State of the Media

Why Paper and Print won't disappear

I've been pondering the conversation I had last week with marketing guy about whether print is viable as a communications medium -- particularly for B2B communications. There were a couple of posts that kept the brain juice flowing.

First, Brian Fuller points out that the changes in Middle East culture and politics are causing a boom in the newspaper business. Second, Rich Karlgaard, did a mini-review of the Amazon Kindle that mentions he can't look at a display for more than 30 minutes at a time.

This brings up two very significant issues that we like to overlook in our inexorable march to a digital future. Number one, more than half of all the internet traffic in the world occurs within a 100 mile radius of San Francisco. Much of rest is split up among the rest of the United States, Europe and Japan. Only a very small amount comes out of the Middle East, South America and Asia where most of the world's population is. Access to digital media is very limited still and that is a big reason that print publications, even the B2B kind, still do well in all those areas. To dismiss print is to dismiss a very significant audience, not only for customers but for potential employees and technology partners.

Second, it has been shown again and again that digital displays are damaging to human eyes and a a significant cause of mental stress. That means that anything you read ion the digital media has to be consumed in 30 minute chunks a day, limiting the amount of time a potential customer has to find information about your company as well as the amount of space available for telling your story. Digital media as a communication medium is well designed for publishing news releases, shopping, marketing blurbs and blogs, but it isn't a world or market change yet. An the closer we get to a global community, the further we get from a paperless society.

Pain brings change

What a difference a few months makes. Back in September, I started promoting the concept of New Tech Press and got very polite yeah-good-luck-with-that responses. Since then several media houses followed the way of TechInsights, nee CMP, and drastically cut editorial staff, sold of properties and curtailed coverage of entire industries.

Now, days away from the official launch of New Tech Press, I've been called in to meet with several companies, organizations and even European government agencies regarding the state of the media and what might be done about it.

What's the difference? A new year began and the silence from the technology press scared the crap out of several industries and even several countries.

As I've heard several times, no great change without pain. The potential "pain" of the loss of the media considered last year is now a reality for many technology niches. The good news is there are real industry leaders who looking at and creating new options for reviving the marketplace conversation.

It would have been nice to see it happen a few months ago, but the future looks bright.

Asking the right question

In the past 24 hours I've had an chance to experience the polar extremes of marketing savvy in the technology world. On one side was the CEO of a pre-funded biotech firm looking for PR representation. On the side, was Milan Lazich, vice president of marketing for Magma Design Automation. What made this remarkable is that the biotech guy, a member a the hot new tech niche, was clueless, and Milan, representing a significant member of the brain-dead EDA industry, is a voice of sanity and reason.

I was recommended to the biotech guy as an out-of-the-box communicator. He was supposed to be disappointed in the PR firms he'd already approached because, number one, they gave him "cookie-cutter" approaches to communication and, number two, they were "to expensive."

So he opens up the discussion with the question, "How can you help me?" Now I could have played the game and given him the stock answers about the value of communication and ROI, etc. etc., all of which would have created another form answer that he would have dismissed. Instead I said, "I have no idea."

I had looked at his website when I was alerted that he was going to call and it said nothing of value. I did a couple of searches on his name and found virtually nothing. There is no history, no message, no apparent value in what he or his company does. And yet he wants me to tell him how I would raise the perception of his company.

His question can only be answered by a rote response, which he was tired of getting. So I ignored his question and told him what he needed to do. I told him to get funded first and stop wasting his time talking to PR firms until he had done that. I told him to establish a budget that he is willing to spend on marketing (not just PR) and be willing to share that with the consultants he talks to. I told him when he did that, call me back and we'll have a meeting so I can determine if he has what it takes to represent his company to the world or if he or a member of his team needed to be trained.

He didn't like any of that, but that was the right answer to his question. Right now, I'm pretty sure this guy is going to underspend on marketing, spin his wheels with an inadequate program with a consultant he won't listen to, and be out of the business inside of three years. I could be wrong… but I doubt it.

The whole thing depressed the snot out of me. Then I had coffee with Milan today.

I've mentioned him before calling him one of the few real marketers left in his industry (a compliment he prefers to qualify as an overstatement.) He has some new responsibilities in the industry since his CEO, Rajeev Madhavan, got elected to the industry council board a few weeks ago. Milan's now the chairman of the communications committee of the council, charged with getting the word out about how "wonderful" the EDA industry is. That's a job akin to explaining how well the surge is doing in Iraq (it may be doing well, but no one believes you.)

We talked about a lot of stuff, including Brian Fuller's the company is the medium is the message" concept. During our time, Milan gave this great statement about the cost of marketing. He said "if you only have enough budget to print up fliers at Kinko's and pass them out at street corners," you still have to figure out why that material would be important to the audience … and what is important to the audience is not going to be your product.

