GUEST BLOG POST: Developers from Poland create an easy Do-It-Yourself tool for publishers to prepare tablet apps on their own.

Rafal Oracz from Spoti.pl explains their HTML5 tool for publishers

By Marek Miller, guest blogger:  Marek Miller is the regional consultant of Innovation Media Consulting for Poland and Eastern Europe. You can read a number of his coverages of different INMA and WAN events on Forum4Editors.com. He also blogs in Polish on www.em-jak-media.blogspot.com.

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While the tablet market is still quite an unknown territory to many publishers, all they agree upon is the need of experimenting. And experimenting in this area is not easy. There are a number of questions still to be answered before newsmedia companies will actually be able to estimate real growth possibilities.

Those questions are, for example:
- how many tablets are really used in my country? (only estimates are possible)
- will Apple change its regulations again?
- should we focus on iPad only, and how will the market of other tablets develop?
- will people really enjoy one’s content on tablets?
- what kind of business model should be implemented and why the hell do we need to pay the share?

Waiting for these questions to be answered is suicidal. When you look only 12 months back, you will notice there is not a month to be wasted if you want to innovate and protect your place in the tablet market without making the same mistakes as the publishing industry did some years ago with the rise of the internet. And because tablets are here to stay, you need to experiment on as many levels as your budget allows.

Until recently there were basically two possibilities for publishers in the Polish market that wanted to make products for tablets. The first, as probably many publishers around the globe do, was to outsource this service, hire a professional consultant who would guide the editorial offices through the process of filling a prepared application with the content. This is the most expensive possibility when publishers develop a native app specifically designed for their own needs and with no similar apps in the market.

The second option is white label applications. There are companies around Poland offering the same kind of application for different publishers. They can be customized to (some) needs, but the core difference between those are usually colours, graphics, and maybe the order of the sections. Those applications look similar to one another, yet still are a bit expensive (somewhat mid-market price).

For about one month so far, a new tool has been available on the Polish market. The tool called Spoti Kreator uses HTML-5 technology, and makes applications available on diverse platforms: not only on iPad, but on all existing Android platforms as well.

Spoti is a simple do-it-yourself tool, where publishers can insert their content: text, images, videos and audio. They have about 30 different layouts of the application pages at their disposal. The entire code of the publication is open for the user, so when he is a developer with a basic HTML knowledge, he will be able to build his own layouts as well. Someexamples of how a page within the application can look like are listed on the picture below.

Spoti Kreator lets you choose many different layout templates for each page in the app

The process of creating the application is very easy and intuitive, and is done online. First you have to pick a template for your publication. Then you choose how your table of content should look like. Next comes the articles, which of course are linked with the table of content. Each article can be shown in one of 30 layouts. They can be either articles or galleries or simple pictures or videos or infographics. After choosing “publish” you will be able to enjoy your tablet application.

Spoti Kreator, just like all other tools, has its pros and cons. The great advantage is definitely its price. For now, creation of a single application costs about 125 Euros, but the developers of Spoti say they are considering an offer that would allow publishers to use their tool as much as they wish within a certain amount of time (weekly, monthly, we’ll see).

Due to the fact it is based on HTML-5 technology, the application is not distributed via AppStore or Android Market. Instead the final version of the application built in Spoti is given in the form of a link you can save on your tablet’s home screen.

Another advantage is the time needed for such work. In a 3 hour trial I managed to turn a 24 page publication (text and pictures) into the fully operational application. You can view it by opening the following link from your tablet: http://spoti.pl/e-dokument/5810/Raport (the publication is in Polish). It may not look astonishing, but given the fact it took me three hours only to prepare it makes me consider Spoti an interesting tool.

Apps built in Spoti Editor can be both sold or distributed for free, whereas in both situations the user can sell his own advertisements within the app.

Despite the fact that Spoti Editor is no longer in the development stage, it is still going to be improved. So far the applications work only when the device is online. At first this can be treated as a huge disadvantage, but being able to use different Wi-fi zones around the country or simply 3G connection, the user can actually be satisfied he does not have to wait for 200-300 MB to be downloaded.

Despite that fact, the developers of Spoti work on the possibility to allow users to download entire publication to their tablets. When they manage to do so, the publications will have to be distributed through AppStore or Android Market, what again has its pros and cons. Luckily, Spoti Editor’s users will have a choice whether they want the publication to be downloadable or to be accessed online only.

The idea of this post is not to promote Spoti Editor as the ideal tool for publishers. It is however a tool that allows publishers to experiment with applications, their content, learn about their readers and users, and to do this all without risking their entire budget.

Spoti Editor is so far available in only in Poland (one of the biggest media monthlies in Poland – “Press” has already chosen Spoti tool as their solution). Again, the developers are interested in expanding outside of Poland, so the english version of Spoti Editor can be expected soon.

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This is just one example of a company trying to build tools to help publishers use HTML5 to distribute their content. Do you know of other interesting examples? Let us know in the comments field.

It is used in lots of board rooms these days – as an expression of the danger newspaper companies are in. But in fact the executives would be wiser to ban the word. What word? Read on.

Publishers' worry about print revenues may harm their potential in developing good business models for digital media

I have heard it used so many times in different media contexts. We are afraid of it and try to avoid the effect of it. It is a word that makes media executives sleep less at night.

It is called “cannibalization”.

Yes, we would love to build new digital revenue streams. We dream about how users will pay tons of money for our excellent and unique content. But it better not have any harmful effect on print revenues!

So the thinking goes.

To put it in another way: Digital revenues are fine as long as they do not “cannibalize” print revenues!

This line of thought influences product development, pricing strategy, marketing and editorial workflows in many media companies.

It is a dangerous way of thinking.

In fact the word “cannibalization” should be banned in media companies. Using it will only cause harm to media’s chances of surviving the massive digital transformation we are witnessing.

Did you hear me?

Ban the word “cannibalization”!

Yes, I really mean it.  Don’t allow the executives or other employees to even use it!

Why should the word be banned?

Let us start with the basic statement that I keep repeating here at BetaTales:

What can become digital, will be come digital.

Now, then: What does this mean?

It means at least two things:

• Print newspapers will at some stage be extint. We can argue about when it will happen, but the trend is very clear
• This being said, the major strategic challenge for media companies is not how to save print revenues, but how to build a successful business model for digital content

Why should using the word “cannibalization” be a problem?

Because even using the word implies a mental context that will in fact be counter-productive in producing the efficient future business models of digital media.

Let me ask you a question, all CEOs of media companies:

What do you think is the most strategic important issue to focus on for the next five year?

