From Reuters.com
A future for news
Devin Wenig is CEO, Thomson Reuters Markets
Much of the last few years have been spent discussing how journalism will survive in the face of the immense changes taking place in the industry. The digital revolution, the shift in advertising-based business models and the explosion of content sources has turned the consuming, dissemination and publishing of news on its head.
But the debate has shifted from will it survive to how will it survive? How will media organizations deliver value while adapting to consumers’ new demands and capabilities, which will only continue to change?
Blaming Google for disrupting the advertising market or waiting for the iPad to replicate offline content are not strategies. Overcapacity and commoditization are not the most popular industry topics to discuss. But look at any news aggregation site and the thousands of stories about any given current event that have little or no differentiation and it’s self evident. When local markets were walled off and self sustainable, there was room for this level of duplication. In the age of information ubiquity, there is not.
News organizations need a horizontal platform. They need a broad, fast and fact-based news capability. The only economic model that makes sense is a shared industry capability. However, no single news provider can provide all the requirements in a rapidly shifting and dynamic market for current awareness.
Thomson Reuters is investing heavily in news. We believe that our history, brand and broad capability give us an excellent starting position to build that industry platform. We will supplement our unique offering with investments such as the one announced today to support our U.S. and global media business with deep U.S. content. Additionally, because we know that we will never be able to satisfy all of the industry’s needs, we’ll also provide a platform so that sources can monetize their news and content through our distribution channels. That marriage will make the industry more efficient while freeing up journalists to focus on really adding value for their customers.
Where is that value? In vertical content and in true digital innovation. Vertical, valuable journalism is ultimately about expertise and about connecting the dots. It can be based on an editorial voice, a point of view or a set of common interests. While profit pools have been eroded in general news, they have gathered in vertical markets such as corporate industry news and deep expertise in topics of interest such as sports, politics, weather and many other niches. Editors in these verticals generally have a distinct editorial voice and deep connection to the producers and the consumers of newsflow. When journalism at this level really connects, it can reflect or even create a “virtual community.” For Thomson Reuters, vertical content means the world’s deepest, fastest and most relevant news for professionals. Our editorial goal is to be indispensable to our customers.
How will journalism survive the Internet Age?
Chris Ahearn is President, Media at Thomson Reuters. The following is the text of remarks prepared for the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop on how the Internet has affected journalism.
Good afternoon. As I only have a couple of minutes, let me get straight to the point.
First, journalism is not synonymous with newspapers and today the discussion has focused too much on newspapers alone. Second, journalism will do more than survive the Internet Age, it will thrive. It will thrive as creators and publishers embrace the collaborative power of new technologies, retool production and distribution strategies and we stop trying to do everything ourselves.
I agree with Mr. Murdoch that the bold will survive and the timid will fail. However, the newfangled aggregators/curators and the dominant search engines are certainly not the enemy of journalism. Nor are they the salvation. They do not always refrain from doing evil in their pursuit of profit and audience. And they do fail to “do unto others” at times -– some do steal and use complete or near-complete copies of our and other work and use ad networks such as AdSense to unlawfully monetize without sharing.
That said, most are a constructive and competitive part of the news ecosystem, I welcome them and I continue to believe and support the link economy.
At Thomson Reuters, I am lucky to oversee the business of both the world’s most indispensible news agency as well as our innovative publishing arm, Reuters.com. Thus, I see the challenges and opportunities from both sides of the aisle. Many of you in this room are clients of ours (or should be) and some of you are our competitors. Perhaps different from those who wish they could roll back the clock, we prefer to lean into the winds of change.
Like many we grapple with the coverage, cost and value issues of content scarcity vs. abundance as well as content uniqueness vs. utility. We choose to maximize the value of each of these four quadrants and have adaptive business models and markets which allow us to. For example, we focus principally on the importance of vertical and niche markets that have subscription-oriented models — this where our firm derives the vast majority of its revenues. We focus obsessively on the needs of professionals in those markets we serve. We don’t want to be all things to all people. We want to create journalism that has unique value to our clients, and partner with creators as warranted and needed. Most importantly, we focus on creating and providing valuable services — not just content.
Can Chris Ahearn be taken seriously on anything if he used these words in this appearance:
“At Thomson Reuters, I am lucky to oversee the business of both the world’s most indispensible news agency as well as our innovative publishing arm, Reuters.com.”
How about the journalistic sourcing for such over-blown adjectives as “indispensable” and “innovative?”
Can this be a honest journalist when he has such a big head and such a swelled opinion of his and his company’s position in the world?
Indispensable for whom or what? Innovative? Maybe for
1996, but not for today.
Take off the rose-colored glasses, Chris Ahearn, and see the scary truth about your inadequate news report with its gaping holes in coverage.
It certainly will be interesting how this evolves. I do see the extensibility of your vision outside of news into all information sources.
What is implied in your blog is an evolution toward the potential of harnessing the power of crowd sourcing, both dynamic (such as Twitter) and persistent (blogging, etc.). This is not a small undertaking given the question of trusted and unbiased content, though this an area where Thomson Reuters leads the competition.