Tags containing: "digital transition"

Media teams strive to adapt, but struggle to keep pace with digital

October 11, 2017 Michelle Manafy, Editorial Director – DCN

A study conducted by International Center for Journalists survey set out to answer a critical question: Are journalists keeping pace with the digital revolution? Despite making strides in leveraging new technologies, the study concluded that the answer is no.

The State of Technology in Global Newsrooms takes a deep look at the adoption of digital technologies at a wide range of news media organizations worldwide. Working with Georgetown University, the International Center for Journalists conducted the study in 12 languages, and received more than 2,700 responses from journalists and newsroom managers in 130 countries.

Key takeaways include:

Newsrooms still face a deep technology gap.
Digital journalism has made some substantial gains.
In an era when fake news and hacking have proliferated, too few journalists are taking the proper precautions.
While most newsrooms find it challenging to gain trust with their audiences, there are two major exceptions.
New revenue models are emerging, but not fast enough.
Newsrooms have yet to fully embrace analytics data to make decisions.
Journalism is a young person’s profession.
The digital training journalists want is not what their newsrooms think they need.

Today’s media organizations

The report examines technological investment, use, and staffing across different types of newsrooms in the digital age. ICFJ identified three newsroom types based on their primary distribution platforms:

Traditional news organizations, which disseminate information primarily in the legacy formats of newspaper, television, print magazines, and radio. Though these organizations may have a website or some digital presence, their primary platform is a traditional format.
Digital-only news organizations that exclusively publish in an online format.
Hybrid news organizations, which use a combination of traditional and digital formats. Many hybrid organizations have transitioned from being traditional news outlets.

The report finds that digital-only and hybrid newsrooms are outpacing traditional media in most of the world. In fact, according to the ICFJ, news organizations that disseminate content primarily in traditional print, television, and radio formats are disappearing from the global media landscape. Overall, the majority of journalists surveyed work for news organizations that are either fully digital (33%) or a hybrid of traditional and online (40%). About one-quarter are employed by traditional news organizations.

Distribution strategies

Today’s newsrooms have access to a multitude of new platforms and formats — from social media to mobile apps to virtual reality, which they use to distribute their stories and reach wider audiences. Though the range of tools has expanded, the news industry relies heavily on the two social media giants: Facebook and Twitter.

Though digital-only and hybrid newsrooms are more likely to use Facebook, traditional organizations (which use digital but not as a primary distribution format) are not very far behind. Three-quarters of traditional newsrooms reported using the social media site to push out content, compared to 93% of digital-only and 91% of hybrid.

Staffing up

Hybrid organizations are the most likely to cut their newsroom staffs, with 41% reporting that their staff size has decreased in the past year. Traditional newsrooms are a close second, at 38%. Digital-only newsrooms are at the opposite end of the spectrum, with only 17% reporting that their staff size has decreased, compared to the 50% that reported adding more staff members.

Digital-only newsrooms are also more likely to have older personnel – in the 51-55 age group – than both their traditional and hybrid counterparts. Traditional newsrooms also have a higher percentage of staff in the 25-29 age group than hybrid ones, following digital-only newsrooms in this category.

Hybrid and digital-only newsrooms are more likely than traditional newsrooms to have digital content producers/editors and tech professionals on staff, though the number of these positions remains small compared to established roles.

The study shows that many journalists are hired into their positions without experience working in digital media or significant digital skills. While on-the-job-training remains an essential tactic for staff-strapped media newsrooms. However, news professionals almost universally agree that training is important to help them meet the demands of their job.

As the report points out, the digital era is forcing newsrooms to adapt to a constantly evolving space. They face an array of major challenges, including shifting revenue models, attracting loyal advertisers, engaging audiences, and developing new storytelling formats. While journalists (and the media organizations they work for) continue to experiment with a range of digital tools, the report makes it clear that continued investment, innovation, and development of the digital skillset is required.

Innovation | Perspectives | Revenue

A tale of two legacy brands: The New York Times & Yahoo

February 11, 2016 Mark Glaser, Founder and Publisher – MediaShift

We all know the narrative that older media brands are struggling to reinvent themselves for the digital age, while upstarts have the advantage of being “digital natives” with no legacy burden. But what about the older “digital native” brands such as AOL and Yahoo? Looks like they might end up having an even more difficult road ahead.

Take the recent quarterly and year-end earnings reports from the New York Times and Yahoo. While the Times saw strength in digital subscriptions and native advertising, Yahoo struggled to deal with massive layoffs and “digital magazines” that weren’t gaining momentum. While both are considering streamlining their organizations, Yahoo has to take much more drastic measures.

Digital growth at the Times
At the Times, digital-only subscriptions grew 20% from the previous year profits were up nearly 50% from last year’s quarter. Print circulation, meanwhile, decreased by 6.9% for the daily and 4.4% for the Sunday edition, but circulation revenues were up 1.3% in the quarter due to an increase in delivery prices. When it comes to ad revenue, print decreased by 6.6% whereas digital increased by 10.6%. A growing strength, however, is mobile ads, which were up 74% in the quarter, making up 22% of all digital ad revenue (which itself is now 24% of all ad revenues).

CEO Mark Thompson said the Times’ T Brand Studio, which produces sponsored content, has become “a meaningful part of the business,” hinting at its importance in long-term strategic growth plans.

The results came the same day executive editor Dean Baquet sent an internal memo announcing an overhaul of the Times’ structure and strategy. “Does our system of powerful desks help us cover big stories that don’t easily have a home—like climate change and education—or does it sometimes get in the way? We deeply value the craft of editing, but in the digital era should we continue to edit every update of every story at the same level?”

The “desks” he’s referring to are the traditional Metro, National, International and other broadly named desks that help classify Times coverage—and thereby newsroom resources. Baquet revealed in the memo that he had asked David Leaonhardt, a recently named columnist and one of the founding editors of The Upshot, to help him examine the current newsroom structure and any necessary changes.

Yahoo’s retrenchment
Meanwhile, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is feeling an even bigger burden of change, especially in the face of dwindling prospects nearly four years into the job. Yahoo’s loss in the quarter was $4.4 billion because of a write-down from investments that didn’t pay off. Without that charge, the company actually earned 13 cents a share. Compared to Google’s 31.9% profit margin in the fourth quarter, Yahoo’s profit margin was an embarrassing 2%. It’s now planning to close down five offices, and its board announced it was looking at “strategic alternatives” (in other words, a potential sale).

It doesn’t help that one way of streamlining costs—laying off 15% of Yahoo’s workforce—adds to a brain drain already taking place at the company. The New York Times reported in January that more than a third of the workforce has left in the last year, prompting Mayer to approve “hefty retention packages” to prevent people from taking job offers elsewhere. Yet most recently, entrepreneur Arjun Sethi, who helped Yahoo compete in the field of mobile chat apps, announced he was leaving.

Much of the criticism toward Yahoo is that its vision was poor from the start. “It’s very, ‘We’ll try this, we’ll try that, we’ll throw a bunch of money at that thing without a clear, coherent strategy around it,’” Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, told the Los Angles Times.

The problem with Yahoo is that its expectations are higher in the digital-native space, having to compete with the likes of Facebook, Google on the platform side and BuzzFeed and Vox on the content side. The New York Times has figured out that an older brand can succeed online with the right revenue mix: mobile ads, native ads, subscriptions and memberships. It’s not going to be easy, but they have certainly built up trust and credibility over the years.

While the ceiling is so much higher for ambitious digital natives, the bottom is so much lower when things go sour.