Battling to bridge the digital divide

It’s back to the drawing board for open-model media houses as online ad revenue fails to replace offline losses

THE past few weeks have been something of a flashpoint for print media, which is really saying something considering print circulations have been falling for the better part of a decade. First was the discussion around the viability of The Guardian’s open journalism model after it announced that it was putting many of its more ambitious plans on hold amid 20 percent cuts.

At the time, the sentiment among commentators was that publishing news content for free digitally was, at best, a necessary first step towards eventually convincing enough of your audience to pay to make you sustainable.

Then came the news that the first of the UK national papers was to go digital-only.

The Independent and its Sunday counterpart are set to cease print production next month following the sale of the auto-cannibalising tabloid i newspaper to Johnston Press.

Its owner, Evgeny Lebedev, said of the decision to go digital: “The question should not be why we are doing it, but why others in the industry are not.”

Michael Wolff waded in to the debate, suggesting that while print is dead for news publishers, digital is too: “Despite the online world’s crowing about ad growth, and the belief of many publishers that online ad revenue would surely replace offline, the per-view price of a digital ad continues to drop, and ever-more ad dollars are concentrated with Google and Facebook. Now, to boot, there are ad blockers: nobody ever has to see a digital ad.”

David Pemsel is the chief executive of the Guardian Media Group, which, whether fairly or not, found itself at the centre of the debate. He argues the Guardian’s relationship with its readers is its core strength, from which any future success is likely to grow.

“Scale is still vital to the future of any news brand but it’s no longer viable to trade on reach alone. Over the last 18 months there have been seismic shifts in media economics affecting the whole industry and we need to adapt more quickly and respond more confidently than ever before. Audience engagement is an increasingly important metric in the digital world and that’s why we believe the relationship we have with our readers should be at the heart of both our business strategy and our editorial and commercial offerings.”

“Guardian readers around the world are crucial to us. We launched our existing membership offering in September 2014 from which we’ve learnt that many of our readers do want a closer relationship with us and with our journalists.

“Our plan is to re-imagine what Guardian membership means, exploring how we can evolve our membership into simple, enhanced proposition which focuses relentlessly on serving the interests of our readers and building communities around them.

“That might mean producing some journalism which only our members can access but no, it’s not a paywall. A paywall is a very different route, which of course we have considered, but putting one up now would diminish our reach and influence around the world, which is the opposite of what we’re trying to do.

“Our newly imagined membership offering is about offering readers a little bit more of what they like with the day’s core news staying absolutely free. It’s a new approach, but we think it’s an exciting opportunity to better serve both our audiences and our advertisers.”

“Yes, absolutely. Over the past 18 months we have been investing in targeted initiatives, one of which is video. What has been evident for some time is more audiences want to consume their news via video and, consequently, expect quality video from us.

“Our video views have risen from 10 million a month in 2014 to 30 million a month in 2015 with off-platform playing a big part in that growth but, with demand in the market so high, we need to do more in this area.

“This isn’t purely about volume of video content created. Our strategy needs to balance carefully what videos we choose to make and how they can be delivered effectively across our products to ensure we are maximising the editorial and commercial opportunities on offer and providing our readers with more of what they want to see.”

● This is an edited version of a piece in www.themediabriefing.com, the intelligence platform for the global media industry.