Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL How early movers get into digital news and stay profitable
By Nam Hyun-woo
By Nam Hyun-woo
Not only The Korea Times but also a slew of other “legacy” media outlets are striving to adapt to the digital platform, but most of them are facing the same fundamental problems ― online audiences are less patient reading text on screens and less willing to pay for it.
Kurt Gessler, editorial operations director at Tribune Publishing Company
In its efforts to explore ways to tackle these problems, The Korea Times asked for advice from Kurt Gessler, Chicago Tribune's digital deputy editor from 2010 to 2018 and now editorial operations director at Tribune Publishing Company. He shared useful ideas and strategies that successful digital media outlets are expected to have, and perhaps the readers of The Korea Times could recognize their efficacy in its digital publishing down the road.
Understanding new audiences
Gessler said newspapers have been unsuccessful in reading digital readers' expectations, thus understanding it is the first step toward true digitization.
“I think the true meaning (of newspaper digitization) is that you're not actually publishing a digital newspaper,” Gessler said during an email interview with The Korea Times. “If all you're doing is publishing the same text-based stories online that you would have published in your newspaper you're not exploring the breadth of storytelling options available.”
According to a 2020 report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, “readership of newspapers in Korea is significantly down since 2016 and YouTube is being increasingly used for news and this partly explains the surge in social media use.” YouTube was the top social media platform for news, with 45 percent of respondents saying they use the site for news purposes.
This drops hints that newspapers should no longer consider video, audio, slideshow and other interactive visual aids out of their domain.
“If you are writing about the best violinist in the world, your audience will not just want to read about her. They will need to see and hear her. You need a video,” Gessler said. “Most assignments start with the question, 'should we cover this?' After you answer 'yes,' the next question must now be 'OK, how should we cover it?' Many times words are enough. If you are user-focused in your approach, you will start to make different decisions.”
The necessity for visual aids in reporting is growing as online audiences are more attracted to stories with instant interest and becoming less patient than readers of printed newspapers.
While newspapers unilaterally offer content that they think is important in their own pagination, online news ― whether it is a portal or an individual outlet's website, allows users to select what they find interesting.
Under this structure, a newspaper's conventional advantage in delivering in-depth and well-researched articles after taking time is losing ground. This, especially in Korea, has led many news outlets to mass-produce quickly rewritten stories, sometimes referred to deridingly as clickbait, to increase traffic to their websites.
The Korea Press Foundation criticized in its report that “the quality of digital news continues to decline and public trust on news media is aggravating as news companies churn out unidentified advertorials, obscene and exaggerated articles to address their weakening profitability.” The Reuters Institute report also showed that Koreans' overall trust in news remained at 21 percent, which was the lowest among the 40 countries it surveyed.
Over this, Gessler pointed out that news outlets should “stick to their mission and core journalistic strengths, but really explore the medium.”
“Your audience will be patient for the right story told in the right way with a frictionless user experience,” he said. “For general news sites, the path seems to be to strike a balance between speed on breaking news but thoughtful analysis and investigation later.”
“Know what your readers or subscribers are expecting from you. If a site is always last to publish urgent breaking news stories, readers will not rely on them for that type of information. That could result in an overall loss of audience,” Gessler said. “At the same time, if you only publish fast, short stories, you may have a difficult time convincing readers to subscribe or pay since that type of news is often widely available.”
Staying profitable
Recently, an owner of one of Korea's largest conglomerates told The Korea Times that he had been very interested in acquiring one of the country's best-known newspapers but ultimately did not make a bid. He said he assumed that turning the paper into digital and growing it into a profitable company while providing the “right news” will cost nearly double the amount he would pay for the company's acquisition.
As he pointed out, adapting stories for online or increasing paying subscribers are a conundrum for most news companies seeking digitization. The easiest way for a newspaper to go digital with lowered revenue concerns would be charging for digital content too, but that is widely considered a risky move. That is especially so in Korea, where only 10 percent of news readers pay for online news, according to the Reuters Institute report.
“It was a challenging gambit,” said a former journalist who was a founding member of one of Korea's leading paid online business news outlets. “Since we had to expect a narrower range of readers who are willing to pay, we had to come up with articles meeting their specific needs and interests. And those articles needed to be distinguished because subscribers should feel their viewership is worth payment, so there was greater pressure for scoops among our colleagues.”
He said his company managed to establish its business structure in an early stage, but maintaining the same tension afterwards was very stressful and burdening for reporters.
Gessler also said it is a “long and hard process” to break readers' conventional ideas that online articles are free.
“Part of the process is marketing. You do have to tell your audience, time and time again, that your journalism isn't cheap to produce and it does have value,” Gessler said. “Then, you have to follow it up by creating content that's unique and valuable. You can't just publish commodity news you can get anywhere and expect people to pay for it. Invest in coverage areas you can own and be an expert in.”
In August, the New York Times announced its digital revenue exceeded print revenue in the second quarter, for the first time in its history. As the paper's chief executive Mark Thompson said, many in the news industry described it “a milestone,” but they also noted that the company ― one of the most prestigious news companies in the world ― had to endure nine years to see such an achievement.
“The reason why Korean news outlets are slow in digitization is because they are still heavily reliant on advertising revenue coming from newspapers,” a separate Korea Press Foundation report said. “Therefore, they still see the digital news market as a secondary playground to support the print market, and they are not exploring fundamental solutions to tackle problems in the digital space. … If their efforts are aimed at a short-term increase in website traffic, they will end up replicating existing problems. To see an innovation in digital news, they need to come up with medium- and long-term plans.”
The report continued that conventional media outlets have lacked medium- and long-term plans and investments, while demanding digital division writers squeeze out short-term increases in revenue.
Gessler said some of the core investments that Chicago Tribune has made for digitization include improvements in their content management system (CMS), training for journalists and the company's own capability to track readers' news consumption. CMS refers to computer programs reporters use to write and edit stories, add video or photos and publish them.
“You need one with a good array of storytelling tools so that you don't need developers to facilitate day-to-day coverage. It has to be easy to add a critical video or audio file to a story. And then invest in training. Journalists need to know how to use these tools,” he said.
“Make sure you have great data on what audiences respond to. Tribune Publishing uses a dozen different data tools to track the user journey so that we know ― long-term and in real time ― what's compelling online and what's not. Then, use that data to guide your investment. Invest in areas that are working and stop what's not. And that last part can be hard, but it's critical to do.”