• Saving as much as you can of your print revenue?
• Or: Building digital revenues as fast as you can?

I have already given you my answer: You need to have full mental focus on buiding future digital business models.

I know many of you will answer that you will be able to balance both.

I don’t believe you.

In fact I think many media executives still underestimate the major challenges facing our industry. They think they can transform a business model of the past to the digital future. If that is the way you think, managing “cannibalization” makes a lot of sense.

But they will be proven wrong.

Instead I believe the winners will be those who have been liberated from their past business models. They focus primarily on how they can build a digital future, and less on how to save the print business a few more years.

I am not saying that media companies should ignore the print business, which is still the biggest revenue stream. Continue to develop the product, increase quality, lower costs and make distribution more efficient! The printed paper will be an important platform for media content for many years still.

But do not let considerations for the print product limit product development in the digital area!

Stop worrying about cannibalization!

Instead you should set your digital products free to compete in their own markets – without considerations for effects on the printed products.

There is an interesting success story to study within the media group I work for myself: Schibsted Media Group.  More than ten years ago visionaries within the corporation realized that classified ads inevitably would move from print to online.

Instead of saying that all efforts should be put into protecting the lucrative print ad revenues, they suggested to start a new company that would try to be the leading digital market place for classified ads.

A company – finn.no – was indeed started in March 2000. It set out to be the market leader in online classified ads in Norway. Prices were only a portion of prices in the newspaper. The newspapers were instructed to market the new online classified ads brand.

It is no secret that there was a lot of discussion within Schibsted about this strategy. Yet it proved to be one of the big success stories.  Finn has for years operated with an extremely high profit margin, driven by its position as market leader in online classifieds. And how did Finn become market leader? By aggresively seeing the opportunity early, before the market had developed and matured.

Today Schibsted is No. 3 globally in online classified ads, according to Businessweek. That’s not bad for a company from a small Scandinavian country.

Market dynamics in the news business are different from the classified ads – and the same rules may not necessarily apply. Yet the main lesson is the same: Make sure to focus on what will be the future!

Many media companies try to offer print and digital products in bundled subscriptions. That may very well be a smart strategy, provided that it is done in a way that will lead to a future business model for the digital media. But if the main purpose is to slow down the fall in newspaper readership without any clear plan for the digital future, such a strategy probably will fail.

I believe the mental focus in the organization is extremely important for media companies that are in the middle of a radical digital transformation.

The losers will be those who put all their energy into slowing down the digital transformation and saving the past. The winners will adapt a digital-first strategy to rush forward to build a new, smart and sustainable digital business model.

I don’t think you can win by doing both.

Therefore: Start by banning the word “cannibalization” in your company.

So you got stuck, working for the printed newspaper all these years? And now you realize your future is with digital media? Here is your digital makeover plan!

Many of my journalist colleagues these days find themselves in the same trap: They realize that the future holds limited demand for print journalist experience alone and that the brightest career potential in the business is within digital media.

The only problem is: They have no experience with digital media whatsoever!

What should you do? Is there a digital makeover plan you can follow?

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One thing is for sure: It will require hard work on your part. But if you want to stay in the media business, you better get on with it! And please don’t wait for your employer to fix it for you. Your competence is your own responsibility.

Also I think you can be sure of the following: Career opportunities in the media business will be fewer and fewer every year for people with only print experience. Especially that applies to any kind of management position.

Why is that?

Because most media companies will realize they have a digital competence deficit in their staff. As digital media takes a stronger position in the media houses, top managers realize it will be foolish to hire editors and managers with only print experience. Rather they should look for people who know how digital platforms work.

To put it even more clearly: Your print experience will be in less and less demand over the next years! If you look at it in a perspective of 5 – 10 years, changes will be dramatic. As a print journalist you are indeed naive if you don’t believe that this will affect you professionally in a big way.

• Read also: How print journalists can fall into the typographers’ trap

So you got to do something, don’t you?

Yes, you do! And you better get on with it!

Here is my suggestion for a one-year first-step digital makeover plan for journalists:

Step 1: Get yourself on social networks

If you are not on Facebook yet, you better register now. Understanding social media is essential for digital journalists and there is really no other way to do this than to participate yourself. Therefore your first step will be to get active on some of the most common social networks. As a minimum I suggest  you start using actively Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Also familiarize yourself with YouTube and at least one location based social network, like Foursquare or Gowalla. And if you are really dedicated to the task, you might consider starting your own blog. Really, there is no better way of learning digital media than maintaining an active blog.

Let us not forget an important aspect of this step: Start interacting with your readers! Respond to their comments, ask for tips to stories, use readers’ expertise in your articles, follow all discussions about your own content.

Step 2: Get experience in online journalism

If you work in a media company, start talking to the web people in your organization. The best alternative is to ask if you can work for the web site for a while, gaining useful experience. If that is not possible, show active interest in writing exclusive stories for the web site, including special versions of the print stories that you write. Your main purpose at this point is to gain as much experience as possible and to learn from your online colleagues. Study their writing style and what makes stories work on the web as opposed in the newspaper. Experiment with different headlines and see which ones make readers click. And especially: Take good note of which print stories that do not work on the web site! There will be more of them than you probably thought ahead.

Too many technical terms the online people expect you to know? Check out this digital survival guide for journalists!

Step 3: Learn basic photo editing

In big print organizations specialists often take care of the photo editing. So far, at least.  Hardly any web site editorial organization can afford that luxury. Instead it is expected that all journalists know how to crop and photo shop an image. And I tell you: There are hardly any journalists under the age of 30 that do not know photo shopping today at some level.

The most used software is Photo Shop. You may decide to start with Photo Shop Elements, which is a simpler version.

How to learn it? There are numerous online courses!  A great place to learn is Lynda.com, which has easy-to-follow videos for self-study of any type of software.

Step 4: Start making short video clips

Video is an essential and growing part of the web. As digital journalist you might as well start to learn using video at once. The best starting point is making small video clips, for instance with your iPhone. This can be short clips from the interview you are writing about, like what I have done in this story about the social media strategy of 20minutos.es in Spain.

Using video can be incredibly sophisticated or amazingly simple. At this stage you should start with the simple solutions. You will realize they can still create great value for the reader.

Digital journalists should of course learn more sophisticated video recording and editing as well, but I suggest you start with the shorter and unedited clips and then move on as your confidence grows.

Step 5: Start experimenting with interactive elements, like maps and time lines

Digital journalism opens up for many new story telling techniques, such as sound slides and time lines. Until recently many of these techniques required a lot of technical knowledge to use. Not any more. Today there are lots of sites offering to help you make your story telling more interactive.

