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Featured Post | Perspectives | Policy

Here are 3 big changes coming for digital media

In case you haven’t heard, there is an election coming up in a couple of weeks. Regardless of which party wins, the public policy landscape for digital media is likely to undergo some major shifts in the next couple of years. Let’s take a look at three big changes on the horizon:

Google and Facebook will pay for premium content

In 2019, the European Union approved the Copyright Directive and underlying publishers’ right, which gave news publishers legal leverage to demand better terms from platforms. Now, all eyes are on France where a court ruled earlier this year that Google must negotiate in good faith with publishers. Of course, Google will avail itself of all the legal channels to slow down any effort to force them to pay for content. However, it’s likely just a matter of when, not if.

On the other side of the globe, in 2019, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to develop a voluntary code to rebalance the relationship between news organizations and big tech platforms. As the latter predictably dragged their feet, the ACCC switched gears earlier this year and moved to the development of a mandatory code, which appears likely to be easily approved by the Australian parliament in 2021.

In response, Google and Facebook have threatened to drop news from their services and/or pull out of these markets altogether. However, we know these are empty threats. For one, there’s common sense. If Facebook’s news feed and Google’s search results were devoid of trusted news organizations, what kind of miserable consumer experience would that be?

Really, given the massive profit margins of these tech companies, and the political scrutiny they are facing on multiple fronts, it makes sense for them to simply buy their way out of this problem. Case in point: Earlier this month, Google launched Google News Showcase, which will pay out approximately $1 billion in licensing fees to a select group of news publishers. As News Corp’s CEO, Robert Thomson, noted, “…the principle and the precedent are now established.” My take: Google sees the writing on the wall and is trying to get ahead of regulators in an effort to set the market.

Also, earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee issued a lengthy report that summarized their investigation into big tech platforms and laid out a host of legislative solutions. One of those proposals would allow news publishers to collectively negotiate terms with platforms like Google and Facebook. It’s pretty clear which way the wind is blowing. Platforms will pay for premium content in the not-to-distant future.

Consumer privacy laws will impact data collection and profiling, especially programmatic advertising

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went on the books in 2018, was meant to give citizens new rights and protections over their data. Since then, the common narrative from big tech’s apologists has been that GDPR didn’t work. It only resulted in annoying pop-up notices while Google and Facebook cemented their dominance in digital advertising.

I dispute the narrative that GDPR didn’t work. It hasn’t been enforced…yet. The most significant enforcement action to date has been a French court ruling (currently under appeal) that Google improperly gained consent from consumers, which resulted in a $50 million fine. The resolution of that case could have huge implications for the entire industry, not just Google.

Meanwhile, Google, Facebook, Apple, and other companies claim Ireland as their European headquarters, which gives primary jurisdiction to Helen Dixon, Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner (DPC). Last month, in response to a European court ruling, she announced that Facebook and other companies could not transfer data about European citizens back to the U.S. because the U.S. does not have equivalent privacy safeguards. In response, Facebook sued the DPC and declared that they might pull out of the European market if this ruling stands. (Sound familiar?)

At the same time, there are hundreds of cases pending before the Irish DPC, any one of which could have wide-ranging ripple effects. Adding to the pressure for her to act, the Belgian data protection authority issued an initial finding just last week that the IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) is not compliant with GDPR. While the IAB Europe is expected to push back on these findings, the ruling could have massive implications worldwide for programmatic advertising, in particular the real-time bidding systems for open exchanges.

According to the United Nations, 132 out of 194 countries have enacted some kind of data privacy law – many of which are modeled after GDPR. This November, California voters are likely to approve a ballot initiative called the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), which will align California’s privacy law much more closely with the GDPR.

Of course, Google and Facebook have enormous legal and lobbying budgets that they will leverage to forestall regulation and enforcement for a time. But, eventually, the same public pressure that led to the enactment of GDPR and other data privacy laws will lead to the enforcement of these laws, which are primarily targeted at limiting the ability of big tech platforms to collect data about consumers.

Platforms will soon face new responsibilities and liabilities

Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic seem to be hell-bent to make platforms more accountable for what’s happening across their services. This morning, the U.S .Department of Justice, along with 11 state attorneys general, filed suit alleging anticompetitive practices by Google with regard to the search marketplace.

The suit does not lay out specific remedies but could include breaking up pieces of Google into separate companies and/or imposing new obligations on the company. While the suit is likely to take years to play out in the courts, it dramatically ramps up the pressure on Google while also ensuring the conversation will remain top of mind for policymakers. It’s also widely expected there will be additional suits filed by the bipartisan state attorneys general who have been investigating Google on a range of practices including digital advertising.

Meanwhile, members of both political parties in the U.S. have expressed grave concerns about the anti-competitive practices and dominance of the big tech platforms. Democrats have expressed additional concerns about the impact on democracy, news organizations and vulnerable segments of society. Republicans have lambasted the platforms for allegedly suppressing conservative speech.

Importantly, both parties agree that platforms’ algorithms should be transparent. They think regulators should have greater authority to oversee their actions and mergers. And both sides believe that that Section 230 protections should be significantly narrowed. The CEOs of Google, Facebook and Twitter will likely be walking into a political minefield next week as they testify to Senate Commerce on this sensitive topic under threat of subpoena.

In Europe this month, European Commission Vice President Margrethe Vestager announced plans to move forward by the end of this year with two major legislative initiatives designed to impose a whole new set of obligations on big tech platforms. These big tech companies used to be the darlings of innovation. Now they are nearly uniformly seen as impediments to economic growth and democracy.

What does all this mean for publishers?

Taken together, these three unfolding and inevitable changes should provide a unique opportunity for premium publishers. Obviously, public policy debates are messy. And lawmakers and regulators don’t have the best track record in terms of truly understanding tech.

But, as we’ve seen with enforcement action in Europe, investigations by various competition authorities and hearings before the US Congress, policymakers have gotten a lot savvier and are poised to act in bold, new ways. Going forward, companies that enjoy trusted, direct relationships with consumers and advertisers are likely best positioned to flourish in a world where premium content and contexts will have greater value.

Featured Post | Innovation

How Vox Media uses its podcast network to grow franchises

Vox Media has become a podcasting powerhouse, with more than 200 shows across multiple categories. From news and tech to culture, comedy and sports, the publisher is seen as a leader when it comes to building and monetizing audiences around their premium podcasts.

The Vox Media Podcast Network is well-established. However, there is a great deal of strategic thinking and consideration that goes into developing new shows. This has been highlighted recently with the launch of a new narrative podcast, Go For Broke, from Epic Magazine. 

Vox Media’s VP and Executive Producer of Audio Nishat Kurwa and Epic Magazine’s Director of Business Operations Melis Tusiray discussed the development of Go For Broke. They also explore the ways in which they leverage the power of the network when launching new shows. 

Developing Epic’s first podcast

Go For Broke is a narrative franchise that looks at the stories within historical success “bubbles.”  The idea for the podcast stemmed from a discussion of Pets.com. For those who don’t remember, the pet supply enterprise rose to fame after a sock puppet advertising campaign. It became one of the more high-profile victims of the dotcom bubble burst in the early 2000s. 

“As we started talking about bubbles, it just really occurred to us at that moment that there was so much rich storytelling under this thematic concept of bubbles. It really made sense to do it as a podcast,” said Tusiray. “We could put in the audio texture of that time period, and really immerse the listeners in it. So when Epic merged with Vox Media in 2019, this was one of the first stories that we pitched.”

