SIIA Panel - Sink or Swim?
Kevin English from Satyam moderates a panel with Oakleigh Thorne of Blumenstein/Thorne, Michael Wolff, Bob Merry of CQ, and Vivek Shah.
Question: What do information companies look like now? Michael Wolff tackles this right away and asks back, "How do we look at what Google's doing it and mimic it and adapt to it and possibly steal from it?" Wolff continues - "How do we pay less for content? How do we pay nothing at all for content?" Well, this is an old question - I was asking this back in 1995, and then again in 1998, and then again in 2001. Wolff touts his own company Newser, which uses other people's content - just links out to people.
English moves on to Shah, who runs the digital group at Time: "The core fundamentals of a media business are the same - a great product, an audience, and a way to make money. Two ways to make money - ads and consumers." Tilting more towards advertising. But there needs to be a focus on meeting the needs of users. Economic advantage used to be the scoop - but on the internet, that advantage is very very narrow. Voice, personality matter a lot right now. As the formats change - from PC-based web to mobile - all of a sudden the real estate devoted to ads is small and so revenue potential goes on.
Oakleigh Thorne goes on to say that a lot of this has been talked about before, with business media rather than consumer media - and invokes the transition from print to CD-ROM, changing printing plants and sales forces, etc. How did B2B publishers handle some of these transitions? Very good questions.
Bob Merry pipes up with a question which I have lost the thread of - to Shah, who demurs by saying he's responsible only for the website not the magazine. What's the difference between print and web content? The web medium is an "hourly medium"? Have had to change the nature of editorial orgs that have a "different metabolism".
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