Daily newspaper brands: advantage or inconvenience
Are daily newspaper brands an advantage or an inconvenience? I acknowledge, I do not have the answer. Even if I would like to say that they are an advantage. This question is indirectly the subject of the French journalist Gilles Klein's post on his blog Le Phare (the lighthouse).
Gilles reports the initiative of the websites of two French national newspapers, liberation.fr (here in French) and lemonde.fr. They asked their readers to send photographs via MMS (cell phone) or email. The newspapers wanted photos about the protests organized by French students and unions regarding a new job law -- CPE -- making the hiring (and the firing) of young people easier (more about it here). Almost no photos have been sent. "The young people do not seem to want to send their photographs to newspapers which perhaps they do not read. They rather post them on Flickr. Type the word "CPE" this morning you have nearly 1,400 photographs", writes Gilles.
Jules, one of Gilles' blog readers, comments: "the success of Flickr and the disinterest for the initiative of Le Monde and Libé show one thing: the disavowal towards the intermediaries of any kind. We do not need more intermediaries to select, choose, etc. It is time for "disinter-mediation"... "
Jules is undoubtedly close to right. But to respond to an initiative, it is necessary to know the existence of it. And sadly, the "young people" undoubtedly did not know that they could send their photos to these two media. Why? Because, as Gilles suggests, they read little to none at all of the print or digital version of these two French national daily newspapers.
But, should they give up trying to attract "young" readers? The answer is no. And for this reason, these initiatives should be supported. Let us hope that they will have many other initiatives such as the one above. But they only have meaning if they are part of an overall strategy. And strategy is not the strength of the daily newspaper organizations.
Maintaining these brands is not going to be easy. Young readers seem to find the answers to their daily information needs elsewhere (free daily newspapers, Yahoo!, etc). Do the newspapers absolutely have to create new brands in order to reach other target markets?
The British regional press, for example, gives the beginning of an answer. It is increasing the portfolio of products. In Newcastle, the total number of media targeting different types of consumers (readers and advertisers) went from 14 to 45 over the past 10 years. Steve Brown, regional managing director of Newcastle Chronicle & Newspaper and Gazette Company Media, declared: "We have become extremely good at identifying new ways to reach specialist markets and are continually innovating and launching new products" (read more about it here).
What do you think ? Do daily newspapers have to create products under new brands in order to reach new readers... and advertisers?
Gilles reports the initiative of the websites of two French national newspapers, liberation.fr (here in French) and lemonde.fr. They asked their readers to send photographs via MMS (cell phone) or email. The newspapers wanted photos about the protests organized by French students and unions regarding a new job law -- CPE -- making the hiring (and the firing) of young people easier (more about it here). Almost no photos have been sent. "The young people do not seem to want to send their photographs to newspapers which perhaps they do not read. They rather post them on Flickr. Type the word "CPE" this morning you have nearly 1,400 photographs", writes Gilles.
Jules, one of Gilles' blog readers, comments: "the success of Flickr and the disinterest for the initiative of Le Monde and Libé show one thing: the disavowal towards the intermediaries of any kind. We do not need more intermediaries to select, choose, etc. It is time for "disinter-mediation"... "
Jules is undoubtedly close to right. But to respond to an initiative, it is necessary to know the existence of it. And sadly, the "young people" undoubtedly did not know that they could send their photos to these two media. Why? Because, as Gilles suggests, they read little to none at all of the print or digital version of these two French national daily newspapers.
But, should they give up trying to attract "young" readers? The answer is no. And for this reason, these initiatives should be supported. Let us hope that they will have many other initiatives such as the one above. But they only have meaning if they are part of an overall strategy. And strategy is not the strength of the daily newspaper organizations.
Maintaining these brands is not going to be easy. Young readers seem to find the answers to their daily information needs elsewhere (free daily newspapers, Yahoo!, etc). Do the newspapers absolutely have to create new brands in order to reach other target markets?
