I’m at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Vienna along with 450 representatives of newspaper publishers from 41 countries. Everyone is here to talk about how newspapers can make money from online plays and retain (and even grow) shareholder value in this rapidly changing world.
Day one has been kind of a show-and-tell event with publishers presenting what they have done. For me, the most interesting presentation today was by Mikal Rohde of Schibsted Sok AS in Norway. In just over a year the Sesam search engine developed and launched by this publisher has become the hit of Norway. In a globalisation sense it gives me heart that there are some who can beat giants. They are playing in a space few other publishers play in yet it is a logical place for a publisher because what is a search engine but an aggregator of content?
From an Australian newsagent perspective, what is most important about day one is what has not been discussed that much – that print is old news. Some people on the floor talk as if print is already buried. No, it won’t go away but, boy, will it go through some changes. Everyone at the conference is focused on moving the publisher brands born in print to the online world and while many speakers discuss how their online strategy is supporting their print model, the reality is that profit will determine how this plays out.
Newsagents need to understand that newspapers will not be the traffic driver to our retail businesses in five years that they are today and even less so in ten years. This is why what we spend on our infrastructure must change not only to draw new traffic but also to de-emphasise newspapers and to not provide them the most expensive real-estate in our stores.
I was surprised at what some companies have achieved with very small teams. Some excellent sites and services have been established with teams of ten or less – in businesses employing thousands in their print operation. I was also surprised that most of the companies so far are talking about almost single online strategies. Okay, these single sites have depth. I would have thought that is they were looking to replace a significant portion of print revenue they would need many online strategies. Connecting with an online consumer is not a once a day event to get the purchase and leave them be as is the case with a newspaper. For many, online consumption is 24/7 while with others it is many times a day through many channels – hence the need for publishers to break out from behind the masthead and connect through these channels.
Back to Norway, I like that Schibsted has created their own search engine. The control this provides will prove invaluable to their future.
Live coverage is available in part as a demonstration of some of the technologies on show.