Here are three tools you can start playing with:

Time lines:  http://www.dipity.com/ Create exciting time lines to illustrate how the topic of your story has developed over time

Maps: http://www.umapper.com Make maps that users can click on for more information.

Live log: http://www.coveritlive.com A great tool for live events, allowing you to live log and communicate with readers as the events pass.

After finishing your work, all services provide you with a code that you embed into the story. You will probably need some help from an experienced web journalist for this part. But I tell you: Learning how to embed external elements like maps, time lines and Youtube videos gives you unlimited creative possibilities in digital journalism.

A great blog for getting tips on interactive multimedia journalism is 10.0oo Words.

Step 6: Start analyzing traffic data for your site

Almost all news sites will have some analytics system installed. Many use more than one system, depending on the purpose of the analysis. Live logging of traffic is for instance often a separate system.

Ask for access to the analytics of your news site and try to learn the basics of the service, whether it be Google Analytics, Xiti or another system. Try to understand the traffic pattern. Where do users come from? What stories are most popular?

The easiest and most fun software to learn using will typically be the live log, where you can see which stories people click on right now. By following the live log regurlarly you will learn a lot about what actually works and what does not in driving traffic to a web site.

Step 7: Get yourself a smart phone – and use it to its full potential

A significant shift in platforms is taking place – and it will have major influence over the media industry over the next years. It is driven by the growth in smart phones, but also tablets like iPad is pushing the development.

If you don’t have it already, hurry up to get a smart phone. Whether it is an iPhone or an Android-run phone is not that important. What matters is that you get a smart phone with lots of apps, GPS and all other features that are part of a modern phone.

Try to use it to its full potential. It will revolutionize your media consumption, and give you a new perspective of where journalism might be headed.

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My suggestion is that you make this list of 7 steps your plan for this first year of a digital makeover – although not necessarily in the same order.

If you spend time on all these steps – and try to learn as much as possible – you will be much better positioned in a year from now than you are today.

However, let me tell you: It is not enough! There are many more things you need to learn. But it is a starting step, putting you in the right direction.

But do not be fooled: It requires hard work! And you have to do it yourself. Don’t sit around and wait for your employer to come around with a course or two. Only you can be the manager of your own professional future.

And please, please, dear print colleagues: Do not fall into the typographers’ trap!

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Bonus:

After this article was written I was made aware of an excellent guide to become a good multimedia journalist:

Reporter’s Guide to Multimedia Proficiency

It is written by journalism professor Mindy McAdams at University of Florida.  I really recommend that you read it! It is highly useful and very instructional.  (thanks to Blue Lady Blog for giving me the link)

Screenshot of VG+, the iPad app from Norwegian news company VG

Apple’s ‘Jesus tablet’ seemed to be the news industry’s best hope of salvation but few publishers are finding apps to be the moneyspinners they so desperately want.

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This article titled “iPad apps – still more dash than cash” was written by Jemima Kiss, for The Guardian on Monday 10th January 2011 06.59 UTC

The news industry embraced the launch of Apple’s iPad in April 2010 with something that felt like true love: feverish anticipation at that first meeting, lengthy sentimental eulogies and whispers of hope that this must finally be The One.

In an industry largely uninterested in gadgets, the iPad offered optimised reading and viewing, portability – and a built-in payment system wired to the credit cards of 280 million iTunes customers. Editorials began asking if the iPad might be the saviour of an industry in a seemingly terminal decline.

But less than a year on there are already signs that the romance is fading, along with those first flushes of novelty. The latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations in the US show average monthly downloads slumping by the end of 2010. Only two publishers were brave enough to share their figures.

In for a long wait

Condé Nast’s Wired US iPad magazine sold 73,000 copies through the app in its first nine days in May 2010 but that fell to 23,000 in November – a bad month all round. Vanity Fair sold 10,500 in October but 8,700 in November, and GQ’s average fell from 13,000 in October to 11,000 in November. And Men’s Health, published by Rodale in the US, fell from 2,800 monthly shortly after the iPad launch to 2,000 by November.

These baby steps need to grow up fast if they are to compare to the sales and profits enjoyed by print. Last year’s census by the Association of Online Publishers showed nearly two-thirds of publishers pinning their hopes on in-app content as the best chance of making money through mobile – but they might be in for a long wait. The tablet userbase is small and the potential app userbase outside the US smaller still – and Apple takes 30% on every app sold.

Analysts Research2Guidance estimate that 100,000 app sales at 79p would make the publishers £40,000 – not exactly a moneyspinner, when they will have to wait three years to see a return. By then, Apple’s domination of the tablet market could be at an end, bringing a new problem of developing for multiple devices – though Screen Digest senior analyst Dan Cryan expects 6.5 million people will use an iPad by 2014.

If there is any business model to be found for innovative publishing on the iPad, Condé Nast is determined to find it. Albert Read, general manager of Condé Nast UK, acknowledged it is an “undoubtedly expensive” commitment. “It’s a punt,” he said. “A long-term hope is that we create something exciting for readers and advertisers – and that brings its own returns over time. In five years we will have reaped those benefits.”

Read would not comment on how much Condé Nast has invested or when it expects to see a return. But he described the projects as “resource intensive”, with Wired’s app needing up to five dedicated staff. Print pages have to be redesigned and copy resubbed, and advertisers – who are keen to experiment, Read said – have to submit horizontal and vertical formats.

“Though we are ambitious, we are also relatively cautious. We haven’t launched apps for every magazine and have only done one experimental edition for Vogue.

“Rather like the dotcom era, there was a period of hype and excitement over the iPad and then things calmed down. In two, three, perhaps five years, that excitement will be justified.”

Rupert Murdoch seized on “the Jesus tablet” as part of his crusade to elevate his news business from free web content. With a reported investment of m (£19m), he has a team of 100 in New York furiously putting the finishing touches to The Daily, News Corp’s dedicated iPad newspaper, which is due to roll out next Monday. The Daily is expected to include a new push subscription feature that automatically delivers and charges for weekly or monthly editions.

Murdoch will be hoping to outshine Virgin boss Richard Branson, whose own New York-based iPad magazine, Project, launched in November, charging .99 per month. But whether Murdoch can turn around his dubious track record in digital projects, from Iguide to MySpace, remains to be seen.

The Daily could become a mass-market phenomenon – a next-generation Sun – but at 99c (62p) a day, it will be some time before the experiment sees a return.