The British regional press, for example, gives the beginning of an answer. It is increasing the portfolio of products. In Newcastle, the total number of media targeting different types of consumers (readers and advertisers) went from 14 to 45 over the past 10 years. Steve Brown, regional managing director of Newcastle Chronicle & Newspaper and Gazette Company Media, declared: "We have become extremely good at identifying new ways to reach specialist markets and are continually innovating and launching new products" (read more about it here).
What do you think ? Do daily newspapers have to create products under new brands in order to reach new readers... and advertisers?
2 Comments:
Hi Jeff,
You raise an interesting question. I like the example of
the French student protests -- my first reaction is to say
that the kinds of people who would participate in the
protests are also the kinds who would thumb their noses at
traditional, corporate media such as Le Monde, rejecting
them in favour of outlets they feel they can build into
media that reflect their interests and needs. In this
sense, perhaps the daily newspaper brand is a disadvantage,
since it may not have the trust of young people.
Another factor, I think, is the "cool" factor of things
like Flickr, which you mention. Not only are "sticky" sites
like Flickr (and Friendster, and MySpace, and LiveJournal,
and so on) on the cutting edge of internet technologies and
fun to play around with; they have the added benefit of
being unknown to most people in the older generations. And
what popular youth trend has not benefitted from this sense
of mystery, of doing something your parents can't
understand?
I do agree that Jules has touched on something important
with his comment that young people are seeking "unfiltered"
media, although I think it's maybe more accurate to say
that young people seek news that is filtered in ways
traditional media either haven't thought of yet or are
disregarding or ignoring, at least for now. Even when you
search for something on Technorati or Flickr or Wikipedia,
or follow links from one favourite site to another, you are
employing a kind of filtering. Raw information is just too
overwhelming without some kind of editor to highlight what
is important, whatever that means to you.
What's also interesting to me is that many of the most
innovative sticky sites are being bought by huge media
companies, and are still thriving. Flickr is owned by
Yahoo, MySpace by Fox, Blogger by Google.... and for some
reason this either doesn't matter to young people or they
feel they can still take ownership of these tools/media
outlets.
However, I think younger news consumers are clever, and
becoming more media literate. They know Dose is owned by
CanWest, for example, and I think they will temper their
enthusiasm for such an outlet unless they can be convinced
it represents them and isn't simply imposing a top-down
model of journalism on them. If the best strategy big media
companies can come up with is to diversify into different
brands for different demographics, I think this is simply
underestimating their readers with draconian thinking, and
the future will not be kind to them.
hope that helps,
Mason
Toronto
Much to chew on in these posts - and I really shouldn't talk with my mouth full, so I'll limit myself to one quick observation about the French student protest photo example.
The blogger Jeff is quoting notes that the web sites for Le Monde and Liberation asked for e-mailed photos of the protest and got "almost" no submissions. (How many, I wonder?)
He then notes that on the popular photo-sharing site, Flikr.com:
>Type the word "CPE" this morning (and) you have nearly 1,400
> photographs",
Certainly that tells us something. But what, exactly?
I don't think you can jump to the smug conclusion the blogger leaps to: that this reflects "a disavowal toward intermediaries of any kind."
What it tells us is that many of those protestors have Flickr accounts and use them — and little else.
It does not tell us that anyone else is looking at them. The few who did submit to LeMonde.fr etc, who chose to accept the filtering of mainstream media, were rewarded with a very,very large audience for their work, relatively speaking.
How many of those nearly 1,400 CPE photos will ever be seen by anyone other than the photographer? And as long as that is the case, i.e. as long as there is no intermediary sorting through all the noise of those 1,400 images and delivering a manageable number to an interested audience, those photos are not much different than the old print kind that languised in the student's desk drawer. Big deal.
Flikr does do some mediation, through tagging and groups, but not enough to have their photos reach a large audience. They are no more a danger to the current media than the ten thousand thousand shoe boxes crammed with images that sit beneath beds across the globe.
BUT when the results are mediated (and note I do NOT say that the mediation has to be done by a news organization) THEN these photo sharing tools become powerful and useful. I was looking at a Flickr set this morning, referred there by a blog I read regularly.
This blogger has missed the point.
Mediation is still a very, very valuable service (Hello, Google!)- those who do it well will be rewarded.
Bill "Chewing with his mouth open" Dunphy
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