Global media groups ambitious to keep up with changing times

David Pemsel, CEO of the Guardian, speaks during his session at the World News Media Congress in Estoril, Portugal, on June 7. Korea Times photo by Yun Suh-young

• Published Jun 21, 2018 5:42 PM KST
• Updated Jun 22, 2018 5:33 PM KST

By Yun Suh-young

The 70th World News Media Congress held in Estoril, Portugal from June 6-8, was all about "transformation."

"Every transformation is never enough because the world around you is always moving faster than you," said Tina Stiegler, executive vice president of people and strategy at Schibsted Media Group in Norway, during the keynote session.

"It's better to change today than being forced to change tomorrow by your boss or external forces."

While everyone gathered in Estoril to talk about how they have or will transform, other key words that could be derived from the three-day conference were "user experience," "premium product," "engagement," "work culture," "leadership," "gender equality" and "paid subscription."

Here's what speakers from various media groups had to say on different topics:

On leadership

As much as transformation is needed and vital, the ones who can actually make the calls are the leaders.

"Financial success of media organizations worldwide was statistically significantly correlated with two factors: 1) entrepreneurial leadership of the firm and 2) press freedom," said Francois Nel, director of the Journalism Leaders Program and co-convener of the Digital Editors Network in the United Kingdom.

Several CEOs leading change in their newsrooms were present at the conference, notably David Pemsel, CEO of the Guardian, who was promoted to the role in June 2015 to transform the organization from a deficit-stricken outfit to one that can actually make a profit, and Gary Liu, CEO of the South China Morning Post (SCMP), who was appointed to head the 1,100-people company in January last year.

"Our losses got to almost losing 100 million a year. Perfect timing to become a CEO," said Pemsel, chuckling.

"Print advertising continued to decline. We were not sustainable. It cost us 288 million pounds while we were making 210 million in revenue. I would describe that as serious.

"We had to step into this in the most determined, focused and optimistic way to keep doing what we're doing and not run out of money. We will break even at the end of March 2019."

While Pemsel was trying hard to make money, Liu was rapidly prototyping new products ― Inkstone, Abacus, and Goldthread were all launched in February, March and June this year, and are all online verticals that took on average six months to build.

On product innovation

At the core of SCMP's transformation, with a purpose of "moving from a local newspaper in Hong Kong to becoming a global media company," according to Liu, were user-focused products with which the newspaper was redefining itself as a product company.

"The only way to do that is to leverage tech, data and build the company from the perspective of customer experience. So we have to become a product company," he said during the conference.

Coming from a strong tech background, Liu was well versed in building products, which is how he approached news.

"One of our new products is very focused on the tech space in China, which we believe is massively underreported. But there is demand. We have built a new editorial product specifically to address that need," he said, referring to Abacus.

"We will fill in (the consumer need) across multiple different verticals. Inkstone is a package of six pieces of content that we contextualize and distribute once a day without updating."

Liu also plans to experiment with displaying differing opinions next to each other on a screen.

"We've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out something as simple as how to side-by-side show different opinions and incentivize the user to read both, to hear both sides of the equation and make up their own 'damn' minds,” Liu said. “That as a user experience innovation, if that works for us, I would love to see the industry adopt it. Most news organizations have never thought about this."

What he also hopes to do is to build an "aspirational" brand.

"Young consumers care about and become members of brands that are aspirational,” he said. “They can identify with and say this represents me. Very few news brands are aspirational. For us, our hope is that we will be able to build a couple of aspirational brands that specific demographics can say 'this represents me.'"

The term "user" wasn't new or surprising as much as it was used throughout the congress. Global media were moving toward the notion of readers being "users" and news content being "products."

Tobias Henning, general manager premium at Bild, the most widely read German media brand, also highlighted the importance of user experience during his session.

"Products need to be (built) in a user-friendly way and focused in every relevant platform," he said. "It should be frictionless for the user to access the content and the right content (needs to be targeted) for the right user."

On sustainability

As important as it is to generate revenue, it is also crucial for media organizations to stay afloat. To be sustainable, "premium product and premium price are key," according to Andiara Petterle, senior vice president of product development and operations at Brazilian media conglomerate Grupo RBS.

"Premium price is key to sustainability," she said. "Print advertising is declining fast and digital is helping to grow the subscription base. But print can buy time for digital with premium product and better paper."

The Brazilian media group is experimenting with a multiplatform, where readers can "experience beyond content."

"We brought people from places that are not from the media business but people that ask the right questions,” she said. “We built experiential content linking gourmet, sports and shopping (such as a women's platform with a premium concept store to engage brands and customers in a unique experience) which is working very well."

As for the Guardian, which is hitting back to reach the breakeven point by early next year, a simpler strategy was adopted to build relationships with readers and translate that financially.

"Balance between a very strong purpose and a very strong financial framework is what led us,” said Guardian CEO David Pemsel. “Strategically, how do you build something cohesive around building a relationship with readers? The strategy had to be simple.

"We focused on four things: 1) How do we build relationships with our readers? 2) How do we build this relationship into a financial relationship, being mindful of the negative impact of paywalls? 3) How do we navigate through the advertising world? and 4) Bearing in mind cost and agility."

