No Shirking Unsolicited Inputs about Traditional Publishing
June 4, 2012
Straight away I am not a “real” journalist. I am not a college professor. I am not a pundit. I am an old guy who is greatly amused with the antics of Warren Buffet, a budding newspaper magnate. I am an old guy who finds the business high jumps of traditional publishers a modern day Kabuki. The story is well known, and I like seeing how the actors deliver the script. I am an old guy who chuckles as online successes which are attracting more legal hassles than a high school physics teacher’s magnet and iron filings demonstration.
You will want to read “The Washington Post Co.’s Self Destructive Course,” “Responding to Shirky on the Washington Post” and “WaPo Must Transform to Survive.” Both write ups adopt the “we know better” approach to providing business advice. I am assuming that both authors are ace executives, have a good mastery of finance and management, and can run big organizations in a way that would cause Jack Welch to take notes.
A tip of the sombrero to Cervantes and Picasso. Get those windmills.
The fact of life in traditional publishing is, for me, easy to summarize:
There are fewer people who read books, magazines, and newspapers than there were in 1970. For the readers, there are many choices. For those who don’t read, the easiest path between their need for information and information is medieval, maybe preliterate Bronze Age. And Google? Instead of white papers Google shoots videos. I sat and watched two camera people and one guy with a sound boom. The focal point was a Googler “running the game plan” about Google enterprise search. The Googler left out some information which I had heard circulating in mid May 2012 at the search conference in New York; namely, the US government was not renewing some Google Search Appliances due to cost, there are too few engineers devoted to the Google Search Appliance, and that any of the nifty integration requires custom code. Yep, a video. The truth for the non readers who don’t have time for the old fashioned approach to information.
Amazon is pushing short books, 3,000 words to maybe three times that length. Why? There are lots of well heeled Amazonians who do not have time for a weighty tome. Magazines cost quite a bit, even for those with six or seven figure incomes. Future Publishing turned me off with its hefty price in the UK last week and an even heftier price at the lone remaining book store in my area of rural Kentucky.
The fix is not “hamsterized nonsense.” (The phrase is cute but I don’t know what it means.) The nonsense, I believe, is share buy backs. Okay, but if one is in the right part of the financial food chain, those buy backs can deliver a new BMW or a condo in Nice, France. That is the marvel of point of view.
My view is that these three pundits are advocating actions which are similar to a non playing, couch potato who shouts at the TV during a professional football game, “I could do a better job calling plays that you.” If that person were better, wouldn’t that person be working for a professional team. The fact that a person has not won such a job suggests that either the person is unqualified or had a shot and flubbed it. It is easier to criticize instead of do. When the do amounts to telling senior managers what they should do, I enjoy the exercise immensely.
My view of traditional publishing is:
- Demographics have changed so some of the old assumptions held by traditional publishing companies either don’t work or lead to unexpected consequences. One should learn from mistakes, but if most publishing Web sites are cost centers, not revenue pumps, then the problem is deeper than doing some digital stuff and adapting.
- Paying for content works when the information is must have. The fact is that most information is nice to have. Trying to charge for nice to have just does not work. A quick look at the history of Dialcom, the Source, or Gannett’s online local newspaper plays provide some interesting case examples.
- Small start ups cannot be replicated at most companies. The reason is that the people who do start up often approach tasks with a different mind set than an employee. Until the mind set shifts, arguing that a major publishing company work like a two person start up is silly. Never worked. Won’t work. Even digital outfits like Google cannot approach innovation the way it did in 1996 to 1998. When Googlers can’t find alternative revenue streams after 13 years of trying, what does one expect of traditional publishing companies?
The fact is that traditional publishing companies are in the buggy whip manufacturers’ position when automobiles appeared. The fact that non executives without profit and loss responsibility offer advice is just funny. The professional managers are often aware of what must be altered. Those managers and their blue chip advisors cannot implement meaningful change.
Academic inputs are not likely to induce change. Real journalists are not the answer to traditional publishing company woes. Verbiage is quite entertaining, however.
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2012
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