Hosted by BuzzFeed News alumna Julia Furlan, the series will address the ways in which the first dotcom bubble set up the dominance of the tech industry. It will also highlight how the same forces that caused the first crash are still at work in today’s tech economy. 

This is Epic’s first full podcast show. So, it will be an opportunity for the team to discover their own audio voice and style within Vox Media’s Podcast Network. The brand has a strong background in storytelling through their publications. They’ve also done film and TV work, all with a focus on telling extraordinary true stories.

“It was when we joined Vox Media and we got to know the Vox Media Podcast Team that the opportunity became very clear,” explained Tusiray. “It became the right entry point for us to do our first Epic Magazine-branded narrative podcast.”

Leveraging a network

Having a well-established podcast network is key to the success of new shows at Vox Media. “We leverage our network inventory to do a lot of audio promotion across different audio sets and different categories,” Kurwa said. 

New podcasts are frequently cross-promoted through audio promotions in similar categories. Occasionally Vox Media makes use of feed drops; it puts a trailer or whole episode of a new podcast into another show’s feed in order to attract listeners.

Go For Broke’s focus on the dotcom crash for the first season means that it covers both business and technology. These are categories which the Vox Media Podcast Network already publishes some of its biggest shows such as Pivot and Land of the Giants. “We know our audience is already interested in insightful coverage and historical narratives in those areas,” explained Kurwa. “So we took that as a strong signal that this would be a smart series to pursue.”

“That is really important when we’re thinking about developing a new show. What do we know about the audiences we already have? What do we know about the ways that we’ll be able to leverage our network to promote any new shows that we decide to publish?”

Building out franchises

One of the strategies that has made the Vox Media Podcast Network so successful over the past few years has been leaning into its franchises. This involves building out an area of focus for a brand, and then doing special series within that. For Epic, Go For Broke will play a formative part of shaping its future audio portfolio within Vox Media.

“Part of that initial pitch and development process was looking at what we can grow as a franchise,” Kurwa outlined. “As a network, we really have to develop our discipline around what makes sense for the individual brands, and what makes business sense, especially when looking at a very saturated podcast market. Where can we have success, where can we make inroads?”

This strategy plays out across other podcasts Vox Media looks to develop as well. The idea has to be able to extend across multiple seasons and stories to capitalize on the established audience. “While we’re in production for the first season, we’re already thinking about what a second, and even third season can be,” Kurwa added.

Go For Broke has benefited from Vox Media’s centralized audio team, who work across the various editorial networks to help shape their audio strategies under the Vox Media umbrella. This covers everything from the pitching and development process to support with production, marketing and sales.

Stability in podcasting

Coronavirus has not slowed Vox Media’s podcasting efforts. Like many other publishers, it has seen growth during this period, with listeners increasing by almost 50% over the past year.

At the start of 2020, Vox Media was  reportedly aiming to double their $10 million-a- year podcasting business. Kurwa wouldn’t comment on revenue specifics, but said that they were on track with the target. Most importantly, the podcast business has shown stability throughout the pandemic.

“The fact that podcast audiences have remained stable and grown so much is very encouraging for the Podcast Network,” Kurwa said. There have been changes in the time that people listen, with a notable shift from the commute to now listening in the middle of the day or in the evening after dinner.

“The listening has time shifted. But it’s grown in really promising ways,” she added.

The strength of the Vox Media Podcast Network is in knowing its audiences. Epic Magazine’s Go For Broke launches into a vertical that Vox Media already has established podcasts in. This gives the brand an edge when it comes to promotion, monetization, and developing further audio products.

Featured Post | Innovation

How NowThis’ new channel plans to tackle climate in a crowded video ecosystem

When you’re launching a new brand amidst multiple global crises, it helps to hone your focus and target audience. That’s part of the thinking behind NowThis Earth. The new channel from Group Nine Media’s mobile-first news publisher NowThis will address the impact of human actions on the Earth’s climate.

NowThis Earth launched in partnership with a coalition of climate-focused non-profits, research organizations, and NGO’s. The new channel will offer daily coverage of science-based coverage of the changing climate, as well as stories that focus on sustainable living. According to NowThis President Athan Stephanopoulos, climate change is a topic around which the NowThis audience is already highly engaged.

Mobilizing the brand

That’s one way in which NowThis differs from some legacy publishers. Many have struggled to find a way to cover climate change comprehensively. They cite limited consumer appetite for science-based coverage and the risk of fatigue with the sometimes-dire stakes of the issue. Attitudes toward and interest in the issue has started to shift among the public at large. However, Stephanopoulos is confident that NowThis’ young audience, primarily composed of Millennials and Generation Z, is more than ready for a sharper editorial focus on the issue many see as the defining challenge of their age.

“When we’ve covered issues of climate and sustainability in the past we’ve seen those stories over-index in terms of engagement, particularly with our younger audience,” says Stephanopoulos. In fact, NowThis viewers are five times more likely to engage with climate and sustainability content than with any other topic. This engagement has produced a reported 600 million views across NowThis’ existing news and politics channels. Clearly, its native audience is ready to see the topic take center stage.

Audience engagement

Of course, even with signs of growing consumer interest, launching a new mobile-first news channel in a crowded ecosystem presents challenges. That’s why NowThis is leveraging some of its existing assets to give the new brand a boost. NowThis Earth will take over the channel previously occupied by NowThis Future, a science and technology vertical that was one of NowThis’ most frequent homes for sustainability-driven content. Taking over an existing channel with a built-in audience will give Earth a leg up as it aims to break into an increasingly competitive mobile video market. NowThis can seamlessly connect new brand’s content directly with the segment of the audience most primed to receive it.

The channel also enjoyed a boost from science educator, climate activist, and occasional NowThis collaborator Bill Nye. He gave the launch a boost with the introduction of a live climate tracker. The new channel is open to partnerships with relevant voices in the climate conversation. However, Stephanoulos stays that bringing Nye into the launch has more to do with foregrounding future collaborations with the brand than a concerted influencer strategy for the channel. “It was mostly about the fact that we’ve done work with Bill in the past. And we’re talking about things we can do with him now under the NowThis Earth umbrella.”

Strategic partnerships

The new channel will also leverage an array of non-profit partnerships that will play a key role in informing its editorial coverage and helping it to connect with new audiences. NowThis has teamed with the Global Commons Alliance, a coalition of climate-focused organizations including research, business, and philanthropy. According to Stephanopoulos, the partnership will help NowThis Earth to identify stories on the frontlines of climate coverage. IT will also provide access experts who can provide additional context. GCA member organizations will also contribute local reporting from journalists and NGO employees involved in conservation efforts around the world.

The Global Commons Alliance will also help support the new channel through funding that will allow it to remain, at least initially, ad-free. In the near-term, the focus for Stephanopoulos and his team is on building an editorial brand that can motivate its viewers to take the kind of actions that help to address the global climate crisis. This could be by donating to preferred causes, following tips for more sustainable living, or engaging in activism.

NowThis has successfully partnered with commercial brands in the past. However, Stephanopolous thinks it’s important to avoid any potential conflicts at launch. He remains optimistic about the long-term potential of traditional advertisers to support sustainability-driven content both on NowThis Earth at large.

“We’ve seen a lot of brands and advertisers who want to be in this space, particularly content around sustainability,” says Stephanopoulos. “There are a number of companies that are driving themselves to be more sustainable as brands. I believe there will be even more opportunities in the future.”

