Originally posted on 6 A.M.

At Edelman’s fourth Annual New Media Academic Summit, we convened a superb group of senior media executives who offered insights into the future of the sector. They included Raju Narisetti, managing editor of the Washington Post; Greg Coleman, president of Huffington Post; Gerard Baker, deputy editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal; Jonah Bloom, CEO and editor in chief of Breaking Media; Mark Lukasiewicz, VP of NBC Digital Media; Mike Oreskes, senior managing editor of the Associated Press; David Carey who has just joined Hearst as President of the Magazine Unit; and Jon Miller, CEO of Digital Media at News Corp.

These media leaders are addressing challenges head-on, and are optimistic about their future. Here are a few of the most important insights:

1. New Readers & Channels—David Carey, Conde Nast group president cited the incremental revenue and readers for its relaunched Gourmet food magazine and Wired’s completely reimaged iPad app (they sold 95,000 digital copies at $4.99 each in June), as only the beginning as people are willing to pay for mobility and engagement. Baker described the iPad as a potential game changer, noting that the WSJ has sold many subscriptions at $208 per year for this platform, and the Washington Post charges $1.99 for iPhone application for a year.
2. New Revenue Options—Bloom believes Media will integrate eCommerce directly into content so “media will sell stuff directly.” So, right beside a book review will be the option to buy the book. Access to the archives, conferences and direct access to journalists via email are also being considered viable premium paid options.
3. The Pay Wall—Narisetti offered a strong defense of the Washington Post policy on free access to content. “Subscription revenue has always been a tiny part of the newspaper business model. We have 30 million unique visitors each month to our site.” Baker went the other direction describing the Wall Street Journal pay model, “In the beginning of the web, there was optimism that we could focus advertising so ad revenues would suffice. Now it is clear that we need other revenue streams.” News Corporation is bringing in paywalls for its British newspapers and Miller emphasized that will keep investing in quality content to get people to pay.
4. Trust in Content—Baker noted that the decline in trust in establishment institutions (business, government) extends to mainstream media. “We often fail to properly represent the views of the majority of our readers.” He quoted Oscar Wilde, “The parts that were original were not true and that which was true was not original.” Jonah Bloom noted that “there is not enough originality in stories being tackled.” Lukasiewicz said that “transparency is the new objectivity. We will have a point of view in stories.” Oreskes took a strong position on “Journalism being distinguished by its higher standards for quality, not by ownership of the printing press.”
5. Narrow-casting—Narisetti wants to get away from the single “front page approach” so that a reader can focus only on specific more narrow interest (politics or sports). “We need multiple front doors to the house, such as PostLocal.com, PostSports.com, PostPolitics.com.” He said that “we link to other sites on stories they break (Politico as example)—we need to offer everything that is relevant.”
6. Value from Conversation—Coleman said that the Huffington Post gets three million comments from its users each month. “Our content model envisages 1/3 from each of bloggers, original reporting and aggregation.” Narisetti added, “Comments may reflect the market’s view but those who comment represent a narrow slice of readers—but we keep comments as open as possible because these are the most engaged readers.”
7. New Measurement for Reporters—Narisetti said, “Newsrooms have never wanted to measure how they are performing—specifically how many readers look at each article. We now do a daily report to 120 editors, with page views, time spent, unique visitors, which photos are preferred—metrics that are key to the business.” He said that his reporters must use meta-data to be sure they use words that “help readers to find your story…people search for Republican Party, not GOP, so use that term in stories.” Bloom added that reporters must be able to market their stories via Twitter and Facebook.
8. Power of Visuals—Oreskes noted that while the AP may have 50 reporters on the coverage of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the most powerful content has been visual. “People remember the pelican photo or the AP photographer donning scuba gear to get unique video.” He quoted Walter Lippmann, media pundit, “The world outside, the pictures in our head.” At our dinner, key note speaker, Tom Cibrowski, Good Morning America Executive Producer, ABC, also mentioned they are rapidly adopted new hi-def video cameras to reporters to report more quickly and cheaply with video.
9. Importance of Local Market Dominance—The Washington Post reaches 45% of Washington area households. You need 30 ads on local TV or 60 ads on cable TV to achieve the same reach as one ad in the Washington Post. Of the 18-34 year olds in the area, 62% use the Washington Post on-line. This is group most easily monetized in advertising. Note that 86% of the Washington Post web traffic comes from outside of the DC area.

Those of us in PR would be wise to adapt our business model to reflect the new demands of immediacy, visualization, conversation and localization.

Originally posted on 6 A.M.

This week I spoke at Edelman’s fourth New Media Academic Summit, jointly hosted by New York University and Syracuse University, attended by more than 100 professors from 10 countries. My bold assertion is that there is a Third Way for companies to communicate, beyond paid and earned media, by embracing Public Engagement.

Today, there is a dispersion of authority, away from the mainstream media and classic sources of influence toward open platforms and new voices driven by passion and personal experience. Smart companies are changing their games, moving from strict message control to a more open discussion with stakeholders. Mike Slaby, who just joined our firm as chairman of Edelman Digital, said, “We are moving from speaking at audiences to participating with them by drawing them into organizations with authentic communications”.

