Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Sep 07, 2007
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Online edition of India's National Newspaper Friday, Sep 07, 2007 ePaper |
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Special Correspondent
CHENNAI: Newspaper publishers need to spend more time acquiring knowledge about the changing media environment before reacting with new strategies, according to Jim Chisholm of iMedia, a consultancy venture of newspaper trade organisation Ifra. “The starting point in every management process is knowledge and you should be gathering more and more data about the future of our business,” said Mr. Chisholm, delivering the closing address at the Ifra India 2007 conference. He offered a series of interesting research results to show that most newspapers do not know their business. For example, he shattered the myth that newspaper circulation was hit by the online revolution. ‘No correlation’
“There is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between circulation and internet usage,” he said, pointing to a global survey. It is newspaper advertising, not newspaper circulation, that is affected by internet rivalry, he said. “Circulation is vanity, advertising is sanity. Every editor likes to brag about how large his circulation is, but it’s advertising that pays for his Mercedes,” he said. Inconsistency
Similarly, another survey showed that most newspapers are doing their best work in the areas that readers are least interested in. A simple exercise in newspaper offices shows that there is no consistency across managements and newsrooms about what the newspaper’s role is — to report events, discuss issues or run campaigns. And neither journalists nor managements knew what their readers actually expected of them. Another commonly held myth is that integration across media is the key to future success. “While we all want to become multi-media businesses, there is no evidence that this actually creates wealth,” argued Mr. Chisholm, pointing to the long-drawn Time Warner merger process for proof. Such ignorance of reality could be costly for publishers, said Mr. Chisholm. Spelling out the stages of a value-driven newspaper management process, he told publishers that they needed to focus on knowledge and specifications before reaching the implementation stage. Evaluating performance was the final stage, he said. Ifra itself is gearing to produce the needed knowledge. Its three-year research project ‘Where NEWS?’ started in March 2006 and looks at how media usage will change in the next five, ten and 15 years. “It doesn’t ask how papers will change, but rather how customers will change. It puts media users — that is, readers and advertisers — at the centre of research,” explained Manfred Werfel, Ifra’s research director. Tracking trends
The project is tracking trends in demographics and society as well as technological development, both in digital media and printing. The independent, non-industry sponsored project has already produced a number of reports on the business model of newspaper companies, the future development of media and communication technology and social and economic frameworks and trends. Later this year, these reports will be collated and analysed by Ifra’s expert team. By March 2008, the industry will be presented with the different futures or scenarios likely to develop in the media space, said Mr. Werfel. In the meanwhile, newspapers are welcome to make suggestions and provide inputs for the project.
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