C I T Y . H A L L

Is Rupert Murdoch the decoy for News Corps’ real digital content monetization strategy?

He’s brilliant that Simon.

simontebrinke:

by Simon te Brinke
Digital Communications Strategist
Gramercy Park Consulting

As a media communications professional of nearly 2 decades let me say that I’m a massive fan of Rupert Murdoch.  I think he’s a visionary and a media genius. I regularly use him as a reference and role model in many presentations to clients and colleagues.

That said I simply cannot understand the strategic rationale behind why News Corp (and its digital subsidiaries and assets) propose charging for online content.  I’ve scratched my head on this proposition ever since I first became aware of it.

Each time I think about this notion I can’t help but think of one industry in particular that has hemorrhaged since the rise and rise of digital media, that being the music industry.

Since its birth the internet gave the consumer a new platform to both acquire and share music (be it legal or otherwise).  At the OnHollywood 2009 Forum in West Hollywood this year I heard a gentleman from the William Morris Talent Agency talking about how music artists are increasingly becoming entrepreneurs (in their own right).  Many artists (‘Fiddy Cent’ was one that I recall) are now communicating and transacting directly with their audience (and fans) and thus cutting out the records labels, artist managers and anyone else standing in front of them with their hands out in the process.

It would be safe to say that consumers successfully steered the music industry agenda to their advantage and that the internet enabled this important conversation to occur.

So how is online news any different?

I completely understand and respect that quality journalism will (or should) always reign supreme and readers should be presented with fair, unbiased and trustworthy content. My father was a journalist.

However in today’s digital media world where social media acts as one of the most powerful trust agents, does today’s reader really need content that is framed by an established news brand such as The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times?

Or are readers developing new digital media evaluation skills allowing them to filter and choose credible content, written by authors, writers and passionate enthusiasts who are all willing to write and publish fair, unbiased and trustworthy content – without a masthead brand sitting over the top of the author?

We have evolved as media consumers.  We read differently, we listen differently, we contribute differently, we watch differently, we act differently and we share differently to the way we used to.  And what’s more important, we’ve evolved to evaluate media sources differently.

Before, I used to value a radio station, a newspaper or a free-to-air TV station as a trusted source of news content because those were my only options.  Today, I’m much more attuned to how I read and evaluate news and I’m more likely to steer towards the news sources that ‘people-like-me’ read because I know that those people are part of a trusted network of ‘people-like-me(us)’!

And given that I have the attention span of a gold fish, I’m also more likely to read news in a micro-blogging format such as an RSS feed reader, a daily email summary or something like a Twitter style news service.  I’ve personally evolved to liking ‘news-in-headlines’ – that’s if the headline can tell me what I need to know without having to read the content. Am I lazy? Or cramming in more content today than I ever?

This isn’t an offline versus online argument (god that’s boring).  It’s just that we’ve evolved and we are using the tools we’ve been equipped with.  So it makes sense that our ‘media source’ skills have evolved and those new skills are being constantly shaped as new media sources like Twitter, Digg, Facebook etc are presented to us.

But ultimately it’ll be the ‘people-like-me’ who are going to influence my media consumption and not a news brand in the ‘old media’ sense.

So I just can’t see how paying for content is going to work for me unless those news networks and mastheads have lots and lots of ‘people-like-me’, chosen by me, on my terms, because I trust them and I like their content.  Then, and only then, I might (MIGHT) pay.

I recently I read an online quote by Dave Leitao, former men’s basketball coach of the University of Virginia, regarding one of their star players;

“We use him more on that particular play as a decoy because we knew he would attract attention.”

So I wonder? Is Rupert Murdoch a decoy for News Corp because he certainly does attract some attention!  Does the rest of the media world scramble to put in place online charging models when Mr Murdoch says he’s going to?  It might.

But when ‘god’ speaks, people listen.  I did, but that doesn’t mean I’m going pay for biblical content when I can get it for free, from people I trust, in my personal, trusted network, in a format, style and place that suits me, the reader and the consumer of the content.

There is no such thing as social media, there’s only media people interact with and media people ignore

somethingchanged:

We need to stop focusing so much on the “media” in social media. Instead let’s focus on the “social.” Media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and blogs are not the plot drivers here. What matters is that people are talking, and that marketing is becoming more human in response to all this talk.

Media fragmentation and the loss of a guaranteed mass audience is the big news of our day, not social media. Social media is simply enabling conversations and elbowing broadcasting into another room.

Social is the real trend and it’s not dependent on media. So, if someone were to sincerely (not rhetorically) ask me what’s next I would say, social media opens the door to better relationships, but the hard work of solidifying these relationships for the long haul has to be done, at least in part, offline.

Social Media specialists toiling away in yet another silo is unnecessary. The more pressing need is for people who understand experiential marketing and how the brand’s promise—whatever it might be—has to play out in the physical world and online. Zappos is a good example of company that understands this. They’ve made a huge effort to be social, but it wouldn’t mean a thing if their customer service wasn’t best in class. Put another way, if being social—which means being real—isn’t in your brand’s DNA, it would be best to stay far away from anything resembling a conversation.

By AdPulp

10 lessons from a failed startup

Brilliant article.  Well worth a read and many points have been taken!  Thanks Mark.

A year and a half ago, my co-founder Dev Nag and I started an internet TV network for games called PlayCafe. Our ambitious plan was to run highly interactive game shows in which everyone was a contestant. Players could watch our hosts, answer questions, win prizes, form teams, call our studio, live chat, and run their own games. It was a huge undertaking, but despite great engagement — users watched for 87 minutes per session and 40 percent returned within a week — we didn’t reach enough users. We may revive it in the future, but for now, we’ve placed the site in hibernation and returned remaining funds to our investors. What follows is a post-mortem of what we did right and wrong and how we will improve next time. I feel too many entrepreneurs are afraid to discuss their failures, locking up important lessons. I hope you find some of this useful.

via Venture Beat