The Financial Times took advantage of the traditionally lucrative financial news sector to launch an extensive app in May. Download numbers have reached 487,000 in total, the FT said, with iPad generating more than 10% of new digital subscribers. Deputy chief executive Ben Hughes has said that iPad ad revenues reached £1m in the first six months, and ad inventory has been sold out since launch. The app is free and users are encouraged to register to read 10 free stories per month. Subscription models

Common complaints among readers include huge file sizes, and, with more than 300,000 apps in the app store, visibility is also a problem. But by far the biggest issue is that of offering a subscription model within an app. Apple does not share names and addresses of iTunes App Store customers, meaning publishers cannot build that valuable subscriber database. Reports have persisted since September that Apple is working on a subscription service for news and magazine apps; that could launch alongside the second version of the iPad rumoured for April – if it doesn’t debut in Murdoch’s Daily first.

“Apple needs a better balance between its own desire to have visibility of all the data, and the needs of publishers to get data about their readers that is crucial to their businesses,” said Edward Roussel, Telegraph Media Group’s digital editor.

Both the Telegraph and Guardian used big-name advertisers to launch free iPad apps. The Guardian’s Canon-sponsored photography app, Eyewitness, had had 404,559 downloads at last count, with a separate news iPad app under development. Audi has extended its initial 12-week sponsorship of the Telegraph’s iPad app, of which about 100,000 have been downloaded since launch, and version 2 is due out by the end of March.

Roussel said the Telegraph’s in-app registration system shows the iPad is attracting new readers, with most aged between 30 and 50. “We’re making reasonable sponsorship but at this stage apps are more a beta product than a substantial revenue earner.”

Those in the industry express optimism but a lack of confidence in how best to exploit the tablet explosion. Roussel says apps offer the best of the old world and the new. “There’s no question, , it’s a highly significant development of the media industry and the potential is massive. But it will take years, not months, to work out how to make apps better than both the web and newspapers, which they have the potential to be.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.

Many newspaper journalists are now making the same mistake as typographers did before:

They ignore the massive changes affecting their profession.

For a long time it has surprised me how many of my fellow journalists seem to fail taking necessary steps to prepare themselves for the future digital reality.

In short: They are falling into the typographers’ trap.

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What is the typographers’ trap?

It describes how a group by wrongly trying to save the jobs of its members at the same time destroys its own profession.

Typographers used to hold an important position in editorial newspaper production.  In the old days this was the group typesetting the newspaper pages.

Then the production process was digitalized. Suddenly anybody with basic design and computer skills could do the tasks the typographers used to have a monopoly of doing.

In fact the need for typographers in newspaper production was more or less wiped out in a very short time frame. As a result the profession disappeared in most countries.

In my own country, Norway, the typographers’ union maintained that they had a legal monopoly right to do the actual page production. They kept to the formal agreement with employers that was interpreted as saying that no other professions than typographers could produce the pages. This extremely conservative position has been maintained up to today.

The result of the position is devastating for future typographers:

• Everybody silently agreed that typographers would be phased out as a profession in the newspaper industry.
• Hardly any newly educated typographer was hired by the newspaper industry, despite the fact that many of them had competence thas was in high demand, such as multimedia production skills.
• The typographers’ union defended their own position by formal regulations rather than by making sure their members were the most competent in the business.
• Even though it was obvious that typographers would be in less and less demand, many typographers took few or no personal steps to prepare themselves for a future in a different profession or to develop skills that could be used by the media companies in other ways

The conclusion?

Typographers are on their way to be extint as a professional group in Norway’s newspaper industry.

However, it didn’t have to be like that had it not been that the trade union chose this path. Smart people are still being educated, but they are faced with a “de facto” professional ban in the newspaper industry as a result of of the policies of their trade union.

Now let us look at the paper journalists:

I maintain the position that I have defended on a number of other posts on BetaTales: What can become digital, will become digital.

If you agree with me, this means:

• The printed newspaper will at some stage die. We can argue about when it will take place, but the development is inevitable
• Skills that are explicitly connected to producing a printed product will be in less demand
• It will be much harder for journalists to land a new job without having digital skills

In short:

Journalism itself will not die, but journalists who have not made sure to develop digital skills, will find themself in less and less demand.

Still, many newspapers hire journalists without digital experience.

It is truly amazing that they still dare to do so!

But they do!

However, I am pretty sure this practice will be extremely rare within only very few years. Struggling to manage the digital transformation, media companies will not be able to afford recruiting journalists who  do not have a deep understanding of how to present their content in different media.

Similarly many media houses work hard to integrate the print and online newsrooms. This is a very complicated process which often is faced with cultural opposition among journalists. A major challenge is the lack of managers with digital skills.

At some stage this process in most media companies will make it hard for editors and managers without digital understanding to get promoted.

Were are not there yet in most media companies – as the senior management teams typically themselves have a strong print background and don’t necessarily emphasize the need for new skills (which in fact would imply that they are incompetent themselves).

But as the challenges of managing the digital transformation become more apparent and urgent, the positions of the senior managers themselves as well as career opportunities for journalists with only print experience are bound to be weakened.

At least that is my analysis.

Now comes the part I simply don’t understand:

Why don’t more paper journalists decide to put all their efforts into ensuring that they have the necessary digital skills needed for the future?

That seems to be the rational thing to do, doesn’t it?

I mean: If you observe that your skills will be in less demand and eventually be extinct, shouldn’t that encourage you to develop new skills while there is still time?

I would think so.

But for some amazingly strange reason there seems like many paper journalists don’t agree with this analysis.

Apparently they think it is smarter to concentrate on their skills of making a printed product, although they would be stupid to think that newspapers will not continue their decline.

In fact they are falling into the typographers’ trap.

Trying to be positive, you could, of course, claim they are brave, ignoring the obvious development in the media market and lifting themselves above what it requires.

Or you could say they are ignorant.

My own perspective is this:

If you are a paper journalist with many years ahead in your career, you should hurry up to develop digital skills.

Do you hear me?

Let me repeat it one more time:

If you are a paper journalist with many years ahead in your career, you should hurry up to develop digital skills.

Hurry up!

Some smart steps you could take include:

• Ask to work for some months – at least – in the online news department of your company
• Start learning basic multimedia skills, like photo shopping, video filming and editing, how to make sound slides, etc.  Apply for courses and seminars – and volunteer to bring video into your story assignments.
• Connect with people in social media – and share. Get yourself accounts at least on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – and try to use it to its full potential.
• Take a proactive attitude towards how your stories are published online, check traffic statistics and participate in the online discussion of your own content (without revealing personal opinions that weaken your editorial integrity)
• Consider starting a blog – and try to learn all the trick necessary to make it work

I have heard some colleagues argue that they would love to develop digital skills, but that they are waiting for the employer to provide necessary training.