The Third Way asserts that companies need to complement their usual paid and earned media strategies by embracing new, social and owned media. The Third Way envisages:

• Utilizing the evolved mainstream media, with its numerous opportunities for participation, such as video, commentary from mid-level employees and shared experiences of customers.
• Reaching out to new media with the convening credibility of expert voices. Recognize that Politico or Tech Crunch may be the best starting point for media outreach.
• Utilizing social networks as essential spaces for company embassies. Be an aggregator for discussion. Connect members to related stories. Provide multiple entry points for relating to personal experiences.
• Helping every company become a media company (thanks again, Andrew Heyward, for this quote) via an owned channel. This offers a faithful representation of the present situation while providing context that enables viewers to understand the full story.

The change from impression-based interactions to long-term relationships with clients’ stakeholders requires nothing short of a major reevaluation of our role as PR counsel. We need to provide strategic advice, not simply communications tactics. Our profession must now embrace research to distinguish among idea starters, amplifiers and viewers. We should create the central idea and enable the full exploitation across four screens (TV, PC, Slate and smart phone). Since online platforms and spaces are at the root of the current evolution of media, digital strategy can no longer be seen as a specialty area; it must become a core competence for all PR people.

The new principles adopted by Edelman practitioners in order to maintain our clients’ license to operate, are termed the rules of Public Engagement. These include:

• Open advocacy (why you are here)
• Listening with new intelligence
• Participating real time in conversations
• Create and co-create content
• Socialize media relations
• Build partnerships for the common good
• Embrace and navigate complexity

We should aim for measurable outcomes beyond media impressions and advertising equivalencies, including Building Trust, Changing Behaviors, Deeper Communities and Delivering Commercial Benefit. At the same time we must draw a clear line between journalism and public relations, as we rely on a discerning media sector as a cornerstone of our work.

We will proceed along two dimensions—to encompass a broader set of media options, from Mainstream to New to Social to Owned; and engage stakeholders in deeper, long-term social relationships, as all communications become public. In this way, PR can assume its proper role as the organizing principle for strategy and communications. Herein ends the lecture: please click through my slide show and as always, I welcome your views.

Originally posted on 6 A.M.

We had a Media Future panel at the Edelman Global Leadership meeting this week. Two of the participants, Jonathan Miller of Newscorp and Chrystia Freeland of Thomson Reuters, had particularly acute observations about the way forward for their industry. So did Matthew Bishop, who addressed our team on Wednesday evening.

1. Evolution of Three Segments—Miller and Freeland agree that mainstream media must have a dual revenue stream from advertising and subscription in order to thrive. As the MSM segment begins to charge for content, there will be an even faster rise of the insurgent niche, featuring media such as The Huffington Post. They have tiny distribution costs and small infrastructure of reporters. The third segment is professional service entities such as Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters, who charge high prices to their clients. “The question becomes how much ankle to show in the consumer space in return for ability to attract better reporters and better sources,” said Freeland. Note that Bloomberg makes available its content to the public on Bloomberg.com fifteen minutes after it is posted on the terminal and that only 8% of stories written by Bloomberg reporters make it to the public site.
2. Rise of New Digital Brands That Integrate Backward into Print—Miller spoke about Politico, which “has a print vehicle where they make most of their money via advertising. They are really superb, with true authority. They could start to charge for their digital content.”
3. Commentary More Valuable than News—In an informal poll of Edelman executives at our leadership meeting, the most frequently cited names of “must read” journalists were columnists Thomas Friedman and Maureen Dowd. “Commentary is more valuable than commodity news,” Miller said. “But there is an ever shrinking time frame for readers between news and expectation of views”. Freeland said that there is growing tension in the newsroom between beat reporters and their more celebrated editorialist colleagues. “Tom Friedman wants his content to be free so he can sell more books and deliver more speeches. Meanwhile the business side of the media is installing pay walls.”
4. Power of the Tablet—This is rapidly becoming the fourth screen for media, along with the TV, PC and cell phone. “There will be 40-60 million units in use in the USA within two years,” Miller asserted. “This will change behavior. It is a terrific opportunity for print, both newspaper and magazine, to reinvent itself with a dual paid and free content model.” Freeland sees that video is the key accelerator for mobile devices. “Youth want visual content; video with text.”
5. Three Paradigms—Miller discussed the Mark Zuckerberg web media structure, with the first being linking web sites to each other (Google), the second being applications – especially games (Zynga), the third being the people centric web (Facebook). He is trying to reposition MySpace in the “what you are actually interested in” niche.
6. The Power of Consumer Voice—Fox just held auditions for Glee, my teen daughter’s favorite TV show. Candidates had to create videos to enter; 37,000 were posted in three weeks. Then over 100 million votes were tallied to find the winners.
7. Downward Pressure on Pricing—In prior periods, the media companies were content creators and distribution owners. Now the two competencies are separating. “Apple is really a seller of mobile devices,” said Miller. “They want songs to sell for 99 cents. In fact, iTunes is a break-even business.” The continued squeeze on content producer revenue by distributors is best exemplified by Google, “who think that media is free.”
8. Ultra Premium Brands–The Economist Magazine, according to its US editor Matthew Bishop, expects its readers to devote two hours to each issue. “Our bargain is that you will be truly informed for that investment of time. We don’t see other media as competition. We are competing against other options for your Sunday afternoon leisure time.”

We will have to move ever more quickly to adapt to a world where the extended universe of media is more segmented.

Image credit: Robert Scoble and dkleinst