Lessons to repeat

For publishers looking to launch a new video brand into today’s highly competitive market, there are some valuable lessons in the NowThis approach. NowThis Earth isn’t so much a new vertical, as a distillation of coverage that was previously spread across multiple channels in the NowThis portfolio.

With close attention to user engagement, the NowThis team was able to identify an area of opportunity that it was already well-positioned to develop based on its existing network of partners and to grow based on its established cross-channel audiences. The topic is timely, but as Stephanopoulos pointed out, NowThis has been nurturing this audience across several of its brands for years already.

Featured Post | Innovation | Revenue

Insight killed the video star: The role of video in premium subscriptions

It doesn’t seem so long ago that premium video was the great hope for publishers. Newspapers including The Daily Telegraph were investing heavily in building up their video teams, only to have the ground fall away from underneath them when platforms changed the terms of agreements. The result? Newspapers cut their losses and jettisoned the teams around which they had so recently built their strategies.

Premium video now finds itself in a bit of a limbo. It is no longer the star of most publishers’ offerings (save for a few examples). And it has taken a back seat when it comes to the marketing of news paywalls. Instead, insight and access are the new tentpoles of subscriptions. That’s never been more clear than when the Telegraph, fresh from abandoning its video unit, launched an out of home ad campaign heralding its unfettered access to Westminster.

The Athletic has taken a similar approach. The sports analysis site, which has outperformed during Covid, has emphasized the access its journalists have with athletes (and the access its subscribers get with the journalists). Crucially, The Athletic has eschewed video for the most part. The company does create or licensing video. However, it does not view it as central to its value proposition, as this interview with its president and cofounder Adam Hansmann demonstrates:

“According to Hansmann, the industry’s sense of news, often based on daily newspaper deadlines rather than what readers will pay for, is outdated. ‘The modern fan already knows what happened in a game, whether it be from Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. They’ve seen the highlights a million times on the internet’”.

Short and social

Hansmann’s nod to the popularity social video is telling. Mobile video is still far and away the largest growth market for the medium. That’s especially true in markets like China, where short-form video dominates any growth charts. Users spent a total of nearly 600 million hours per day watching short-form videos on mobile in April 2019. That’s more than in any other category.

Additionally, premium video is expensive to produce and the ROI is less clear-cut than for the mass-produced videos on YouTube. As Vanita Kohli-Khandekar explains: “Because [ad-supported] video is free, platforms will do anything to get eyeballs. But subscription-supported programming (usually) is well-researched, written and produced – whether in entertainment or news.”

So, the bottom has dropped out of the video advertising market on platforms. Short-form video is the new normal. And even sports-based digital publications don’t feel the need to make premium video part-and-parcel of their offering. Is it now time to call “cut” on the concept of premium news video at newspapers?

Not news

News publishers do license footage and social video to accompany breaking news. However, the reality is that, unless premium video is a newspaper’s key focus, it just doesn’t make sense for them to invest in strictly news-centric video. For one thing, news video has a shorter tail than other types of video. For another, given that individual papers have a far smaller footprint than other platforms, it’s unlikely that they can attract enough eyeballs to compete with viewers on, say, YouTube.

That is, in part, why publishers like Joe (and its current affairs-based YouTube spinoff PoliticsJOE) choose to produce vox-pops and simple interviews. Frankly, they suit the ad-based platforms better. Even The Financial Times, which does produce longer form videos, typically hews close to the interview-led format on its in-house videos. This format entails a relatively low investment in terms of time and editing, despite looking extremely professional. However, they don’t match the level of production quality of traditional broadcasters or OTT entertainment services.

Head of audio and video for The Evening Standard Chris Stone said: “When a breaking news event happens there is obviously massive spikes in traffic, and everybody’s very interested in this one thing that’s happening. And so, it’s actually quite easy to serve video to that audience, because there’s people out there that are looking for that right then. But it tends to be a shorter tail. And that spike will disappear very quickly. And then you’ll be on to the next thing.”

The lifestyle lifecycle

Instead, he argues that lifestyle video content is the way forward for newspapers. It has a longer lifespan and greater opportunity for commercial partnerships.

Paul Newman is brand director for Future Plc’s home interest titles. Speaking about its own “pivot to video” with the Real Homes Show, he notes that: “Real Homes Show… has been a huge success since we launched it last April. We generated hundreds of thousands of views of the show. It’s proved incredibly popular with commercial partners.”

“I think the important thing is just to start with a good solid business plan, and to understand why you’re creating video, rather than just creating video because you think you should, or because somebody in senior management thinks, ‘Oh we haven’t gotten the video content, maybe we should get on with creating some.’”

The success of lifestyle content in attracting users to sign up for a subscription has already been clearly demonstrated by The New York Times, whose Cooking app is frequently cited as a reason for paying. It is, unsurprisingly, heavily based around video.

Similarly, major lifestyle publications have made their archive of health and fitness videos available as part and parcel of their memberships. The reality, then, is that while video is still a good investment for newspapers for driving subscriptions, oftentimes news video is not.

Marketing medium

So, does that mean that there is no opportunity for newspapers around news video? Not at all. Just look at the success of Vox’s Explained series on Netflix. It delivers an awful lot of value to the parent brand in other ways that aren’t primarily monetary. At the time of Explained’s launch, Vox’s editor-at-large Ezra Klein stated that “… the Vox team did think about the overall Netflix audience, which is much bigger than Vox’s. But not as much about whether those people were watching on phones or tablets or other devices.”

Newspapers also recognize that video consumption habits are different among their key demographics. Consumption is growing across the board. However, it is effectively the primary means of media consumption among younger audiences. The Guardian, which hit one million subscribers on its YouTube channel last year, is keenly aware that those younger audiences are the key to its future.

One million subscribers may not sound like a lot on YouTube. It is considerably smaller than many individual’s channels, and any ad revenue it generates is likely to barely cover production costs, if at all. That, after all, is why many larger (non-media) YouTube channels operate Patreon or donation models as well.

The longer-form explainer news videos that The Guardian produces and makes available for free is effectively the best form of brand marketing possible. It hits audiences where they typically spend their time and can be used as a lure to drive interest back to the paper’s own membership scheme. More than that, as audiences shift to seeing YouTube as a primary source of news, it helps demonstrate that the brand can be trusted above all the conspiracy and polarized videos that typify the platform.

News publishers are serious about the quality of their journalism, no matter the medium. As younger people’s consumption habits lean further towards video, then investment in news video is a way to communicate that quality. It just requires publishers to recognize that the return on that investment is unlikely to come quickly or easily. Rather, it will come from a deeper overall relationship with the audience segment on which they will soon depend.

Featured Post | Perspectives

Censorship isn’t the issue. Controlling the spread is.

In a recent meeting between the Vice President of Values and Transparency of the European Commission, Věra Jourová, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, they agreed there should be more focus on how harmful content is distributed and shown to people rather than pushing for its removal. This is a critical point to be made as we enter what may be the most volatile two months in the history of our still-young democracy.

If you don’t know Jourova, she speaks from experience on civil liberties and technology. Time Magazine named her to their Time 100 last year and she played a key role in passing the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law in Europe. Her responsibility now includes watching over democracy and election integrity. Meanwhile, Jack Dorsey continues to lead Twitter bravely, despite the political risks. Facebook, however, continues to play a game of public relations to the continued detriment of our democracy.

