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PaidContent Headline (Prediction) From Sept 22, 2009

From time to time, I love to pull up old business articles/blog posts and see if the predictions came true. Tonight, I decided to check in on PaidContent.org, one year ago. This was the top headline:

PCUK/Harris Poll: How Much Do Readers Say They’d Pay?

The UK-based survey predicted that if people’s favorite papers went behind a paywall — less than 5% of the current readership would subscribe.

Were they accurate? (The simple answer, yes.)

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12 Random Thoughts on Content

I’ve sat listening to so many give their take on the future of content. Here are my thoughts.

1. Pay walls, sub models, etc. make sense for magazines & small/local newspapers due to the lack of competition for those topics/angles/articles. Not moving fast toward this model makes no sense at all.
2. Pay walls, sub models, etc. don’t make sense for big-name newspapers because so many competitors are writing the same story from the same sources (e.g. see post-game comments in sports articles). Partnering with third-parties such as multiple papers have done with Bloomberg also makes sense. [Full disclosure: We have similar relationships with a number of newspapers.] Also, a good point made by my colleague Joseph Campbell, pay walls, sub models can work on certain sections and/or applications/tools. 
3. This is a favorite quote re: journalism from VF’s Graydon Carter: “My suggestion to newspapers everywhere is to give the public a reason to read them again. So here’s an idea: get on a big story with widespread public appeal, devote your best resources to it, say a quiet prayer, and swing for the fences.” But, of course, there has to be a part of the model that subsidizes this cost as classifieds once did for newspapers.
4. Treat your freelance community like you would your best employees: 1) pay them regularly & on time; 2) give them a career path, opportunities to make more money, gain higher status in their community; 3) give them a limitless runway of work; 4) create a community in which they can teach and learn from others & 5) invest in making them better at their craft.
5. If the biggest piece of the online traffic pie comes from three places - YouTube, Google, & Facebook - publishers should invest in knowing those businesses inside and out. And when a SIZABLE (not trendy, small) player comes into the picture do the same thing.
6. Focus editors on editing; focus writers on writing; focus titlers or headline writers on titling; focus filmmakers on creating video. Yes … editors should understand the business models, SEO, and social media. But, if you ask a writer to focus on keyword density AND not on fulfilling the promise of the headline, you are already losing in the first inning.
7. ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind,’ said Vonnegut. The content world is a small world. In the vein of ‘under promise, over deliver’ build a business model that creates more benefits for your freelance community than it did the day before. This is everything from how much you pay to rolling out education tools, programs.
8. Check for plagiarism … if done with the right partner, it is SO cheap. It is shocking with today’s tools how few publishers check for plagiarism.
9. Most successful content models must have a combination of ‘want’ (entertaining, aspirational) and ‘need’ (utility) content. Esquire magazine does this beautifully.
10. UGC content, when moderated, can be even more powerful than a $2-a-word critic. Zagat, TripAdvisor & others have proven this. UGC, not moderated & not directed, has the opposite (negative) effect.
11. The death of classifieds and the rise of certain blogs had the biggest impact in the decline of firsthand news reporting. That said, Romenesko’s curation of news stories is the first thing I read every morning.
12. This is a wish more than a thought: I hope obits don’t become a major revenue source for newspapers.

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Favorite quote

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh…” - Jack Kerouac