This is a far too defensive attitude in my opinion.

Wait for your employer?

Come on!

Nobody but yourself can take responsibility for your own competence!

If you observe dramatic changes taking place in your own business that will influence your own career prospects, nobody but yourself can make sure you stay ahead of the game.

Nobody but yourself!

Look at it in a 5 – 10 years perspective.

What is likely to take place in that time frame?

My dear newspaper colleagues: Your business will be turned around by then! And it will affect you!

Please, please, please don’t fool yourself by thinking that editorial skills are easily adapted to new platforms without any effort.

You have to learn stuff!

You need to understand the concept of sharing, of dialogue with readers, how you can use multimedia in your stories, what makes readers click and spend time on your stories, the practical techniques of making your stories work in the digital world…

The choices you face are quite simple, in my opinion.

There are only two alternatives:

• Stay focused on the print business only!
• Hurry up to get digital competence!

If you stick to the first alternative, I think the consequence will be that you within a 10 year period will have big problems getting promoted or recruited to an editorial job.

Is that what you want?

If you choose the second alternative, you will find yourself much better positioned as the senior editors realize that they really, really, really need people who understand the digital world.

I think the choice is simple.

What do you think?

Recently published numbers for The Times‘ paywall demonstrates how hard it will be for media houses to make users pay for digital content.

In the beginning of July UK newspaper The Times introduced a paywall of its sites. No longer users could read articles for free. Now you had to pay. Compared to many other media houses, The Times had taken a deliberate choice of a closed wall strategy.

As expected, traffic dropped dramatically – with up to 90 per cent. Yet the whole industry has been wondering how many people actually signed up for the new offer.

The Times' experienced a dramatic drop in readership after the introduction of a general paywall. Source: Alexa.com

Finally the owner company News Corporation has released some figures – and its executives hail it as a big success. We are being told that they have achieved 105.000 “consumer sales” to date. The number includes both digital subscriptions on PC, iPad and Kindle as well single-day access to the site.

Are these numbers impressive? Or are they hiding a major failure?

Let us dig a little bit into the numbers and make some assumptions. Here are five essential questions and my attempts at answering them:

Question number 1: How many active subscribers does The Times have?

According to the information released from The Times, around half of the customer sales are monthly subscriptions.  This information is actually a little odd, as the web site quotes the price of £1 for the first month and then £2 per week.  Let’s not worry about that part, though, and instead concentrate on the 50.000 monthly subscription sales. This is the number of sales so far – the actual number of active subscribers will of course be lower.

The paywall was launched in the beginning of July – and we are now in the beginning of November. That gives the paywall four months operation time. Let us assume that The Times sold 20.000 subscriptions during the first month and thereafter 10.000 subscriptions per month – making a total of 50.000 subscriptions sold. Further let us assume a monthly reneval rate of 85 %.

If these assumptions are correct, The Times currently has about 38.000 active digital subscribers.

This puts the number of digital subscribers to 7,8 % of the circulation of the printed The Times paper (circulation 486.868 according to ABC in September). My guess is that 38.000 current subscribers probably is in the higher end of what is reality. Especially the monthly renewal rate could be much lower than what I have estimated, bringing the number of current active subscribers further down.

Question number 2: How much money has The Times made on user payment so far?

Subscriptions cost £1 for the first 30 days and thereafter £2 per week – or £8 per month.

With the assumptions taken in this article, The Times so far has made £593.000 – or USD 960.000.  To this we should add around 55.000 single-day purchases with the price of £1 – a total of £55.000.  That sums up to a total of £648.000 or USD 1.050.000.

That doesn’t sound much, does it?

No.

Yet it is important to understand how a revenue model like this works as new business is being developed. As long as the number of new customers are higher than the ones not renewing their subscriptions, income will increase each month.  For The Times that will probably still happen for a few months until a peak is reached. With 10.000 new subscribers per month and a reneval rate of 85 %, as assumed in this article, The Times will reach around 50.000 running subscriptions in February and a monthly income of around  £335.000, including 15.000 single-day purchase.  That is £4,02 million or USD 6,5 million per year in user payment.

My assumptions could be far off reality, of course, as I have no knowledge of how many new subscriptions The Times sells each month and what is the monthly renewal rate. This is just an educated guess based on the sparse information given by the newspaper company and my own experience in the media business. If reneval rates are significantly lower or The Times is selling much fewer than 10.000 new subscriptions per month the income peak may already have been reached.

Users at The Times are being teased with access for only £1

Question number 3: Is the paywall profitable for The Times?

For sure not – so far. While there is some user revenue, loss in advertising revenue probably is much more. It is widely estimated that The Times has lost up to 90 % of its online traffic, at least if we look at page views. Such a traffic drop will have a dramatic effect on advertising revenue.

Only News Corporation knows the exact mathematics, of course. But I am pretty sure that advertisement income used to be much higher that what The Times now is generating in user revenue.

Question number 4: Will the paywall be a smart move in the long run?

That is far too early to say. It all depends on how the market moves, and whether The Times succeeds in getting enough people to sign up each month.

My guess, however, is that they will fail in the long run.

Here are my reasons:

• Loss in advertisement income will be too big with traffic drop of this magnitude. Probably it would have been wiser to choose a meter model, like Financial Times and The New York Times.
• It is doubtful whether enough people will choose to subscribe digitally to maintain a sufficient revenue stream. Remember that The Times operates in an English language market with lots of free content.
• Most important: Over time The Times will have an engaging relationship to less and less people. In the end that will be a major strategic problem.  The media house will see its influence diminished and also no longer have the same opportunity to monetize the user base, and not only the content, as before.

Don’t forget, however: I could be wrong! What if The Times actually succeeds? What if the experiment demonstrates that many people are indeed willing to pay for digital content of high quality? Then Rupert Murdoch has a head start on all of his competitors.  He will be the one making the big profit as payment for being early mover.

I don’t think that is what will happen. But I could be wrong. And Rupert Murdoch might be the winner – as he has been several times before.

Question number 5: Is The Times‘ paywall good for the rest of the media business?

Yes, definitely. Rupert Murdoch has taken a bold move that is making a major impact on the media landscape and maybe even readers willingness to pay. Most media companies have realized that they need to build new revenue streams in addition to display ads. This becomes even more urgent as readership of printed papers continues to fall.

