramble to make more than a meager income from the delivery of newspapers. Hence the need to unlock their local distribution network for the delivery of other products at the same time as delivering the newspaper. The lack of return is one reason more newsagents are exiting from home delivery than at any time in the past.

It would be appropriate, if the discussions between Fairfax and News proceed further, that the ACCC considers the proposal at the same time as conducting a review of the impact of the 1999 deregulation of the distribution of newspapers and magazines overseen by the ACCC at the behest of the Federal Government.

Prior to deregulation, newsagents operated under a territorial system. Deregulation took that away and while we have an appropriately more competitive environment, newsagents ought to have been compensated by the Government for having their exclusivity unilaterally taken from them.

If newsagents were auto workers, farmers or chemists, the Government would most likely have thrown millions their way as it has done regularly to those industries to facilitate restructuring.

While not wanting necessarily to reopen the deregulation can of worms, there is no denying that newsagents did have something valuable taken from them by Government action without compensation.

0 likes
Media disruption

Fairfax cashing in on digital success

fairfax-ifra.JPGMike van Niekerk, Editor in Chief Online of Fairfax Media, delivered an impressive presentation called Cashing in on Digital Success at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna which ended Friday. It was impressive not only in demonstrating how to leverage excellent revenue from a popular and respected news site but also in the numbers presented as the table on the left shows. The full slideshow presentation is available online at the conference website. Van Niekerk demonstrated the many ways Fairfax is able to generate revenue beyond the traditional banner ads. He listed examples of rich media, over the page, half page, leader board, TVCs and sponsored links and went on to say that their problem was lack of inventory.

What I would like to see from Fairfax and the other publishers who presented at the conference is the income and net return per employee and by capital compared to the print operation. Given that publishers must be driven by share price it is the return which will guide them to the tipping point where the success of the online model, with a lower cost base, forces significant contraction of the print model. Please don’t misunderstand my interest – I am not wanting to talk newspapers down but rather have a better “heads up” when considering capital expenditure related to the sale and distribution of newspapers.

As publishers like Fairfax continue to drive their online operations, newsagents, too, must aggressively pursue new traffic and revenue opportunities. Every day we continue to perform the same tasks with the same revenue model is another day lost to the changing world and to our more forward thinking competitors.

0 likes
Media disruption

What do 16 year olds think of online newspaper sites?

blog-16yo.JPG

It’s a brave conference which gets 16 year olds on stage to critique newspaper websites. That’s what happened this morning at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna. This team of bright 16 years shared their views, warts and all. Here is a selection of their comments:

Ads get in the way of content. They don’t like clicking on a video and having to watch an ad before the video. (You could hear the gasp when they said this.)

Pop up ads are annoying.

Most banner ads are not appealing.

They don’t like sites with too much colour, too much animation or swirling fonts.

Sites need to be easier to navigate.

It is frustrating having to register to get the content you need.

As soon as you are sent to another site, when you click a link, they quit.

Having a dating service on a news site is degrading. It’s useless.

They have a preference for proper news sites as opposed to citizen journalism.

Sites chasing young people should be designed by young people – they can tell when a 40 year old is trying to design young.

Not much interest in using mobile phones to access news. (more mutterings from the audience given many are playing in this space.)

I can’t do the hour long presentation justice here.

Some key take-aways for me were that peer pressure drives site traffic. When asked if they would switch to another social media site most of the 16 year old panel said no unless their friends switched. The big surprise was their strong reaction of advertising and their dislike for paying for anything. This is a huge challenge for any online content site chasing this demographic.

How does this connect with Australian newsagents? Well, we’re chasing this market and since they are buying fewer newspapers than the generation before them, their insights will help determine what we need to do in-store to be attractive to them.

This was an excellent session, most invaluable.

0 likes
Citizen Journalism
Trending Articles

Fairfax changes approach to TV Guide, disrespects newsagents

Published on April 20, 2011

What do you think of the Powerball changes?

Published on February 16, 2018

IPS releases new magazine contracts

Published on June 21, 2011