Facebook would prefer that our public debate is focused on issues of free expression. Mark Zuckerberg can then symbolically drape the American flag around his shoulders and remind us of the importance of free speech while his company sidesteps the perils of his platform and dodges the thorny issues at the core of Facebook’s profit model. In positioning his argument this way, Zuckerberg creates a false case in which supporters of our democracy’s rights to free expression must agree with him.

In this crowded theater, he not only defends the right to yell fire, and light them, but also algorithmically fans the flames so that they spread out of control. And he does so in the very same month his company threatens to block all news in Australia and to withdraw from Jourova’s Europe because their profit model can’t survive regulation, quite a statement if you stop and think about it.

As long as Facebook focuses on the issue of content take-down versus minimizing or stopping its amplification, they avoid the real issue with the platform. And they are certainly not going to solve it.

Yes, Facebook has become an essential utility to the world despite harboring toxic sludge

This is undeniable by all parties, including Facebook. And it makes any scaled changes particularly sensitive. This is particularly problematic and impactful in nations without the freedoms of our First Amendment. For these countries, the positives and negatives of Facebook are even more pronounced. And reports of Facebook cozying up to authoritarian governments are even more troubling.

We need to stop debating the “censoring” of posts on Facebook

First, Facebook is a private platform and has the right to make decisions to remove or promote posts as it sees fit according to the (you guessed it) First Amendment. More importantly, press advocates should be uncomfortable with Facebook outright removing posts unless the information presents an immediate danger to the public. If a Facebook user wants to follow and read Alex Jones or Michael Moore, then so be it. If Jones, Moore, or any of these folks want to share questionable content (within limits around issues like inciting violence and hate) then so be it. These are consumer choices and the statements from Jourova and Dorsey imply they tend to agree.

Reach = velocity x amplification

It has been frequently stated in policy circles that “freedom of speech” does not equal “freedom of reach.” This is a clear and elegant way to illustrate how protections from the government or from Facebook’s freedom of expression bear hug should stop at the company’s decision to permit a post to survive on its platform. It is too simple an analysis to treat Facebook merely as a “platform” or the “21st century town hall.” Being neutrally available to all is one thing. However, it does not account for the platform’s design decisions that impact whether posts spread like wildfires or fade into history. The average person’s posts simply don’t travel like a Trevor Noah monologue or a statement from President Trump, and it’s not simply because they have more “friends.”

This is the argument presented in an important 2019 UK report positing why Facebook is neither platform nor publisher. If Facebook were the traditional model of a publisher, it would commission, pay for, edit, and take responsibility for the content it disseminates. And there are already renewed efforts to make social media carry more liability. At the same time, it’s not merely a platform because it continually changes what is and is not seen, based on algorithms and its own employees’ human intervention. If it were purely a platform, then that liability protection it receives may be warranted.

Content targeting suppresses counter-speech

An influential academic compared Facebook’s “black box” algorithms to the opacity of newsrooms in the 80s. This is disingenuous. As we stated in our 2016 letter to the CEOs of Facebook and Google, no one is arguing we should return to the world of gatekeepers and information scarcity. Any comparison to newspapers and television falls apart here as social media platforms reinforce a cycle of regurgitated bias. We must recognize these same algorithms that microtarget content to individual users also serve to suppress the counter-speech to that same content. No news media is entirely immune to bias. However, balance, integrity, and responsibility to the public are fundamental to their success. And consumer feedback and choice offer a sufficient check on this.

So, when Facebook executives share platitudes about free expression in response to harmful content, please ask why they continue to actively promote this harmful content with their algorithms. When they describe the labels they had to be pushed into affixing to harmful content, please ask why they haven’t gone a step further and put these labels on the harmful posts before they’re even visible to users. When they describe their reluctance to censor individuals, please ask why they haven’t removed the tools in their product that allow for massive amplification of questionable content. In a message all too familiar to us in 2020, we need to stop the spread

Featured Post | Perspectives

The future of the newsroom post-pandemic

After nearly six months away, staffers at the Annapolis, Md.-based Capital Gazette came back to the office on Labor Day. However, they weren’t there to return to their desks. Instead, they came to reclaim their belongings, bidding farewell to their newsroom and vowing to continue covering the local community despite the loss of a local office space.

The Capital is one of five Tribune Publishing-owned papers whose newsrooms will soon be permanently closed. The company is evaluating its real estate needs “in light of health and economic conditions brought about by the pandemic,” a Tribune spokesperson told the paper last month, noting the high levels of audience engagement the Capital has achieved since March.

In lieu of a replacement office, Tribune will provide Capital employees with workspace at sister title The Baltimore Sun, about 30 miles north of Annapolis, when that paper’s offices reopen next year.

Lost without newsrooms

While news typically doesn’t happen in newsrooms, offices still play a vital role in news organizations. This lesson has only been underscored in recent months, said Pamela Wood, a Maryland state politics reporter at The Baltimore Sun who previously spent 13 years at the Capital Gazette.

“I find that the biggest problem is coordination among reporters and editors,” she said. “You can’t just shout across the newsroom.”

In a constant stream of phone calls, Slacks and emails, communication is slower and prone to challenges. Further, Wood says the loss of the newsroom has a particularly adverse impact on young reporters, who benefit from simply sharing workspaces with veteran colleagues.

“I’m worried for our young journalists,” Wood continued. “There’s a lot of learning that goes on just by observation. It’s so much easier just to ask a question of somebody. When you’re alone in your kitchen you lose a lot of that. And I think that’s to the detriment of the news organization.”

Adapting to the times

Media companies across the board have been forced to adapt to remote operations. At the same time, they are faced with a historic economic crisis that’s gutted advertising revenues. So it’s not a surprise that Tribine is not the only one to consider reducing its real estate costs.

Just last month, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch informed staffers that “remote work will be a larger part of our future workforce strategy,” as the company seeks to renegotiate its lease at One World Trade Center. Skift, a B2B media company covering the travel and hospitality space, opted not to renew its lease on its Manhattan headquarters in July.  CEO Rafat Ali estimated that the move would save the company $600,000 annually.

The Charlotte Observer, a McClatchy-owned newspaper, fully vacated its headquarters over the summer and won’t be finding a new office until at least 2021. President and executive editor Sherry Chisenhall said that while there will never be a replacement for a physical newsroom, the pandemic will likely prompt the organization to take a more flexible approach to workspace moving forward.

Permanent displacement

“I know that there are some companies or newsrooms that are rethinking whether they ever need an office again,” Chisenhall said. “I don’t think Zoom calls can fully replace what it means to work together. But I think the time where the office is the home base is probably over. We know that our job is to publish stories that are relevant to the community and to grow an audience that sees enough value in our journalism to pay for it. I think we can actually do that really well without saying that people have to work 40 hours a week in an office.”

Like Wood, Chisenhall said communication has proved a challenge. In particular, newsroom leaders need to be more conscious than ever of their employees’ wellbeing.

“We have to look out for each other in ways that we never had to consciously do before,” Chisenhall added. “It’s not as easy to know who needs to take a break. It just always feels like we need to do more to make sure we’re staying in touch with people.”

The future of the workplace

The non-profit ProPublica, a national outlet by nature, has long operated a network of reporters based around the country in addition to more formal offices in New York and Chicago. That setup, coupled with the occasional need to publish stories on weekends, meant the editorial side of the company was already well suited for remote work, according to president Richard Tofel. For him, it remains unclear what a large-scale return to in-person work might look like.

“My personal hunch is that we’ll end up with a smaller office with many more conference rooms, a lot of hot desking and a configuration that permits that. But that’s just a guess,” Tofel said. “Our business depends on attracting talent, and part of attracting talent is giving people an environment that maximizes their chances of doing good work. I think we’re going to have to learn about what that means as we go.”

