Media startup CEO challenges newspaper industry

By Yun Suh-young

PUBLY CEO Park So-ryoung / Korea Times photo by Yun Suh-young

At a time when traditional media companies are struggling to create revenue and produce quality content at the same time, there's a startup that's doing both － PUBLY.

The media startup, which was established two years ago and officially began operations last year, is rapidly gaining a reputation and ferociously expanding－ both in the number of projects it initiates as well as the sales made through them. Soon the company may take over a certain amount of the pie in the media market, threatening the ailing “old boy” newspapers who are still preoccupied in following the mass public's interest and feeding them with one-off, click-bait content instead of servicing deep, quality content that can inspire and educate readers.

PUBLY's CEO Park So-ryoung successfully tapped into her target readers, precisely with the purpose of providing content that's worthy of purchasing and possessing timelessly.

"I like content that makes me feel like I've learned something, something that makes me self-reflect － content that makes me want to share with others, highlight and write them down in my notes. I think that type of content needs to increase," said Park during an interview with The Korea Times at her office in Yeoksam-dong, southern Seoul, last week.

"Instead of catering the content to government or businesses, I want to provide content that's catered to the readers and give them what they want. I see this market as an opportunity."

PUBLY is an online publishing company that offers digital publications. In essence, they offer "digital books" that cannot be downloaded but can be viewed online through streaming. They offer pay-per-view content (which will be extended to subscription-based content later this year) which, once purchased, can be stored in a library so readers can come back to read anytime they want. The design and layout of the book is formatted to maximize the reading experience on screen. The books are published by crowd funding and each book focuses on one specific topic. The topics are released four weeks before publication to call for pre-purchase and only when the goal is met does the writer begin writing.

In terms of content, PUBLY's books are rather subjective and personal, but based on research and the experience of experts or specialists in the field. Many of the books are experiential, meaning they rely heavily on the experience of the writers who write recounts of conferences or events they have participated or topics they have researched or personal experiences they went through. All of this has to be "professional," in other words, it's not a blog; it's more of an extended feature article that's published in the form of a book.

Park had once dreamed of becoming a journalist. Before starting her own company, she had knocked on the doors of several newspapers, a couple of which invited her for an interview. But in the end, there wasn't a place for Park. She was too high profile to join as a cub reporter and her lack of experience in journalism prevented her from becoming a specialized journalist.

Park majored in business management at Seoul National University and went on to work at the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, before getting a master's degree in public administration at Harvard Kennedy School.

"I had high hopes when I came back to Korea because I left off dreaming of joining the traditional media industry. But when I came back (after grad school), the situation wasn't as it was when I left the country. The reputation of media companies plummeted. It became a dying industry," she said.

"I wanted to join a traditional newspaper organization to create quality content but soon realized not only was there no place for me as journalist, but also no media management teams in organizations to drive change."

So she created her own company.

The reason for the withering of newspapers, she said, was mainly due to their business model.

"They've grown mainly in the B2B market for decades, gaining revenue from advertisements and sponsorship from companies and governments. Naturally the content is geared toward them, to satisfy their taste. But are readers interested in that type of content? Not at all. They're sensitive enough to recognize that content and move away from it. Newspapers can't quit their legacy because the main revenue still comes from these entities."

The reason why Park focuses on content so much is because of her background. She has been an avid reader since she was young but was never satisfied with school education.

"My real teachers were newspapers, magazines and books and it played a huge role in shaping who I am. So I had great interest in the media and content industry and hoped that one day I could influence others through it as well," she said.

"I feel like there's a huge intellectual gap between Korea and the world. There are so many things that aren't introduced in Korea that I would like to introduce to readers through the experts' lens. I want to upgrade the level of perspectives for our Korean readers. That's why we have so much content that deals with foreign conferences and events that professionals would pay to read."

Some successful topics so far have been recounts of the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Monocle Summit, which are both big global events that aren't covered in depth in local news media.

"We've carried out 45 projects as of now and the ones that succeeded were those that provided a direct connection to the readers' work. Our readers are young professionals in their mid-20s to 40s. Many of the bestselling content are in the business and management category," said Park.

"For a book to sell well, it's important that the writer has extensive experience or education in the topic. If there's a weak connection between the topic and the writer, the project is likely to fail. Much of our content are recounts of global events that Korean readers can't pay to go to themselves but an expert would do it on their behalf."

The key to success for digital content is to influence readers come to it, says Park.

"The product has to be competitive enough to attract readers － that means the writers who provide the content need to have the competitive edge. Our role is to be an effective platform with completeness in both content and technology. We want to make good writers come to us."