 The good news: Donald Trump has given publishers, including The New York Times, a renewed sense of purpose. If you are in media and feeling light-headed, take a deep breath - you have been working in the most disrupted of industries. You deserve a beer or something harder. Now sit down. Because I have encouraging news for you - as well as same trends to consider from my recent sabbatical in New York. What you do not want to hear is that the pace of change will continue as it has been. It won’t. It will multiply - that’s according to everyone at the forefront of change. The good news for media is that clear paths have emerged. The fog of uncertainty has lifted around paywalls, on how best to fund journalism and on where Facebook and Google fit into the media equation - well, sort of. Media folk also have a lot to thank Donald J Trump for - because he has re-stoked the fires of quality journalism. In short, for the first time in years, the media has reason to feel optimistic. I spent two weeks in New York visiting established and new media players, as well as attending the International News Media Association (INMA) world congress. During an INMA-run study tour I visited iconic media, including The New York Times (NYT), Dow Jones, Bloomberg and Google. I visited start-ups Playbuzz and established digital companies such as Chartbeat and Nativo. Some of the deepest insights came from talking with media executives. I spent time with delegates from the US, Germany, China, India, Latin America, South Africa, Finland, Norway, Sweden. Gee, even Australians and Kiwis. What were the themes? I shared a bunch in a blog aimed at communications teams and those wanting to craft their own DIY Newsroom™. Here I zone on what is of relevance to the news industry and those keen for solutions. So let’s roll.
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9 essentials from Media Central, New York City, for communication teams to knock it out of the park1/6/2017  The stodgy stuff of reinventing business models and how best to use data is consuming the world’s top media executives in 2017. The new shiny toys of immersive reality and 360-video are receiving plenty of attention and funding, but for the most part big media is focused on getting its house in order. That is about returning to purpose and applying a traditional sales funnel approach to convert window shoppers into fully-fledged subscribers and then maximising revenue per user. Joining the dots between data and customer conversion is critical. Funnels? Data? Boring, huh? But for media today these are the smarts, along with amazing tech, helping companies emerge from a fog of uncertainty. I got up close and personal with the latest global thinking by spending two weeks in New York, the self-appointed epicentre of media today. I took a study tour of iconic media organisations, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Google, along with lesser-known but impactful start-ups PlayBuzz, Navito and Lotame. The tour was a prelude to the International News Media Association world congress held at the New York Times Centre, attended by media executives from 40 countries, and book-ended by a workshop that built a playbook for print. The message from New York: start spreading the news, media is fighting back. And I will address that in more detail in another blog. For those of us in the business of communications, I identified nine themes to absorb and which will help you better understand the landscape as is stands. *** |
AuthorStuart Howie is a Canberra-based communications consultant. He is the author of The DIY Newsroom, which won Social Media Book of the Year at the Australian Business Book Awards. Stuart has worked in media, publishing and communications for more than 30 years as an executive, editor and strategist. 
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