In other words, the most important thing you can say is what the audience wants to really know. Wow. An EDA guy that gets it. Of course it had to be Milan.

What's going to happen is that a group of people are going to conspire on how to fix the image and messaging problems of an entire industry. I damn well expect that it will benefit Magma if Milan has a say, but it will also benefit everyone else who gets with the program. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Viva la revolucion!

Alix Paultre and Advantage Media work the web

I ran into Alix Paultre at the Embedded Systems Conference and had a chance to catch up on what he's been doing since I reported his move from Hearst. As usual he was full of good news an optimism, which always an interesting departure from the normal doom and gloom in the publishing industry. The nice thing is he has numbers to back up his optimism. Most publications use their website to drive readers to the print publication, which has always seemed to be a bass-ackward approach. Alix has Advantage using the print publication driving readers to visit the websites and boost readership there, making the print publication a promotional tool for the web. Listen for yourself here.

Rumors and the sounds of crickets

The Embedded Systems Conference was an exciting place to be this week. It's been a while since I;ve been to a trade show where there was positive buzz from both the editorial and the vendor side. Technical content was great, there was good activity on the floor, the editors said the interviews were interesting (and I had to agree since I was wearing my New Tech Press hat this week). If you want to see some real innovation in electronics, it's going on in the embedded world.

For full disclosure, I did meet some people at booths who were not happy about ESC. They didn't like their booth placement, they weren't getting any good leads and they didn't like San Jose. But most of those people were also very disagreeable. I watched a couple from a distance and saw them ignore people waiting to talk to them as they fiddled with cell phones, utter single syllable responses to questions and actually heard one of them turn away a prospect because he was "going to lunch."

Conversation, however, was positive where ever I went, even in the media center... until the conversation turned to the state of the media or ... EDA.

Lots of rumors around that woebegon industry, most surrounding the fate of DATE and DAC, the two big conferences in Europe and the US. None of the rumors could be sourced so I won't repeat them. But every time I heard the story is was consistent, so you have to wonder. What is real is that many US editors are not planning on attending DAC this year. The redoubtable Freddy Santamaria won't even be there because there is no European press planning on attending. We already know what TechInsights thinks about the industry so maybe Gabe Moretti will be there for EDA Designline. Reed has cut back its plans to cover by pulling Ann Mutschler from the team (you can expect Ron Wilson to be attending sessions but he doesn;t take meetings) but John Blyler is sure to show up as is Dave Maliniak ... maybe.

Dave sent out a second plea for content for his pre DAC story. One deadline has passed so he's set a drop-dead date of April 25, but he's said the "sense of deadness in EDA is palpable." That aptly describes the sentiments of at least a dozen editors talking about the industry in the ESC press room.

Does that mean nothing is happening in EDA? No, I know of several interesting companies and technologies. the problem is, none of them are investing in the market conversation. The entire industry is so impressed with itself that it thinks the fact that they exist is enough to warrant attention, and it is sulking right now because no one has asked for a date.

To paraphrase Sting, Roxanne, you need to put on that red light.

To end on a positive note, I'm restarting the podcasts with the ever effervescent Alix Paultre coming next week. The guy has ideas. Tune in next week.

Episode IV

I'm at the Embedded Systems Conference this week wearing the New Tech Press hat. TechInsights has recognized this blog as legitimate media so I'm back from the dark side of media (kudos to anyone who gets the reference in this post's title.)

It's an interesting and gratifying contrast to see the reception of new ideas in journalism, compared to what it was 6 months ago. Only a few, recent refugees from the B:B death spiral were willing to give thought to doing journalism different. Today I've had multiple conversations with journalists I haven't seen in months, all still employed in the traditional press, asking about opportunities in the new way of doing things. We're fielding more calls from PR reps and start-ups asking for meetings, than we've been making. It seems like a tide is turning and there are those who see the next wave starting to crest.

Speaking of new ideas, New Tech Press will be publishing its first article, authored by the estimable Brian Fuller, on an up and coming display technology from Europe. Stay tuned. The dawn is coming.

Ziff Davis bloodletting

Sam Whitmore's podcast announced what could be a 20 percent layoff at Ziff Davis, mostly affecting eWeek. As many as a dozen editorial personnel, including Lisa Vos and Renee Ferguson. Insight Venture Partners is apparently unhappy with the financial progress of the ever dwindling publication, now all online (remember how well that worked for Electronic News?) and decided to make sure they got rid of the deadwood. Hey, as long as there is advertising, everything is OK, right? After all, that's what people go to publications for. Advertising. Isn't it? Hello?