The ease of the transition from an office to remote work varies from person to person, Tofel said, acknowledging that work-life balance is a concern. But Tofel added that feelings of being overburdened are more likely the result of covering multiple relentless news cycles than an inherent symptom of operating remotely.

“The result is that people are working unbelievably hard, and harder in many cases than is sustainable,” he said. “We try to emphasize to people the importance of taking time. Where we can slow things down, we do.”

Flexing flexibility

Despite the challenges, rethinking the function of the office and perhaps adopting a more relaxed approach to attendance could benefit employees in the long run, Chisenhall said.

“It would be great to be back in a situation where we could have space for a weekly staff meeting and to do the things that are easier and better to do in person, but not have this expectation that this is where you are by 8:30 every morning,” she said. “If untethering from an office helps people in this business improve their work-life balance, that could be a big plus that we come out the other side with.”

Publishers, especially those with a national focus, could also stand to benefit from a more distributed workforce that isn’t as dependent on physical offices clustered in large cities, Tofel said. A group comprised of journalists based all over the country, with a variety of perspectives and experiences, can help news organizations see stories and understand problems that they otherwise might miss.

Newsrooms are newsworthy

Wood has other concerns about the loss of the Capital Gazette newsroom. She worries that the lack of a dedicated office in Annapolis could place journalists in dangerous situations as the resumption of in-person activities necessitates more reporting from the field, often late into the evening.

“Now you have a reporter sitting in a car in a parking garage alone with their computer lit up,” Wood said. “Our main newsroom in Baltimore does have space. But it is absolutely not workable for a reporter who is covering stories in Annapolis. It slows us down and just makes it impossible to cover the news in a timely fashion. It’s unacceptable to say these far-flung suburban reporters can just work out of our city newsroom. That’s not a realistic solution.”

Despite his recognition of the advantages of distributed remote teams, Tofel isn’t ready to abolish newsrooms. “We have no intention of doing that. I do think that you need to gather some people very regularly. Top editors and people who run groups are often more efficient and spur more creativity if they are co-located. I’m not prepared to defend the idea that nothing is lost if you don’t have a newsroom.”

Featured Post | Innovation

How 3 local news outlets optimize mobile experiences

Around the world, mobile accounts for just over half of all online traffic. However, a concerningly large number of local news publishers have sites that are either inaccessible to mobile users, or are slow to load and clunky.

“A good mobile experience is absolutely pivotal,” emphasized news industry analyst Ken Doctor, who is launching his own local news outlet Lookout in the fall. “At least 65-70% of news reading is mobile. That defines the landscape. If you want to be in the news distribution business, you’ve got to go where people are.” And they are using their phones. 

But providing a good local news experience is about more than just making sure the content is accessible to readers. “The massive yet slow movement of traditional publishers to the web meant that they largely took their news sections and put the headlines on mobile in the most boring way possible,” Doctor explained. “A good local newspaper always gave you a sense of city life. It would show you the problems. But it also told you what was going on in town, fun things to do, characters in town.”

According to Doctor, most mobile experiences from local publishers lack a sense of place. “And local press at its best has always been about a sense of place.”

Many legacy organizations struggle to cater to the growth of mobile. But some recent launches have shown just how vital a good mobile experience is. Here, three publishers explain how they’re putting the mobile experience at the front and center of their local news delivery.

Spectrum’s new News App

SSpectrum Networks, a News and Sports Network owned by Charter, has recently launched its own local news app. The Spectrum News App combines written reporting from existing newsrooms and curated content from partner news organizations. It also includes local weather and linear feeds of all Spectrum News networks. 

Although Spectrum already has local linear news networks, they saw a mobile app as a way to go deeper into those communities with a wider range of content. “We were seeing these trends with mobile growth just exploding, and TV and mobile getting to a similar amount of time spent,” said  Alison Hellman, Group VP, Audience and Content Strategy at Spectrum. “It made sense for us as a business, but when you look at the gaps, there really is a gap in high-quality, targeted local news. We wanted to bring it to a new platform, and that’s how we got here.”

The app has live video and podcasts as well as text content. Hellman emphasised that it was how it all worked together which is one of the key draws. “Weather is critical for local news, and it’s not just the data, but it’s about the context,” she explained. “If we do this right, we are a one stop shop. People are doing some of these pieces well in the mobile space. But no one was providing it all.”

The app is free to access to all 28 million of Spectrum’s residential customers. For non-customers, the company offers  a 30 day trial. The mobile initiative is  a play for a long-term relationship with their customers. “We want to be a part of their lives in the way that they live their lives,” Hellman said.  “If they watch TV, we want to be there. But if they’re on the go, we want to be providing that information as well.”

Each locale in the Spectrum News App features original content produced specifically for the app by dedicated local digital journalists. It is also includes content from nearly three dozen local news partners. Sources range from major daily newspapers to community digital news outlets. This has helped bolster the app’s content in local areas. 

Launching The Longmont Leader

McClatchy is another publisher using mobile as a key part of its local news strategy. The company has partnered with Google to found The Compass Experiment. This news laboratory explores new sustainable business models for local news. The second of their local news sites, The Longmont Leader, was launched in May in Colorado.

Rather than building the site from scratch, The Compass Experiment partnered with Village Media, which operates  a number of local news sites in Canada. Village Media’s platform is mobile-responsive. It also has features such as classifieds and obituaries which can sometimes be complex to build and manage from scratch.

The Compass Experiment’s General Manager Mandy Jenkins explained that partnering means the team can focus resources on reporting rather than development. “I’ve seen other startups that have built their own thing. It always ends up being more expensive and more clunky than they think,” she said. “Ultimately, there’s a lot of people who do this well. And I don’t feel like we have to reinvent the wheel.”

The team did extensive research in the local community before launching to find out what people’s expectations were around both the content and the experience. The answers were unsurprising, but included not wanting hugely busy screens, ads popping up or autoplay videos. A clear, easy-to-navigate site was needed. And with the vast majority accessing the internet via mobile, a mobile-default mindset was essential.

This mindset extends back even to before the stories are published. “Even within the CMS, when [the journalists] produce stories, we get a mobile preview by default,” explained Jenkins. “Most of our readers are on mobile, so that’s where we have to look at it.”

This mobile-first thinking doesn’t have to mean producing an app as there are plenty of ways to engage users through mobile sites. “Although we’re not going with an app strategy, we’re sticking with a mobile web strategy, we’re still looking at doing mobile push alerts,” Jenkins outlined. “Not just for breaking news, but things like local election alerts and what’s going on around town. We’re starting to put together the strategy around that and how we’ll use them.”

Lookout for local news in Santa Cruz

Unlike Spectrum and The Longmont Leader, Ken Doctor’s Lookout has yet to launch. However, he is applying his extensive knowledge of the news ecosystem to how he and the team are shaping the Santa Cruz, CA publication.

Doctor is working on the assumption that around four fifths of the readers are going to be on mobile. So, the whole experience will be mobile-first. Like the Longmont Leader, Lookout has chosen not to build the site from scratch. Instead, they’ve opted to use the L.A. Times’ Graphene platform. The team will benefit from the technology expertise and development resources of a much larger publisher, which allows Lookout to focus on the content. 

Lookout will also focus on just content for the first few months, saving audio and video capabilities for later down the line. But they are looking to get the community involved very early on.

