Make Digital Marketing Work

I wrote yesterday about book publishing and predicted that the book was not dead and would continue with its admittedly minority but niche audience.

Newspaper publishing is less clear.  Over crowded tubes and the increasing switch of commuters to pedal power has made a noticeable difference on the number of Times and Telegraphs left behind on the 7:43 to Liverpool Street in the mornings.  Murdoch correctly predicted that news would be delivered digitally.  What he failed to predict was the way that the value of news was commoditised and made freely available.  On the one hand, the BBC has its mighty news service which breaks stories of interest throughout the day and on the other hand citizen journalism is providing some excellent news coverage that is trusted by more and more people.  Then there is Google that aggregates it all together and makes it available at the type of a search string.

As a child I remember watching the movies of the thirties which many would say was the golden era of newspaper publishing.  Reporters took on heroic levels of importance with a dogged determination to find the story and rush it to the editor’s office for inclusion in the morning episode.  Even Superman was a journalist at the daily Planet and everyone knows that Spiderman took the pictures that mattered for the Daily Bugle.

Today however both Superman and Spiderman would have problems.  Whilst they were holding the train one handed to stop it plunging into the river,  everyone down below would be pointing their camera phones whilst a blogger sat in Starbucks and published the story as it happened.  Superman could fly faster than a speeding bullet but could he conceivably fly faster than a wireless connection with broadband?  I suspect not.  Krypton’s last son would get scooped every time.

Please excuse me for vanishing into my childhood for a second but I think the analogy highlights the problem perfectly.  Daily newspapers were all about the scoop and the strength of commentary.  Even with super powers it is difficult for the news agencies these days to replace the person on the ground equipped with modern communication methods, so what hope does a mere mortal with a press pass have?  Similarly an army of young boys in short trousers can never  build a distribution network as efficiently as Google with its ability to help people “read all about it”

One of my favourite movies when I was growing up was All the Presidents Men, which is probably also journalism and newspaper publishing’s finest hour.  The complex story showed two dedicated professionals use every ounce of their experience and professionalism (as well as a few little strokes) to get the story that ultimately removed a president from office.  Never before, never since was the ethic of journalism so well highlighted.

I found myself wondering how it would go down if Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein found the story today.  Would they have waited to publish in the Washington Post or would they have released it piece by piece in an anonymous blog to gather information in the form of other anonymous comments which would then be tweeted and linked across the world.  One can imagine deepthroat.wordpress.com becoming one of the most read blogs in the world if it did play out like that and all the Presidents men wouldn’t have been able to stop it.  The recent story of Trafigura which was first reported in WikiLeaks shows that the Internet is understood by everyone at the top of a story as a way to circumvent even legal attempts to stop the story being told.  No need for Superman in that little episode.  All you need is the power of the Internet.

Newspapers are hurting there is no doubt about it.  Times and Sunday Times bulk bundles ceased to be given out to airlines and hotel chains this week and joins the same move by the guardian and Observer a few weeks ago.  So what can publishers do to stop them taking their place amongst the ranks of the Dodo?

There have been several high profile instances of Citizen Journalism this week, at the same time as the established news media are talking about charging for their content.  I feel that these two examples of the former are perfect representations of why the latter won’t work.

The first started with a an entry in The Guardian which read “The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.”

The popular myth is that this entry captured the imagination of many Twitter users who uncovered and published the story about oil company Trafigura which exposed a toxic dumping disaster inflicted on the Ivory Coast, which hospitalized up to 100,000 people.  This came about because Trafigura pulled what political Blog Wikileaks described as a legal parlour trick to prevent the reporting of this.

The full sequence of events is laid out in the  WikiLeaks article.  It shows that this isn’t a people’s journalism coup of Watergate proportions but rather a deliberate collaboration of a series of people to make use of the Internet in order to disseminate information in a game of cat and mouse.  It does however highlight the manner in which law and technology are engaging each other in an exchange similar to that of a great white shark and a killer whale, with the killer whale able to ram the shark, place it an a catatonic state and then devour it at will.  Technology is simply too clever for the existing law, especially where information is concerned.  If you want it hidden and people sont want it hidden, it wont be hidden.  If you want something silenced and people don’t want it silenced, it wont be silenced, if you want it paid for and people are not prepared to pay for it they won’t.  The point that is worth considering (from someone interested in online media’s point of view)  is that all that appeared in the press was a piece in the guardian saying they couldn’t print anything, after that it was the Internet all the way and websites which are free.  Its success was because it was free and it captured the imagination of hundreds of thousands of people who had never heard of Trafigura or Carter Ruck.  I include myself in this,

It was the players who orchestrated this and watched it go viral, and if they can do it once they can do it again.  Will they need or can they use a paid for online media with it’s limiting capabilities to achieve the same again or will they simply go back to Twitter with a good story?  I suspect the latter is true.

The second example is a bit more grass roots and an example of actual citizen journalism.  An every day commuter was travelling home when he witnessed a member of TFL staff blow up at a member of the public.  Its a very common thing and it has pissed commuters in London off for years.  There was never any point complaining so everyone subjected to it just got on with it whilst dreaming of excruciating death machines for the TFL staff concerned.  Yesterday though the commuter used his camera phone to video it and capture the sound.  The full story of Ian’s TFL abuse is on this blog entry.  It was posted yesterday evening.  By this morning it had gone viral on Twitter and Facebook.  By mid morning it had attracted the attention of the Mayor’s office, the Daily Telegraph and BBC lunchtime news carried extensive coverage of the incident complete with subtitles.  It is a clear example of a TFL employee losing it, and the chap concerned looks as though he is probably going to be hung out to dry.  His full name has been made public and links to his personal Facebook page are being circulated across the web at the speed of broadband.

This is a clear example of Citizen Journalism being picked up by the mainstream media, and if it originated on the internet how do the established media expect it to be suddenly worth paying for?  Do we?  All the commentary has already been made, and the Mayor has already got involved.  Interestingly enough he has voiced his opinion before anyone in TFL has responded.  They must know it has happened and that the cries outside Holborn station are getting louder. Their silence shows a company ill prepared to deal with their brand in a fast paced social media world.

One of his last entries was that he was “trying to get out of bed” yesterday.  After today he may well look back on that and wished he had not bothered.

This highlights the next point though, because this single employee who has (for all we know) made a single but significant error is now the focus for every Londoner who has ever suffered a similar experience from TFL staff.  The mob is baying and they want blood.  Unchecked it could get out of control and people could get hurt.  There is the need for a mainstream voice to keep thing in proportion and perspective.  In this case in particular if the employee was not removed from his platform the unrest and cries of the mob could easily turn into a tragedy.  The media does therefore have a part to play, I just don’t think we are prepared to pay for it.  They of course have the choice to not pick up a story of this nature, but that won’t stop the readership from creating their own news online.  Back to the drawing board then for Murdoch and the other media owners.