{"id":872,"date":"2017-01-26T08:40:36","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T08:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=872"},"modified":"2017-01-26T08:40:36","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T08:40:36","slug":"news-media-a-slither-of-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/news-media-a-slither-of-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"News Media: A Slither of Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It would be wonderfully ironic if Donald Trump, who seems to believe he\u2019s in some sort of holy war against the established press, should prove to be the medium\u2019s saviour.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Sadly, that\u2019s unlikely (Trump-driven upticks in sales of the printed \u2018real news\u2019 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 \u2018alternative facts\u2019 does give newspapers and news magazines the opportunity to stress the benefits of objective journalism.<\/p>\n<p>As we said <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/using-influence\/\">last week<\/a> putting a value on values is hard but a noble objective.<\/p>\n<p>One thing\u2019s for sure, and that\u2019s lumping everything together through an all-purpose, lowest common denominator sales operation isn\u2019t going to help. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.campaignlive.co.uk\/article\/daily-mail-pulls-joint-newspaper-ad-sales-initiative-project-rio\/1421053\">\u2018The Daily Mail\u2019<\/a> is well out of it.<\/p>\n<p>What also won\u2019t help (and this penny does seem to have dropped) is a reliance on tech platforms like Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>Why anyone would fall for the idea that journalism\u2019s future lies in delivering mass reach whilst providing <a href=\"https:\/\/cdn.ampproject.org\/c\/digiday.com\/publishers\/publishers-made-14-percent-revenue-distributed-content\/amp\/\">limited direct revenue<\/a> to the business that creates the quality content is beyond me.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019re going to do that is by focussing on the demonstration of effect.<\/p>\n<p>They need to prove their worth in language that resonates with the advertiser, and avoid the dive to the bottom produced by programmatic algorithms.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, those that run newspapers seem to have bought into the need for cheapness at all costs.<\/p>\n<p>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)?<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t need cleverness, appears to run the argument, just give me loads of clicks.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that hasn\u2019t worked either, to the surprise of precisely no-one.<\/p>\n<p>Newspapers (and other purveyors of quality journalism) are uniquely powerful channels, whether consumed online, in print or both.<\/p>\n<p>News media work \u2013 why else do the rich and the powerful get so upset when they run stories that expose their perceived wrong-doing?<\/p>\n<p>They work \u2013 look at all that excellent work from <a href=\"https:\/\/effectiveness.newsworks.org.uk\/?utm_source=Newsworks&amp;utm_medium=HPC&amp;utm_campaign=Newsworks\">Newsworks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you have something that works shouldn\u2019t 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?<\/p>\n<p>Doing the opposite and focussing on delivering the lowest costs at all costs makes zero sense.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s not a word of an \u2018alternative fact\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It would be wonderfully ironic if Donald Trump, who seems to believe he\u2019s in some sort of holy war against the established press, should prove to be the medium\u2019s saviour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}