Yet putting up a full paywall, as The Times has done, is a very risky strategy. Most media houses will not even dare to consider such a radical alternative at the moment, worrying that it will do major damage to their positions in the reader market. When a major media company like News Corporation is willing to take this risk with one of its biggest brands, it is an experiment that is being followed closely by the whole industry. And even if  The Times fails, Rupert Murdoch has contributed in making people more used to thinking that they actually might have to pay for content.

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There is an interesting detail in the press release from News Corporation: The company tells that about 100.000 print subscribers have signed up for the digital subscription, which this group gets for free.  That is 20,5 % of the print circulation – or one out of five. Personally I am surprised this number is not higher.

Now I am eager to hear: What do you make out of the recently released figures from The Times? Do you agree with my analysis? Or should the figures be analyzed in a completely different way? Let me know what you think!

Related articles from other sources

• Murdoch’s London pay wall may be dead end (Newsonomics)
• W(h)ither The Times? (Emily Bell)
• It’s official: News Corp’s pay wall is a bust (GigaOm)
• Mixed response from PR industry on paywall figures for The Times (prweek.com)
• Times paywall – what constitutes success then? (guardian.co.uk)
• Murdoch’s Paywall Numbers Sound Better Than They Really Are (techdirt.com)
• Victory for paywalls? 105,000 shell out for Murdoch’s Times [TNW UK] (thenextweb.com)
• The successes and failures of the Times’s paywall (newstatesman.com)
• News Corp. Being Buried Under Crumbling Paywall (revenews.com)
• Rupert Murdoch Declares Pay Wall a Success. Is It? (blogs.forbes.com)

How can media companies measure the value of content? Is editorial quality the only aspect? Or should they look at it from a pure commercial viewpoint?

An interesting discussion started in the Norwegian Twitter area this week that made me reflect about the value of editorial content. How should media companies pay for content? What ought to be the guiding principles behind what constitutes value?

Let me first introduce you to the discussion that made me start to think about this issue. It actually involved Aftenposten.no, a major news site in the Media Norway group that I work for. A blogger explained how he had been offered to blog on Aftenposten.no - a news site with 1,1 million unique users per week. There were two conditions. He could not publish the same material on his own blog and Aftenposten would not pay him.  The blogger decided to refuse the offer, thinking that a major media corporation should in fact pay him if he was to spend his limited time writing for them.

As I work for the mother company of Aftenposten, I am certainly not going to state any opinion about the position of the Norwegian news site in this matter. But I think the discussion raises some important questions about how media companies could choose to price the value of editorial content in the digital world, at least if we look at it from a pure commercial point of view.

In the print newspaper world it used to be easy: Any individual article was part of a bigger bundle. It was impossible to estimate how many people appreciated the specific article – and it was entirely up to the editors to consider whether it should be part of the bigger bundle or not.  In this perspective only one pricing model made sense: Offer a payment that takes into consideration how much time and resources that have been put into producing the content.

In the digital media world the metrics are quite different. Suddenly we have very specific knowledge about the commercial value of each article. We know exactly how many people read it as well as the value of advertisement the traffic gives us. In fact we have all the knowledge we need to make a radically different pricing arrangement with the journalists, for instance based on a revenue share model.

So far, at least in the Norwegian market, we have not entered into this kind of arrangement with freelance journalists and other writers. But should we?

I don’t know. But let us at least summarize three different models available to estimate the value of content.

1. Payment based on work hours put into producing the content

In Norway the freelancer chapter of the Norwegian Union of Journalists strongly defends this model. The freelancers in fact have published their own standard price list, recommending what media companies should pay for different types of content. The price list has one single guiding principle: The more work that has been put into producing the content, the more the media company should pay.In addition the size of the media company is taken into account.

This model puts the full commercial risk at the hands of the media company. If a piece of content is hugely popular with the readers, the media site will make good money from the advertisement, while the reporter basically is underpaid. If nobody reads it – it is just bad luck for the media company. The journalist, on the other hand, receives his/her  high payment anyway.

2. Payment based on revenue share

Any individual article on a web site has a specific commercial value – and it is easy to measure it. It all depends on how many people read the article, in what context it is published and what is the CPM for the traffic in that context.

As most news web sites still offer only free content, the CPM is the basic income model.  A revenue share model with the freelance journalist is thus an easy alternative to conceive.  The media company could for instance put up a 50/50 revenue share for all content, whether it be produced by professional journalists or amateurs, like bloggers. Let’s say the CPM is 10 dollars. An article that reaches 30.000 visitors (not untypical of the Norwegian market) thus would receice an income of 300 dollars. In a 50/50 revenue share model this would give the journalist USD 150 for the article.

A similar revenue share can be imagined for user-paid content.

For freelance journalists this model would mean that they get much lower pay for articles that are of minimal interest to readers or are in areas advertisers have low interest in. Articles that are reader successes, will be lucrative for the journalists. The model  maximises commercial revenue – but sometimes at the cost of socalled editorial quality.

A natural consequence of this model is that the journalist and the media company share the commercial risk with the content.

3. Content is basically free, but with great upselling opportunities for the journalist

This model primarily looks at the journalist/content producer as a business person interested increating opportunities as a independent content brand.

Using this model, the freelance journalist would give away his/her content to the media company for free in return for exposure and distribution to his/her main brand.  In the Scandinavian market, at least, this would be a very new way of thinking for freelance journalists. But you only have to go to the music industry to observe a relevant parallel: Less and less money is made from selling the actual music. Instead the distribution of tunes has become the major marketing tool for a new major revenue source: The events and tours.

The model is actually quite common in the digital world, especially among bloggers where the concept of “guest blogging” offers payment in terms of exposure and links rather than money. There are also many large media web sites that enter into distribution agreements with small niche sites. No payment is made for publishing the content, but the big site agrees to include a number of links directly to the small site as part of the article.

Advanced bloggers are currently more open to this model than most professionals journalists. For the “amateurs” blogging often is an activity to build a personal brand – enabling opportunities for new revenue sources in the long term perspective.

This model can give great opportunities for the journalist if he/she has a strategy of building a personal brand as well as a plan for monetizing the content in other ways than just getting paid for producing it, for instance by giving speeches or making money from a dedicated niche site. The challenge is, of course, that very few journalists work in this way.

To sum it up we have three basic models

• The media company takes the full commercial risk (payment based on time used)
• The media company and the journalist/blogger share the risk (revenue share model)
• The journalist takes the full commercial risk (free for the media company, but with lots of links to the journalist’s brand site)

The question, then: How should the media companies value content?