“We have a number of community features and interactive features that are important in terms of the two-way communication between our reporters and the public,” Doctor explained. “It’s a small community – 275,000 people –  and to get to know them, to be able to interact with them and do weekly chats with the correspondents, those kinds of things are build-in.”

However, a good mobile experience is just a part of the puzzle piece for local news organizations. “It’s a combination of what kind of content [it is], how it’s presented, what the overall experience is, and how it’s optimized,” Doctor outlined. 

His advice for local publishers looking to provide a better experience is to work hard to understand their readers and would-be readers. “They need to understand how their reading habits work today, because they’re not going to change those reading habits,” he emphasized. “It takes a mind shift and it takes investment, and it’s amazing how slow both moves have been.”

Featured Post | Perspectives

Are app stores worth the effort? CafeMedia thinks the answer is no

To anyone paying attention to the digital publishing space in recent months, it is clear that the already fraught relationship between digital publishers and platforms has frayed even further. Publishers have long been critical of the power of Apple and Google, the two major mobile operating system operators, which dominate the mobile app economy through their respective app store platforms. However, in just the past month, intensifying antitrust investigations, legal action from gaming publisher Epic, and publishers’ vocal concerns have all highlighted concerns about Apple’s anti-competitive practices.

As digital media consumption has become ever more mobile, a broad cross section of publishers built mobile apps. Their goal has been to build deeper audience connections and try to regain some control over customer relationships increasingly mediated by social platforms.

In that endeavor, publishers have historically had a friend, or at least frenemy, in the OS providers that allow them to access mobile audiences through their app stores while exacting sometimes onerous terms. As that complex relationship transitions to open hostilities, the industry is asking itself some fundamental questions. Among them: “Are app stores even worth it?

To better understand some of the drawbacks of the app economy, we spoke to Paul Bannister, Chief Strategy Officer at CafeMedia. He discusses some App Store challenges that have led his company to forgo apps altogether.  

Discoverability

First among these challenges, according to Bannister, is the limits of discoverability in the app store environment. This is a particular issue for niche and emerging publishers that don’t have globally recognized brands. Prominent legacy news brands like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal can use existing channels to drive a critical mass of dedicated audience members toward an app. However, this is far more difficult for publishers that are still building a business, or for those with niche audiences.

Instead, says Bannister, publishers should build properties on the open web that can be discovered through multiple channels by people searching for the kind of content they excel at producing. Smaller publishers can’t solely rely on a dedicated core audience that’s dedicated enough to a brand to seek it out and download an app. 

Monetization

Bannister also points to the limited monetization opportunities offered by the existing mobile app ecosystem. The advertising model has taken a beating in recent years. Critics blame both the market-distorting presence of Google and Facebook and, more recently, the advertising pullback spurred by the global pandemic. However, he argues that advertising remains a significant source of revenue for almost any digital publishers, be they niche brands, publishing startups, or household names like the Times and the Journal. 

By contrast, Apple favors monetization through in-app purchases transacted through its own App Store, through which it extracts a 30% transaction fee. This fee is the subject of Apple’s current fight with Epic. But, according to Bannister, it’s this self-interest on the part of the tech giant that curtails the advertising opportunity of publisher apps.

“It’s clear that Apple is really opposed to advertising,” says Bannister. “They prefer to make everything about in-app purchases so they can collect their pound of flesh. They don’t have a presence in advertising so there’s nothing in it for them. So they make it harder to make money in other ways.” 

Market dominance

When it comes to the app sector as a whole, Bannister takes a historical view. He compares the role of today’s two dominant mobile operating system providers, Apple and Google, to the monopolistic dominance of telecom giant AT&T’s Bell System in the 1980s. 

“They’re the gateway to content for all consumers,” Bannister says. “If you’re any sort of digital publisher, you have to go through one of the mobile operating systems or one of the browsers. And those two companies control 99% of the mobile OS market and 95% of the browser market. That’s unhelpful to competition and they need to be opened up.”

The Bell System was famously broken up and regionalized following the landmark antitrust case United States v AT&T. Bannister isn’t necessarily recommending similar action be taken to reign in the power of OS makers and their app store platforms. However, he does believe that change is needed. 

“I have no strong opinion on whether that means regulation or whatever that means breaking them up, but it’s not healthy for two companies to dominate all access to information,” Bannister says. “The desired outcome is a level playing field where everyone can compete, and win, and do well. How we get to a level playing field is up for debate. But a fair competitive environment is the goal.” 

Featured Post | Perspectives | Policy

Taking a bite out of Apple’s trustworthy talking points

Given the recent congressional hearing in which the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google testified around the topic, antitrust scrutiny is undeniably intensifying. Each of these tech titans raises distinct competition issues. However, there was an interesting collision of concerns around Apple and Amazon at the hearing. It was revealed that Apple’s seemingly inviolate store terms – long questioned for favoring Apple’s own services and apps – may well bend for those who have sufficient power to wield in their negotiations.

Sometime in 2017, Apple and Amazon, two giant platform companies, struck a deal where Amazon Prime Video would be available on Apple TV and Apple products would be available on Amazon. As part of the terms of that deal, Apple would reduce its fee for consumers who subscribed to Prime Video from 30% to 15%. For existing Prime Video subscribers, Apple agreed to completely waive its normal 15% fee. The cherry on top for Amazon was that they could use other payment systems outside of Apple.

At least those are the terms of the deal according to an email uncovered by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. Neither Apple nor Amazon have ever publicly disclosed the deal. Given that they are the two most valuable companies on the planet, and the huge number of businesses that rely on these platforms, it is remarkable that such a deal has been shrouded in secrecy for so long. Some would point to this deal and say, “It’s the platforms’ world, we’re just living in it.” Frankly, the deal stinks of favoritism at best – and collusion at worst.

Non-negotiable?

Apple’s “non-negotiable terms” have been an issue for some time. The company charges 30% commission on any app store purchase. That fee reduces earnings potential for app developers while also driving up prices for consumers. Most merchants charge a flat fee. Apple takes 30% of the sale of, say, a $25 newspaper subscription. It also takes 30% for the sale of a $500 newspaper subscription. Thus, the more the publisher is able to charge for its service then the more Apple benefits, despite providing the same service.

Notably, Spotify has been banging the drum about Apple’s unfair practices for years now. They have even filed a formal complaint in Europe. Their concern is that Apple charges a fee for any subscription music service on their platform. At the same time, Apple offers its own competing subscription music service, which pays no fee. On that uneven playing field, neither Spotify nor any other music service will be able to fairly compete with Apple on price. The dual role of platform and competitor is inherently unfair.

Recently, Epic joined the fray with a similar complaint. Epic added a feature to its popular game Fortnite that allowed players to purchase V-Bucks in the Fortnite app. It skirted the ‌App Store‌ rules prohibiting developers from accepting payments outside of the in-app purchase system. Apparently, this was a direct salvo from Epic. Just hours after the direct payment option was added, Apple pulled Fortnite from its App Store. And Epic immediately filed suit “to end Apple’s anti-competitive restrictions on mobile device marketplaces.”

Epic released a short mocking Apple shortly after the iPhone-maker removed Fortnite from the App Store for skirted its in-app payment ‌rules.

The chorus of critics is only growing as Apple gets into more vertical business lines – news, shopping, TV, games, etc. Apple even acquired a popular weather app earlier this year.

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The dynamic in the media industry is especially interesting to consider. It’s no secret that advertising revenues for news organizations have cratered over the last decade. As a result, many news organizations have instead emphasized direct audience revenue, (e.g. subscriptions, events, etc.) which tends to better align with trusted brands than the wild west of digital advertising.

