Results and results

Yahoo posted higher than expected results making its shareholders to reconsider Microsoft’s latest bid. About week earlier Ebay showed also growth in profits. And not to forget Google, that also told the markets, that media business is doing great despite the economic situation. Those three examples are totally different story than last week’s news from the print sector. Media business is doing great online.

Same time as their digital competitors are innovating and seeking additional growth, traditional newspaper publishers are running cost cutting and debt reduction programs. Some shareholders lack trust to publishers’ ability to show sustainable growth and profitability and want return to their investment by other methods. According to Robert G. Picard, these programs are “stripping … of the resources they need to develop new initiatives and businesses should their management gain some vision, become entrepreneurial, and have some inspired ideas that might enthuse investor“. I’d say that short term shareholder vision may just reduce the opportunities that some of the most potential publishers would have.

There is of course encouraging exceptions like Norwegian Schibsted, which is targeting to reach 60 % of its 2008 revenues from digital operations (Read NAA report Schibsted – A model for global innovation).

The Norwegian flag used under CC licence, credits to Mr.Driver.

NY Times classifieds fell sharply

The New York Times Company posted a negative results for the first quarter of 2008. The loss was small, but the drop to previous year was dramatical. The hardest hit sector was classified advertising that was 22.6 % lower than year ago. Biggest loser was recruitment advertising. March 2008 underlined the poor development of classifieds as the year on year drop was 25.7 %. The fell of classified sectors are detailed in the table below.

The economical downturn – or should we already talk about recession – in the United States hits classified advertising hard. It is normal and every newspaper publisher knows it from past. They also know that previously the classified problem was solved at the same time as the economy recovered. But there is an alternative scenario. There is an alternative scenario that print classifieds will not recover at all or at least not even close to the same level as they used to be. As Mikolas says:

“…this is the real tipping point for advertising in general and online is really starting to eat revenue from domestic newspaper”.

He is right. The US offline classifieds are almost gone and other markets will follow.

Book factory

IHT had a great article about Philip Parker who has published 200.000 books making him the “the most published author in the history of the planet.” Ok, it is not question about writing as we normally think about it, but books that are automatically compiled by search engine algorithms.

While the most popular of his books may sell hundreds of copies, he said, many have sales in the dozens, often to medical libraries collecting nearly everything he produces. He has extended his technique to crossword puzzles, rudimentary poetry and even to scripts for animated game shows.

Just searched from Amazon.com and found interesting examples like Websters Saami – English Thesaurus Dictionary (link), The 2007 Import and Export Market for Household Refrigerators in Czech Republic (link) and The 2007-2012 Outlook for Year-Round Unitary Single Package and Remote-Condenser Air Conditioners with at Least 640,000 BTU Per Hour Excluding Heat Pumps in Japan (link). And there is at least 85.000 additional titles available in Amazon search.

Mr. Parker is taking advantage from long tail. Or should I say looooooooong tail… We may question the quality of his mass production, but at least he is productive!

Media evolution

Past weeks I have had very interesting conversations about evolution of media. They are partly triggered by some very fascinating posts published lately. We’ve focused mainly to the news media, or the area of media that were earlier dominated by the newspapers. The primary questions are following: Is the news media going to be totally fragmented to a market of many “one man and keyboards” or is the media going to be a playground of a big conglomerates? If it is a playground of the big ones, are the players the same as today? Or maybe sombody else? I write few of my arguments here.

Though the rhythm of publishing news is not anymore restricted to any particular reason, I still believe that the news media is consumed because of a need to understand environment around us and because of need to structure our everyday life. Latter referrers to our (old) habits to read morning paper or watch the 9 o’clock news every day. We read the paper we trust and watch those news broadcasts we’ve used to. After the evening news we make a cup of tea, wash our teeth, read some book or maybe go out to give a moment of relief to our dog.

Media consumption is not just reading and learning, it is also way of building identity and giving a structure to the every day life. Media consumers have always needed flexibility, but technology has not been ready for that until past decade or so. Neither consuming nor publishing are not restricted to a certain moment of a day. Consumers choose their moment freely (according to traffic peaks, it seems to be still in the morning and during the lunch breaks). Therefore those who have built a rigid infrastructure and process culture leaning on it are in trouble.

To reach trust among the audience and help them to structure their life, publisher needs to have a ’story’. I define ’story’ as a style that has stable point of view and the fluctuations of quality are not enormous. Publishers have to be predictable and they hae to publish frequently. I partly joked about NYT’s article on bloggers’ exhaustion, but to be honest, keeping up a high quality and good pace is not easy task. Therefore I believe on specialized teams that can keep up with high level of quality and frequent pace of publishing. Team members can also have breaks without audience noticing it; even in the online world people need to rest and have holidays.

The specialized teams answer also challenge of media’s fragmentation. As a generalist newspaper can provide a narrow scratch about a specific issue, these teams will just focus on their area of expertise. They’ll give much deeper understanding on narrow subject. As in the offline world’s star columnists, there will be individual stars, which are successful and popular by themselves.

Environment may look like a magazine publishing today. Traditional news sites may change to be umbrellas for content created by specialized teams owned by totally new owners. Big media conglomerates will exist, but they’re not necessarily the current ones. Those who are too stuck to their current rigid operating culture and processes and will disappear. More flexible ones just change their strategy, acquire companies to cope with new business environment and continue to prosper. Media market will be much flexible than 10-15 years ago, but less fragmented than we still think.

Photos above used under CC license credits to Olivander, Onthetrain and Ninjapoodles.

Nature of Finland magazine

I just got recent issue of Nature of Finland magazine (Suomen Luonto) in to my hands. It is one of my favourite magazines and I’ve been a loyal reader for years. It is published by Finnish Association for Nature Conservation (SLL).

Past 16-17 years that I’ve been reading it, Nature of Finland has published great articles about our nature, its animals, plants and geography. Most of the issues have also feature articles where photgraphers are allowed to “tell the story”. Time to time the photos are really amazing.

Above to interesting articles and beautiful photos, the magazine has at least two virtues why I like it so much.

1) It has changed its layout, look and feel and renewed its content constantly. The paper is not standing still, on the contrary it has been fresh all these years. There have to be a good team working for the magazine.

2) More important. The Nature of Finland has a story to tell and that story reaches loyal audience. The magazine stands for Finnish nature and is pro nature conservation. It openly expresses its opinion, and therefore it is interesting quality magazine.

Blogging – risky business

I’ll take a risk and use my late night spare time (gmt +2) and write this short post. Risk? Yes, according to recent New York Times article this is bad for my health. Ok, I admit that during a work week, I may use late hours to write these. Have to be careful…

Marc Andreessen made great suggestions to future headlines for NYT articles writing on same topic.