There is of course no easy answer to this. My intention with this article is merely to present some different ways to look at the question. In many cases content valuation will be a matter of conflicting interests, and it certainly depends of what types of content we are talking about and the economics within that specific segment. But I am pretty sure we are going to see a number of new models developing between the media companies and the freelance journalists in the next years. As the media companies are struggling to find sustainable business models for their digital operations, this development is almost inevitable.

All this being said, let me for the record underline that of course the editorial quality of the content always will be an essential aspect in valuation of content. And quality will not always correspond with readers’ or advertisers’  interest, yet it may definitely be valuable in the long run as part of the brand proposition.

What are your thoughts on this?

Media companies can only succeed in charging users for content if they provide unique value. Here are examples of how some sites try to achieve this.

As news media tries to introduce user payment, I have argued that there are essentially five ways to make users pay for digital content .

The five ways are:

• Unique Content
• Unique Convenience
• Unique Usefulnes
• Unique Packaging
• Unique Experience

Any successful attempt to charge users would need to have a very strong offering in at least one of those five areas. The most successful products will combine two or more of the drivers.

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I recently gave a short presentation of this model at a leadership conference in Estonia of Schibsted, the major European media group that I work for. In the presentation I included some examples of how media companies try to use these five drivers in order to charge users for content.

Here is a summary of the examples (mostly Scandinavian) I used in the presentation – with a few extras that I did not have time to include:

Fiskaren – small niche site with paywall

Fiskaren – or The Fisherman – is a small newspaper in Norway targeting commercial fishermen. The newspaper recently decided to put up a paywall on its site – and succeeded. Traffic to the site went down only very little – and they managed to recruit quite a nice number – comparatively speaking – of paying online subscribers.

The reason is obvious: Fiskaren offers Unique Content. There are very few other sites that write for this niche market. Thus the publication enjoys something close to a monopoly.

The Times – will fail in charging for content

The most talked about example when it comes to introducing user payment is The Times in London, which recently introduced a full paywall around the main web site.

This is a risky strategy, and chances are that they will fail.

The main value proposition to readers is that The Times offers Unique Content. But that is also the big questions mark.

As a national news site in a big English-language market: Do people really perceive the content to be so unique that is worth paying for? The verdict is still out: My prediction is that they will fail.

It is worth noting that The Times also try to offer Unique Usefulness to the readers through its Times Plus concept, with commercial offers and discounts on travels, concerts, etc.

The Wall Street Journal – one of very few success stories

The Wall Street Journal is one of the big success stories so far on user payment. 400.000 subscribers pay for their content online, in addition to many more who have access as part of their newspaper subscription.

Does The Wall Street Journal offer Unique Content?

Yes, it does.

Yet, the most important proposition is Unique Usefulness. The brand is extremely strong in providing financial information – and readers are able to convince themselves and their employers that reading The Wall Street Journal actually make them better at doing their job and in making money for their company.  And with the employers picking up the bill, WSJ got itself a good business model.

Kindle – popular for book reading

Kindle has become tremendously popular for book reading, especially in the USA. Also statistics show that Kindle users buy many more books than other customers at Amazon.

Why is that?

Unique Convenience. 650.000 books are available for sale everywhere, even on the beach. You buy with just one click – and the book has been downloaded to your e-reader one minute later. The screen provides excellent reading quality, even in daylight. The device itself is portable and batteries last up to one month. In short it is just a very convenient way of reading books.

The Weight Club – a combination of usefulness and community

VG in Oslo – and Aftonbladet in Stockholm – both run the Weight Club – a service helping members loose weight. Members are given practical tools to record what they eat and how much they exercise.

It has been a big success – and one reason is how the service combines several of the elements in our model. Foremost it provides Unique Usefulness. Members want to loose weight – and they get practical help in doing so.

There is of course also an element of Unique Content, as the journalists provide in-depth articles about health issues, loosing weight, exercising.

More important, though, is the Unique Experience offered by allowing the members to communicate with each other. Members are in a situation in which they desperately need to communicate with others who face the same challenge. I would guess that the forum probably is an important reason why people choose to stay on as member.

The Wired app – using iPad to its maximum

One of the most talked about iPad apps is from Wired magazine. For the first couple of issues it sold almost as many copies as the paper magazine itself.

This app goes much further than most media apps in utilizing the great editorial opportunities and technical capabilities of iPad, such as integrating video, interactive grapchis, cool functionalities, etc. It really is a different experience than reading the paper magazine.

Unique Packaging is the main driver here. Readers are tech-savvy and appreciate all the cool functionalities much more than an average person probably would.

There is of course also Unique Content. And as with other magazines on iPad it also provides Unique Convenience. You don’t have to go to the store anymore to buy a magazine. Your kiosk has moved into your sofa.

Aftonbladet Plus – a rare success story

Aftonbladet in Sweden has had great success with their Plus concept. Aftonbladet Plus is a subscription service giving readers access to premium content. The Plus content is clearly marked on the frontpage of Aftonbladet.se.
Aftonbladet does indeed provide Unique Content to the more than 100.000 Plus members. The site has separate journalists working specially on writing this content – and often reserves some of the best stories for the Plus members.

But the service also has a very strong element of Unique Usefulness to it. Much of the content are different types of guides making life easier for readers, such as travel guides, guides for buying cars, fixing your house, etc.

The TV Guide – charging for free content

Norwegian news site VG har moved very quickly up on Apple’s Top grossing apps list in Norway with its TV guide for iPad.

The content is easily available for free in any newspaper or news site. Why are people paying then?

First of all the app offers Unique Usefulness. Different functionalities, like the possibility to schedule your TV-night, makes it more practical to use than just a regular TV schedule.

But there is also an equally strong element of Unique Convenience. The primary user situation for iPad is in the sofa at night. And where do we watch TV? In the sofa at night, of course. Therefore the app is not only useful, but also very convenient to use. It’s just there in your hands – as you watch TV. VG has hit very well with a useful product designed for a particular user situation.

Aftenposten: E-paper with 150 years’ archive included

Aftenposten’s digital archive contains newspapers from 1860 up to today’s fresh edition. Containing almost 2 million pages there is no other newspaper in Norway with a similar historic archive. Thus this is indeed Unique content.

In fact this content has been free before. But you had to go to a library, ask for the micro film rolls and patiently go through themthem. It took for ever.

Now readers can do the same in their own home. It is Unique Convenience.

Consumer Reports- helping people solve their problems

People need practical help with their problems – and not only academic approaches.