Apple also leans into consumer trust as a foundational principle of their business. For years, Safari has blocked 3rd party cookies and other tracking workarounds. Apple has long held the line on encrypted devices in an effort to preserve consumer trust in their products and services.

Paradoxically, Apple’s fees and anti-competitive practices push companies away from direct audience revenue and toward the murky world of digital advertising where a publisher doesn’t have to take a 30% haircut on all customer revenue and keeps all of the upside from its advertising earnings. In some ways, Apple’s behavior actually works to the disadvantage of companies looking to follow their lead on consumer trust.

Fair terms

At a hearing before the Committee on July 29th, Rep. Hank Johnson asked Apple CEO Tim Cook whether the terms between Apple and Amazon are available to other developers. Cook assured the Congressman that they are “available to anyone meeting the conditions.” Interestingly, at the same hearing, Cook talked about how platforms are in fierce competition for developers.

So, this week, DCN’s CEO Jason Kint, wrote to Cook to publicly call for the disclosure of the terms of this deal so that “anyone meeting the conditions” can apply for them. This is a key test for Apple: Will app developers of any size (the ones for which Apple claims to be competing) be able to get the same terms? Did Cook speak the truth before Congress? Will Apple’s behavior match its trust-based branding?

The monopolistic behavior of big tech puts a wide range of industries – not the least of which is the news industry – at a distinct disadvantage. It is laudable that EU and American regulatory bodies are digging in and uncovering these anti-competitive behaviors. Talking trust is not enough. We need to level the playing field and transparency is a critical first step.

Featured Post | Revenue

How Kumu’s Roland Ros partners with media companies for commerce and community

Global interactive platforms such as TikTok may strike a chord with younger audiences. Still, they miss the opportunity to drive hyper-local content and shape tight-knit transnational communities. It’s a significant and growing gap that Kumu, a Filipino-centric social app and livestreaming platform, seeks to fill with customized content channels. The combination of communication, commerce, and community allows fans to interact and purchase products while watching their favorite livestreamers.

It’s a smart move when platforms everywhere on the planet are forging relationships to become Super Apps. But content will be the factor that sets some of these Super Apps apart. By cultivating relationships with media companies and content creators, they can reach audiences with entertaining content that inspires lasting passion, not just one-off purchases.

It’s a blueprint that makes business sense for companies lining up to engage Internet-addicted populations in emerging markets. Boston Consulting Group’s Center for Customer Insight forecasts that Internet users in emerging markets, which include India, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco Nigeria and the Philippines, will contribute 3x the number of new Internet users compared to developed markets. It’s a young community that will engage in “digitally influenced” content. They’ll also make purchases worth a whopping $4 trillion by 2022.

Continuing our series of DCN video interviews, I talk to Roland Ros. Ros founded Kumu, a livestreaming app that counts a community of more than 5 million GenZ and Millennial Filipinos spread across more than 50 countries. Kumu recently raised $5 million in a Series A funding round led by an impressive mix of investors including OpenSpace Ventures, Summit Media, and Philippines-based media conglomerate ABS-CBN. We discuss the importance of trusted conversations and the efforts of media companies, including Cosmopolitan and Esquire, to unlock the creative and commercial potential of its growing and global audience.

Here are three key takeaways from our talk:

Power community-driven commerce with authenticity and positivity

Younger audiences are eager to participate (and purchase) on platforms that make them feel involved and accepted. “GenZ and Millenials are tired of the social anxiety that comes with pretending life is perfect,” Ros explains. Authenticity has replaced attention as members no longer value millions of likes or hundreds of thousands of followers. The payoff is positivity, he says.  Kumu’s “Kumunity” appreciates “microtransactions and virtual gifts that simply say ‘thank you’ for the content you create.”

Segment according to journeys, not customers

Ros encourages companies to rewrite the marketing playbook to emphasize the “aha” moments that keep audiences everywhere hooked. To pinpoint these events, he relies on CleverTap to track behaviors, patterns and architect a customer journey to make each member feel like an individual. “The logic has to be clean: if this, then that.” Building these capabilities has allowed Kumu to reach “month four retention rates in the 40% range,” he says.

Micro-influencers have a massive impact

Ros reveals the fastest-growing business on the Kumu platform is driven by influencers and creators on the platform talking about their passions and interests. This realization has prompted him to partner with media companies to launch “the concept of an interactive social television network,” amplifying the content and content creators the community loves.

Ros also talks about blending content and commerce to pave the way for “Super Social Apps” fueled by connection and microtransactions. He also lifts a lid on the best practices that allow Kumu and its partners to reach “up to 10%” conversion rates for livestreaming commerce on the platform. 

Watch the full interview:

Featured Post | Innovation | Revenue

How three media companies are approaching virtual events and monetization

Many media companies have turned to virtual events as a way to engage audiences on a personal level during the pandemic. From webinars to virtual festivals, teams have worked to evolve their offerings as the long-term outlook for physical events remains uncertain.

The Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg, are among media companies that produce events as one of their diversified revenue streams. They are also among those that have had to evolve their revenue strategy as their teams hit their stride with virtual events.

Maturing virtual events strategies

In March, FT Live went from being completely focused on physical events to virtual in just days. As a test, they launched The Global Economic Emergency webinar. And with just three days of promotion, they racked up over 7,000 attendees who logged in to watch.

“We had these huge numbers, and it was a bit of a lightbulb moment for us,” explained Orson Francescone, the Managing Director of FT Live. “We quickly realized that we could do something bigger and bolder.”

Weeks later, the company launched The Global Boardroom. The three-day event featured 110 remote speakers and boasted 52,000 registrations. The event focused on the impact of coronavirus on policy, business, and finance. And it was so popular that a second edition is scheduled for November.

The Atlantic has seen similar success with online registrants, with over 20,000 attendees attending their 28 virtual events. “It’s a larger audience than we would have been able to convene in person,” said Aretae Wyler, COO of The Atlantic. “It’s more international, and we’re seeing the same caliber of attendees.”

Bloomberg faced a different challenge with virtual events, as they already had an established Bloomberg TV offering. For them, it wasn’t a matter of a pivot to video. Rather, it was creating a distinct experience and value proposition for a new offering. This meant the focus for its virtual events had to be on the level of interaction attendees could have, and what the value would be for sponsors.

“Once we got crisp on these elements…what we needed from a platform, resource, and process perspective became self-evident,” Bloomberg Live’s Global Head Patrick Garrigan explained. “Not only are our audiences tuning in, they’re staying with us and engaging.”

The value for sponsors

For Bloomberg Live, attracting sponsors came down to the basics of why clients support events in-person. “We distil it down to three core attributes: thought leadership, brand awareness, and content creation and amplification,” said Garrigan. “Similar to in-person, it then becomes a matter of identifying how our platform can deliver on these metrics.”

Bloomberg delivers this by creating sponsor “moments” throughout its virtual programs, as well as allowing sponsors to share the perspectives of their senior leaders. They then share segments from the events widely across Bloomberg channels.

For the FT, it is their technology stack – as well as their access to large global audiences – that has been a key selling point for sponsors. Early on, the team focused on ensuring they had a strong analytics functionality in place. 

“We can analyze who is attending, what stage of the event, how they are engaging, and serve this intelligence to our sponsors,” Francescone outlined. “Sponsors really enjoy our platform because it’s giving them, from an ROI point of view, much bigger and more detailed numbers than in a physical environment.”

