News Media: A Slither of Hope

It would be wonderfully ironic if Donald Trump, who seems to believe he’s in some sort of holy war against the established press, should prove to be the medium’s saviour.

Sadly, that’s unlikely (Trump-driven upticks in sales of the printed ‘real news’ media are unlikely to be anywhere near sufficient to counter the long-term decline in ad revenues), but the current furore over fake news and ‘alternative facts’ does give newspapers and news magazines the opportunity to stress the benefits of objective journalism.

As we said last week putting a value on values is hard but a noble objective.

One thing’s for sure, and that’s lumping everything together through an all-purpose, lowest common denominator sales operation isn’t going to help. ‘The Daily Mail’ is well out of it.

What also won’t help (and this penny does seem to have dropped) is a reliance on tech platforms like Facebook.

Why anyone would fall for the idea that journalism’s future lies in delivering mass reach whilst providing limited direct revenue to the business that creates the quality content is beyond me.

Newspapers, and indeed other online media forms need to elevate the ad sales conversation away from lowest CPM, or any other output-based metric, and the only way they’re going to do that is by focussing on the demonstration of effect.

They need to prove their worth in language that resonates with the advertiser, and avoid the dive to the bottom produced by programmatic algorithms.

Unfortunately, those that run newspapers seem to have bought into the need for cheapness at all costs.

How else to explain the mass exodus of data and insight specialists from some of our leading titles, shortly followed by experienced commercial heads like Dave King (now ex-Telegraph) and James Wildman (now ex-Trinity Mirror)?

We don’t need cleverness, appears to run the argument, just give me loads of clicks.

Well, that hasn’t worked either, to the surprise of precisely no-one.

Newspapers (and other purveyors of quality journalism) are uniquely powerful channels, whether consumed online, in print or both.

News media work – why else do the rich and the powerful get so upset when they run stories that expose their perceived wrong-doing?

They work – look at all that excellent work from Newsworks.

If you have something that works shouldn’t you be going out to demonstrate that it works not just in general terms but in a way of specific relevance to your channel and your key advertisers?

Doing the opposite and focussing on delivering the lowest costs at all costs makes zero sense.

And that’s not a word of an ‘alternative fact’.

 

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