Consumer Reports in the USA has managed to get more than 3 million peopole to subscribe to surveys, consumer tests and product comparisons on its site.

The reason is clear: Consumer Reports offers Unique Usefulness. It helps people make wise decisions in their everyday life.

An important element is that the service also offers Unique Convenience. Hundreds of sites offer product tests and for users it can take a lot of time to search through all of them and select which are the credible ones. Consumer Reports has over a long time succeed in building such a strong and credible brand that users save time by going directly to its site instead of searching all over for advice.

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What do you think of this way of looking at user payment? Do you have other examples that should be included on the list? I would love to hear your thoughts.

What could Apple do if it really wanted to revolutionize the media market? Here is one option.

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Apple is negotiating with big publishers about how to create a digital newsstand, according to Bloomberg. We are not only talking about how Apple could grab a bigger share of publishers’ subscription revenue, but about plans to establish a “News store” separate from the “App store”.

If the rumors are true, Apple is investing its own prestige in the success of media companies. A separate “News store” would give more income to Apple, but also involve Steve Jobs and his colleagues in making sure media publishers have a viable business model.

As I read about the “News store”, I started thinking about how Apple really could revolutionize the content market – if it wanted to, that is.

How is that?

Here is a suggestion:

Imagine for a second that Apple decided that it wanted to do the same with the media content market as it did with the music market.

What is that? Yes, you are right! Splitting up the “edited package” and selling the content in individual pieces/tracks.

How could that be done?

Here are some thoughts:

News media content today is normally sold as part of a bundled package. The printed newspaper is the most typical example, but most digital product versions are built on the same assumption.

You might ask: Why are the articles not sold individually?

There are a number of reasons:

• The market has always asked for “edited packages” – and that is the product that media companies traditionally are interested in offering.
• It is very hard for a single media company to build an efficient micro-payment solution and a market for individual articles.

So here is what Apple could do – and that would revolutionize the media industry:

Make a huge market based on single-piece content – and then allow for efficient repackaging into new products.

Have we seen this model before? Yes, we have. In the music industry. Apple created a market for single tunes, and not only the record as a bundle. And Spotify is in many ways a repackaging service, offering a very large package of music for one price and with people’s play lists as an alternative packaging.

Imagine the same being done with news. What could it mean?

• Apple would introduce a “Content store” consisting of millions of articles in predefined formats, including the possibility of including photos and videos and templates for presentation. The predefined format would fit perfect for iPad and iPhone.
• All articles would be tagged and categorized and put into a well organized structure making them easy to find. Apple would probably offer and enforce a set of quality standards to avoid the worst crap.
• The articles would be sold through Apple’s easy one-click payment system at a very low price per piece ( a few cents). Apple would of course take a cut of the income.
• Apple would put up a good system for user rating helping users find the high quality content of their interest and to ban content producers that do not offer sufficient quality.
• As a next step Apple could develop a product for repackaging the articles into new media products, allowing users to pick pieces from the huge database and sell them as edited topical packages. The business model would be a revenue share between the “content packager”, Apple and the individual content producers. The more your articles are being used by other editors, the more money you make.

What could be the consequences of such a launch from Apple, provided it was successful?

• Hundred thousands of bloggers and experts of all sorts would try to offer their writing up for sale at the “Content store”
• Some content types would soon emerge as the types people would be more willing to pay for. News articles would not necessarily be on the top of the list, while sophisticated guides and how-to’s probably would.
• There would soon be some big success stories of writers that make lots of money selling their content
• The possibility to make money repackaging other people’s content on a revenue share basis would release an enormous amount of creative energy in the content business
• And of course there would be plenty of failures. As always, most of the content providers would not really make that much money, but they would still continue to produce hoping that luck might change.

What could something like this mean for the media industry?

• It could potentially be a revolution as a mass market of single-piece content and repackaged content developed. The value of media’s edited packages would diminish – just like the music industry experienced. Such a market would also probably force prices of content down and make it difficult for media companies to sell their edited packages at the premium prices their cost structures need.
• New players would compete with the media companies in numerous niche areas and probably in main content areas as well. Yes, they compete already, but a successful content market by Apple would put a whole new dynamics into the playing field.

This is only a thought spin, of course. Whether such a scenario is indeed realistic I could not say. But as an editor I find it intriguing to speculate in whether the market for media content could be revolutionized in the same way as we have seen in the music industry. What type of business models could be game changers for the media?  An iTunes for articles, like described here? Or maybe a Spotify for media content – where users pay one price for access to thousands of sources? Something else?

So far media companies have based their value proposition on the concept of “edited packages”, just like the music industry did. But will this model be sustainable in the long term as content becomes disaggregated in the digital world? Could a big global player like Apple or maybe Google completely change the rules of the game also in our industry?

I certainly hope  the media’s authority to select and edit will survive, as I personally value the quality of editorial selection done by brands I respect.

But unfortunately I am not sure.  We could be in for a revolution at some stage.

What do you think? Is this just speculation? Or could it happen?

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Readers are of course moving online. In fact, until recently managers of the big media houses were all able to argue that never before had so many people in total used their media products. It is interesting to note that for both VG and Dagbladet the total reach is now diminishing. For Aftenposten, which is still lagging behind its competitors in the number of online users, the total reach is still increasing.

Change in number of readers for the 10 biggest newspapers. Source: TNS Gallup

What shall we make of this development?

First of all: It is bound to continue and probably also pick up speed. As I have argued before: What can become digital, will become digital.  This transformation is inevitable – and the biggest challenge for the media companies right now is not to stop people running away from the printed papers, but to figure how to build a strong digital offering with a sound business model. Media houses that do not have that focus are going to loose.

Secondly: Norwegian newspapers still have a very strong position in the population and are thus well positioned to manage the digital transformation – if it is managed well, that is. Hardly in any other country the online newspapers are used so much as in Norway. The largest news site, VG Nett, has a daily reach of 37,6 per cent of the population! Beat that! Dagbladet reaches 24,4 per cent online every day, while Aftenposten.no has a daily reach of 14,8 per cent.

Related articles in other blogs

• Is it too early or too late to migrate newspapers and books to e-readers? (Print CEO) (whattheythink.com)
• The Web Eclipses Print Newspapers as a News Source (dailyfinance.com)
• How Income From News Readers Stagnates Despite Growth (paidcontent.org)
• Not a single newspaper in the UK shows an increase in circulation (guardian.co.uk)
• How news sites in Norway engage readers more than in the UK (betatales.com)

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