Big numbers are also a draw for The Atlantic’s sponsors. The publisher is gearing up for The Atlantic Festival in September which will be entirely virtual, and free to attend. Whereas they would normally have 3,000 in-person attendees, the team is targeting between one and 2 million registrants for the virtual version. 

Sponsor interest has grown as The Atlantic’s confidence in their model and ability to pull in high-caliber attendees. “Most of the sponsors that we have worked with in-person have been interested in trying this model with us,” said Wyler. “Part of that is the belief they have in our power to convene and engage audiences. We’ve maintained a 75% average watch time for our audience, which is pretty incredible.”

Reader revenue and data

When it comes to audience revenue, the FT is now charging delegates for all its events from autumn onwards. But for the second edition of its Global Boardroom event in November, FT Live is taking a freemium approach. 

The event has three tiers of ticketing. First, they’ll offer a free pass which gives live access to talks, Q&As and polls. A  $65 pass provides on-demand access to all talks and summary reports. The professional pass, at $385, adds 1-1 networking, exclusive access to extra sessions, and a business community area.

Beyond ticket sales, the FT sees long-term opportunities for the newly engaged data. “Of the 52,000 people we had attending The Global Boardroom, about 75% were completely new to us,” said Francescone. These attendees can be monetized not just through the event, but as part of the FT’s core subscription strategy. 

The Atlantic also sees opportunity in bringing in new subscribers. “We are constantly thinking about how this can be a driver of subscription growth,” Wyler emphasized. “The benefit of virtual events is that it’s an opportunity to convene both the superfans, but also to introduce The Atlantic to new audiences.”

In previous years, tickets to the in-person Atlantic Festival have ranged from $50 to $975. However, registration to the virtual Festival in September this year is free. That said, there will be subscriber-only benefits like exclusive sessions and Q&A opportunities to bring value to existing subscribers and entice new joiners.

Bloomberg has historically not charged for its events. However, the exception is their Bloomberg Breakaway CEO membership community, where virtual events have been leveraged as part of the membership package.

“We’ve created content that is exclusively for members. It gives them the tools, best practices, and essential feedback to grapple with the issues that are impacting business,” said Garrigan, highlighting the opportunity to provide another touchpoint to members through virtual events.

The future of virtual business events

Garrigan sees virtual events being a part of Bloomberg Live’s programming for the foreseeable future. “Given Bloomberg Media’s global footprint, virtual events are such a natural fit,” he said. “While we are incredibly eager to get back to in-person events as soon as it’s safe to do so…[virtual events] serve as a way to connect broad geographies in real-time that may not be able to join us in-room.”

For FT Live, their early success gave the team the confidence to run events for the rest of the year in a digital form. But for 2021, they are being cautious. Francescone suspects that they will iterate towards a hybrid event model. However, details (such as access and pricing) are still to be determined.

“We’ve set up a small internal task force within FT Live which is examining what the future is going to look like,” he explained. “What people’s preferences might be today might not be the same not only in five  years’ time, but in months or even weeks.”

These publishers may have the scale that makes it easier to convince top-tier sponsors to get on board, but there are lessons for publishers of all sizes. Virtual events offer a wider audience and higher engagement than in-person events, whether that be hundreds or thousands of attendees. 

As for reader revenue, features like on-demand viewing or virtual networking can be sold as an add-on, or as a subscriber-only benefit. The key is being flexible in your offerings and understanding what your audience will respond to as the situation evolves.

Featured Post | Perspectives

It’s time to rethink the opinion section

Newspapers are more than just news. They’re also an integral part of the national conversation through their opinion columns. That, in fact, is how many newspapers (particularly weekend editions) market themselves; with huge banners above the masthead proclaiming which columnist is being most opinionated that day.

Recently, though, the two disciplines of news and opinion have started butting up against one another. The twin crises of lack of trust and falling revenue have exposed the sore spot where news and opinion clash to the detriment of the whole.

When words collide

News and opinion are the two sides of the coin for newspapers, each valuable in its own right. It’s unthinkable that any title should drop one for fear of impoverishing the other. However, of late, things are heating up.

Take the latest flashpoint: Almost 300 journalists at The Wall Street Journal sent a letter (later leaked) to the paper’s publisher arguing that a lack of fact-checking standards in its opinion columns were undermining the credibility of the newsgathering operation. The letter itself is worth a read simply for the examples it cites. However, the key point is as follows:

“Many readers already cannot tell the difference between reporting and Opinion. And reporters nonetheless face questions about the Journal’s accuracy and fairness because of errors published in Opinion.

“Some of us have been told by sources that they won’t talk to us because they don’t trust that the WSJ is independent of the editorial page; many of us have heard sources and readers complain about the paper’s “bias” as a result of what they’ve read in Opinion.”

Experts excluded

Perceived bias is, of course, one of the most frequently cited reasons for a lack of trust in news. One of the letter’s signatories’ suggestions for improving that is to impose an even stricter division between the two sides of the paper’s content, specifically to remove accusations of bias.

The tension is exacerbated by the way newspapers use social media to attract audiences, where that division isn’t enforced as rigidly. The main Twitter or Facebook channel is as likely to push an opinion piece as it would news content, which only contributes to readers’ confusion. Even when papers have dedicated opinion accounts, there is crossover.

That’s especially bad given that opinion writers are, for the most part, hired for their ability to create conversation. There is considerable incentive for columnists to be controversial or deliberately strident on some arbitrary issue, because they are rewarded for driving views. That controversy may be good for newspaper businesses in the short-term. However, when it undermines trust in the news side of the house, it undermines the business as a whole.

The issue is further compounded because truly expert voices often do not have a place in the opinion section. Star columnists are usually celebrities, or generalist writers reacting to the news cycle. They don’t have the depth or breadth of expertise to comment on, say, epidemiology or the social aspects of managing a pandemic.

Solutions journalism

So how do we counter misinformation from popular columnists without hamstringing their ability to attract readers?

One potential solution is, as the WSJ news team suggests, to allow the news team to rebut and call out inaccuracies in columnists’ content. That, at least, would lean into the transparency that I’ve previously argued is necessary for the restoration of trust.

Newspapers could also follow the model used by The Conversation and commission genuine experts to write on their chosen topics. Their journalists are on hand to filter that expertise and make it understandable to the public. The Conversation UK’s chief executive Chris Waiting told me that, at times of crisis like the pandemic, news publishers are rewarded for doing so. As Waiting said:

“From February or March, we saw our traffic go through the roof because everything was changing, and nobody knew what was going on. So, the public was just really hungry to have experts not only explain the current moment, but to put it in context.”

Whiting points out that there have been more than a few successful doctors and scientists who have had secondary careers in the media off the back of their expertise. However, he says the majority of academics balk at appearing in newspapers for fear of being misrepresented.

“A lot of academics are quite skeptical of talking to the mainstream media. They’ve seen their work misrepresented or over-sensationalized. The trust between the two has broken down and so the partnership that we create is very important to that.”

View from the audience

The recent row over The Guardian carrying content with which its core audience disagreed shows that you can’t please everyone. But if that content is demonstrably coming from experts and not attention-seeking columnists it’s more defensible.

Opinion columnists are part and parcel of a title’s appeal. And without them a newspaper would lose part of its identity. That said, the industry needs to recognize the act of giving them a platform is perceived as a tacit endorsement of their views, and that those views are inextricably linked to how the public views the news outlet as a whole.

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