“Content is not just king, it’s the emperor of all things electronic [and] without content, these genius mobile products would be lifeless and the world’s large flat screens, e-readers, and tablets would be unloved and unsold.” – Rupert Murdoch Feb 2010
Let’s continue on from the discussion I began this morning about why content never was and never will be king on the web by taking look at the recent decision by the NY Times to reintroduce the Paywall.
We have reviewed the NY Times paradox on a number of occasions. We have also taken a brief look at some of the ways that the newspaper industry could break the cycle of decline. For example…
- What If: Journalism is the real reason Newspapers are dying?
- Notes on the Future of Newspapers
- Does one page per day really make you a heavy user?
- What Apple can teach the newspapers about innovation
- What Google can teach the newspapers about innovation
The paywall is of course something of a back to the future strategy for the NY Times. After all they had an online paywall when they launched the site back in the mid 1990′s. They quickly took it down when they discovered nobody was interested in paying for news content online.
The simple fact that they have returned to this old idea suggests that the industry’s leaders are struggling to discover new ways of thinking. They need to discover new habits if they are to survive the quantum shift in the economics of their industry.
The question is how will they do this?
To answer that question let’s go take another look at the music industry.
If you have ever attended what is known in these parts as a “heritage act” (i.e. A rock music concert performed by a bunch of “geriatric” rockers) then you’ll know from first hand experience that there always comes a time in show when the band wants to play you some of their new material.
Back in their youth when they were at the peak of their powers if they wanted to slow things down a bit they would play you an acoustic set. Now they play new material. Needless to say the die-hard fans clap politely, but not too fanatically, in the hope that the band will get back as quickly as possible to playing what they really paid for. Memories.
This is not to say that the new material lacks merit. Generally speaking they are well crafted song but they do lack something.
Up until recently it has puzzled me as to what that something was. Anyway, with the news of the passing of Dr Harry Coover, the Chemist who accidentally invented Super Glue, I think I have now discovered what that missing ingredient is.
It is the ability to make mistakes.
The most probable reason for this deep-set inability to make mistakes is experience.
These old rockers have lost the naivety of youth. That untempered ability to discover something exciting, fresh and very new simply by making a mistake that you didn’t recognize to be a mistake. Why? because you didn’t know any better at the time.
These old rockers are guilty of falling into old and well established patterns of thinking. And sadly, it doesn’t matter how hard they try to write new and original material, they will continue to tread the same well-worn paths they used to stride so confidently simply because they have acquired the thinking skills that stop them making mistakes.
The leaders across the newspaper industry face the same challenge. They have to radically change their approach to solving the industry’s problems and yet they can’t simply because their industry experience locks them into a limited number of patterns of thinking.
They are not the only ones struggling with this issue. The world’s advertising agencies are facing the same struggle to forget everything they thought they ever knew about their industry.
When TV first arrived on the scene back in the 1950′s it was the advertisers working hand in hand with the TV stations that created the innovative new programming (e.g. The Soaps and the Game Shows) that became the much watch TV of the early days of the medium.
This didn’t happen with the web. The assumption always was “what worked in print would translate online”. For the newspaper and advertising industries this was always going to be just about replication rather than innovation.
15 years on and the simple fact is what worked in print hasn’t worked online and innovative start-ups from Silicon Valley have quickly scrambled to fill the gaps left vacant by the lack of thought leadership across both industries.
Today this trend continues unabated as the next generation of Web and Mobile start-ups scrambles to take more and more market share off the newspaper and advertising industries.
Moving forward both parties can begin this complex and difficult journey to reclaim their lost market share by embracing the very simple idea that content never was, and never will be, King on the web.
They must do this for three fundamental reasons.
- Firstly, 15 years of the pursuing “Content is King” strategy has systematically turned the industry’s analog dollars into digital pennies. The industry simply can’t afford to invest another 15 years pursuing the same flawed strategy.
- Secondly, they must put the “Content is King” strategy aside so they can reallocate the “creative head space” to discover new and potentially more profitable ways of thinking.
- Finally, by putting the “Content is King” strategy back in the box it will remove the mental “road block” that currently prevents the industry from making the simple mistakes that will (or at least may) ultimately deliver the “Super Glue” that can fix the industry.
Put very simply it removes the industry’s safety net. Without content at its core the industry has no established business model. It probably isn’t even recognizable. But at least the decoupling of content from the core of the business model will provide the catalyst for the newspaper industry to reinvent itself a new and ultimately prosper going forward.
Posted on March 30, 2011
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