The Newspaper Industry

The future of newspapers industry and whether it can transform itself to make to the year 2020 was subject to an interesting case study and workshop conducted by the World Association of Newpapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) which is headquartered in Paris. Everyone knows about the declining revenues of most newspapers due to reduced advertising and distribution in modern times. The industry survived the first hit by the round-the-clock news channels on cable TV but started collapsing again when Internet took off. Many newspapers and magazines have either gone out of business or have had to reduce staff to stay in business in the industrial world. But the industry seems to be doing OK in the developing countries like India for the time being. How is the industry going to survive in the industrial world then? Here is the answer. WAN-IFRA’s goal is not only to promote freedom of press which has been under lots of pressure in USA by various lobbying groups over the past 4 decades but to help newspapers develop prosperously. Easier said than done.

In 2008, a firm hired by WAN-IFRA called Kairos selected a number of CEOs and COOs in the newspaper business across the globe asking them a range of questions, some general and most others industry-specific. Kairos collected the data and compiles 66 trends which they named uncertainties and conducted a scenario planning workshop to help stimulate the discussion among a larger group of participants. The group chose the following 8 issues as the most important ones for the newspaper industry in the coming decade:

1.      Newspaper models – Technology based ideas that could become key elements in newspaper models. Refer to author of this blog’s previous blogs on SixthSense Technology. Things are coming together!

2.      Multi-channel strategies – There will be less distinction between newspapers, TV, radio, and the Web. Refer again to author’s previous blogs on SixthSense Technology. Will there be a day that we can see our newspapers on the wall in the bathroom by snapping our fingers? I guess this is already being done at Bill Gate’s home. But he didn’t have to invent this one too.

3.      User-generated content – Thumps up Twitter!

 

4.      Shifting importance from channel to content – Everyone still considers content more important than how it gets distributed, thank god.

5.      Target market segmentation – What segment? This one is to be defined!

6.      More Mobile broadband – invasion of the body snatchers by more gadgets, oh boy.

7.      Simplifying your life – No comments.

8.      Audience fragmentation – I guess audience is already fragmented so go figure this one.

The process so far supports planning and innovation for change because it is collaborative least to say and it represents members of the newspaper industry from every county. Here is how the Kairos study becomes interesting. Four forces are identified to make an impact on the future of the newspapers: Mass audience, Targeted audience, disruptive media dominance (meaning Internet), and traditional media dominance. Now, there needs to be scenario planning to understand what the world of newspapers will look like under 4 different scenarios:

Kairos calls scenario 1, Disruptive media dominates + Targeted audience scenario, “For Your Eyes Only”, from the James Bond movie.

In this world, newspaper publishers repeatedly reduce staff and do organizational restructuring in their struggle to keep up with the more agile, faster moving digital media. It will be a challenge for them to recruit talented people in this world to support specific news for an audience who prefers RSS feeds and other forms of selected information.

The second scenario of Traditional media dominates + Targeted audience is unlikely but a possibility. The solution to this scenario is obviously digital printing which makes print on-demand versions of newspapers for specific audience who like to reach out for news than news reaching out to them. The audience for this one is mainly the new generation born on/after 1990’s. 

The third scenario, Traditional media dominates + Mass audience is what the old school newspaper prefers and what the traditional newspaper industry dreams. How likely is this one? Not very likely in my opinion. In this scenario, newspaper wins!

Here is the last scenario! The Disruptive media dominates + Mass audience. Here internet wins. This is the worst dream of old school newspaper industry. But now that the internet is closely linked to the physical world in so many ways, this is a very likely option. This scenario is based on another force not discussed earlier. By 2020, handheld device will be light, thin, and cheap. There goes the double digit profit margin of the mobile industry. Now they have to make the product lighter, thinner but reduce costs. Two forces which are in conflict but I am sure they’ll find a way to make this happen. We have seen PCs and laptops becoming smaller and cheaper every day in their own purely competitive markets. The same will happen to handheld devices and the new generation described earlier will perhaps read their newspapers online only!

A force missed by the Kairos study is the rising power of social media. In the future, it’s more likely to receive reliable user-based content through platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

References

Wade, W. (2012). Scenario planning: A field guide to the future. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.