The Guardian now has 800,000 supporters (subscribers, members and contributors) and 10 million regular browsers every month.

What have they learned?

"First is to have purpose,” Pemsel said. “I think purpose is absolutely everything. It helps companies innovate and invest. If you haven't found that purpose, or buried it somewhere, put it at the front and be proud and bold about it. Then move fast.

“For us, the pace was very difficult trying to get everyone to cooperate. Setting a clear target, building cross-divisional teams and giving them autonomy allowed us to move very fast. Third, culture is everything. Ensure diversity and inclusion. And finally trust your instincts."

On work culture

Cultural change in the newsroom was stressed as much as anything else during the conference, because without an open and innovative culture, it's hard to implement change.

"We have close teamwork to make (our business) a success but it wasn't a given from the beginning," said Bild's Tobias Henning, general manager premium. "There were walls between product, marketing and the newsroom. We needed a strong change in the culture of the editorial team."

While change is hard for some, for others, they're built for it.

"Change is in the Schibsted DNA," said Tina Stiegler, executive vice president of people and strategy.

During her 16-year career with the company, she has led an organizational change project that was questioned by many asking why she has to constantly change the organization. "Because competition gets harder every day by global giants," she would answer.

Her four key learnings with the company are: 1) Clear and simple structures set you up for success. Keeping things simple is crucial to avoid change fatigue. 2) Love your individuals and give them the tools to do "your work" their way. Empowered individuals are the company's change engine. 3) Make everyone part of the team. Build extended teams that are flexible. 4) You will need solid and strategic HR at the table.

On revenue generation

The session that attracted most wide attention during the congress was the revenue generation session led by the Washington Post.

"All paths lead to paid subscription," said Miki Toliver King, vice president of marketing at the Washington Post, sharing how the company had increased unique visitors to its website by 84 percent since 2015.

"Our monthly page views per visitor is 41 for subscribers and three for nonsubscribers. There is 14 times more consumption by paid subscribers," she said, noting that the subscription strategy is part of the ad strategy. "When we foster their engagement better, we can support our ad business."

So how did they grow digital subscriptions?

"We had a habit of testing and testing again on what are the ways we can optimize an opportunity to reach a customer. Every contact with the reader had to be the pathway to being a paid subscriber. Off-site, newsletters were driving lead generation. They expose readers to our content whether or not they come to our website and provide opportunity to enroll with us without necessarily becoming a paid subscriber."

As for user experience, everything had to be frictionless.

"We really tried to create a friction-free payment experience,” she said. “We made every possible payment option available ― Apple Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay. To decrease involuntary cancellations coming from credit card lapses, instead of sending them emails that get buried, we notify the subscriber while they're reading the content on our website."

All of this was possible because of close collaboration between the newsroom and the business department.

"There is such a healthy relationship between the business and the news side,” King said. “A liaison between the two departments gives us news on what's coming up. We're in constant communication."

On gender issues

The recent #MeToo movement was a wakeup call for those in the media industry. Not only did it alarm journalists about the weight and importance of sexual harassment stories, it also alerted them to the importance of journalism and a sense of duty for journalists.

The different approaches made on the Harvey Weinstein case and the Bill Cosby case are a good example, according to Joanne Lipman, former editor in chief of USA Today and chief content officer at Gannett, USA, during her keynote session "You are the change."

"The Harvey Weinstein case was front page,” she said. “It sent a strong message that sexual harassment is serious, systematic and a societal issue. Whereas the Bill Cosby case was only on tabloids covered as a sex scandal of a lone pervert. We missed the importance of the story because we didn't understand how systematic and a societal problem this was back then."

Gender equality in the newsroom and increased female representation in the news were key to creating balanced social perception, which was why Lipman recently published "That's What She Said."

"Why it's so important to talk about this today is because the media have been guilty of marginalization, both in newsrooms and news coverage. We've perpetuated these inequities," she said.

Unconscious bias that is formed from a young age at home, starting from parents, goes all the way to college and throughout one's career, according to Lipman.

"Women make up half of journalism graduates but women represent only one third of newsrooms and take up only 5.2 percent of executives in journalism,” she said. “Eighty-four percent of Pulitzer winners are men, while 64 percent of bylines are of men. They are also the majority of our sources. Seventy-five percent of the people we quote are male. We are determining what is news, what is serious and trivial, and that overwhelmingly male perspective impacts how the society sees itself.

"Women earned 76 percent of what men did in 1991 at the Wall Street Journal and 25 years later, women still earned 85 cents on a dollar in the same newsroom. When women are valued less, our contributions are valued less."

Powerful women are often seen as acting outside societal norms, as "illegitimate authorities," although research shows top management with at least half being female executives outperform return on equity, according to Lipman.

Despite the positive impact of balanced gender representation, not many newsrooms have gender equality in leadership. SCMP is one of the rarities.

"Across the entire company, our senior leadership team is 50:50 women and men,” Liu said. “The editorial newsroom is also 50:50, which is hard to find. At the executive committee, I'm the only male and there are four other women. We care deeply about diversity."

This article was written with the support of the Korea Press Foundation.