Listen to me. I am lying right now.

Chris Edwards posted something really incredible today ... a disclaimer from A PR COMPANY ON A NEWS RELEASE!

What does this mean? It means that this agency hasn't read the release, has done no research, hasn't asked questions about the content of the release, doesn't even have an agreement with the client with a liability clause to protect them from lawsuits related to false statements in the release. It means they are taking money for just throwing stuff out there on the Internet.

This is what corporate marketing wants?

Forget about government economic policies. Forget about war. Forget about stupid lending practices. Those things didn't cause our current economic slump. The customers can't buy anything because they are too busy throwing up after reading Yahoo! News.

Jon Carroll pipes up

One of my favorite writers in the world, Jon Carroll of the SF Chronicle, wrote a contrarian view of the health of newspapers today. And one graf lower in the column highlights Loring Wirbel's comment from yesterday.

"Newspapers are the original aggregators; Web sites mostly just aggregate what the newspapers have already aggregated, plus opinion. Opinion is useful, sometimes funny, sometimes incisive, but it ain't no good without data. Newspapers are the fountainhead of data. We do the necessary job - well, not me, but real journalists. And we do it because we are trained to do it. We have, dare I say it, standards."

I think he makes a good point. The journalism business is changing. It's not the way it used to be, but it isn't going away anytime soon.

Wisdom and Ignorance, Part 9: The coming golden age of journalism

Over the past few months I've gone over the historical issues that created the free media in the US and now the world, the events and decisions that brought us to where we are today, and made some suggestions about how industry and media should learn to work together. In the process, I've beaten up on some specific industries, gotten involved with arguments from Big Business advocates and seen this blog grow to the point of journalistic legitimacy... whatever that means. It's been a great time.

But in this final segment of the series, I want to turn specifically to my media brethren and make some suggestions about what they should do to help restore the symbiotic relationship between business and media.

This morning I heard that CBS – the Tiffany Network, the organization that defined broadcast news for most of the last century – is outsourcing a large portion of its news gathering to CNN. Once again current events sets the stage for my post.

There are many people that would bemoan this relationship as an indication of the death of the media, while others call it the continuing consolidation. Paul Miller touched on that today by calling for fewer publications, but I'm not sure that's really the point. I think the CBS move is a good one because it shows that media, to be relevant, needs to be cooperative.

The journalism paradigm for more than 200 years has been not only adversarial for its subjects, but to each other. The goal was to create unique content; to scoop competitive news media on information, thereby demonstrating why someone should read your paper or watch or listen your broadcast. The Internet has changed all that. Information, pseudo-information and outright lies are spread almost instantaneously through out the world now. Getting your viewpoint out to the masses is easier than ever. Journalists need to learn that getting out first means nothing. What is more important is getting correct information out, properly vetted and considered. That means it may not come from one journalist, but many.
That's the biggest change media needs to learn. Journalists need to cooperate with each other, regardless of what publication or medium they work for. Media houses need to not only allow that kind of collaboration, then need to encourage it. That means journalists are going to have to become a REAL profession and just not claim it.

I can't count how many times I've heard representatives from every news media company bad mouth the competition, the worst being United Business Media and Reed Business editorial. That can be expected from the business side of those organizations, but it is unprofessional from the journalists. Writers and editors from every form of media should be sharing their information, balancing each other for the purpose of creating considered, thoughtful communication that the audience can trust. Bloggers internal and external to industry, who seek the trust of their audience, should participate in the collaboration to make sure that what they are about to share is accurate, even if it only to a degree.

Part of this can be accomplished by adhering to the principals and ethics established by organizations like PRSA and the Society of Professional Journalists. As I pointed out a few months ago, very few practitioners on either side were even aware those principals exist. And that takes me to my next point.

Communicators who seek to be considered professional need to act like professionals. Any idiot can sign up for a blog on Google. It takes someone with training in communications to make that blog valuable. As much as I appreciate the concepts published by David Scott Meerman one thing he only touches on is that using new media to promote your company doesn't do any good unless you know how to communicate. And there are just not enough trained communicators for every company to have one.

Many companies are retreating behind wall fortresses, pushing employees to establish blogs that speak only to their current customer base. But the efforts are hollow because they don't encourage real discussion. Journalists know how to create interest and uncover bullshit. That's why they need to stay independent.
But media companies need to let their communicators have the freedom to work outside their own fortress and build stories with the help of all their compatriots. It's time for a real "fourth estate" of professionals. This is not the end of journalism as we know it. This could be the golden age.

We'll be back with our regular program of interviews with media players in the next few weeks. Thanks to everyone for their support and encouragement.