(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Two-day INMA Middle East Publishers Conference discusses changes in the way we consume news and changes in the way journalism is presented.
Yasmin Namini Senior Vice-President Chief Consumer Officer The New York Times speaks about The Paid Content Strategy of The New York Times during the INMA Middle East Publishers Conference in Dubai. –KT photo by Juidin Bernarrd
Digital was the buzzword on day one of the two-day INMA Middle East Publishers Conference that began in Dubai on Tuesday afternoon. Changes in the way we consume news changes in the way journalism is presented — on mobile phones more than on paper — and how news is produced were talked about at length. From Liverpool UK Mark Challinor CEO Media Futures Ltd (The Daily Telegraph) evoked the oft-heard ‘Internet of Things’ while talking about how technology will drive down distribution costs via one word: mobiles. “Advertisers have been quite cautious of mobiles” Challinor said with the aid of his presentation slides. But the figures are changing. A different story is being told as advertisers are realising the potential and power of the mobile.
Earl J. Wilkinson executive director and CEO International News Media Association (INMA) spoke of how advertising and marketing solutions are sold.
Publishers are in the print-to-digital transformation as made apparent by the presentation of Yasmin Namini senior vice-president/chief consumer officer at the New York Times. Namini who’s been with the paper for over 30 years spoke of how the company made just a little under $150 million in 2013 through digital only subscriptions. This year from January to September 2014 through digital only subscriptions NYT made $124.8 million. If it weren’t for the digital revenue “the company would be having a very difficult time” Namini said.
She spoke of how back in the recession during 2008-2009 the company literally lost $100 million in advertising revenue overnight.
They had to innovate. They had to come up with revenue diversification strategies. “People will pay for quality journalism” she said explaining the gamble the newspaper took when they came up with its digital pay model and decided on how much to charge. Today they have 875000 consumers paying for their digital subscriptions that range from $15 every four weeks to $35 a week. “Funding this great journalism” she said “is critical.”
From the sub-continent vastly differing pictures of the media landscape were portrayed by Ravi Dhariwal CEO of Times of India (TOI) and Sarmad Ali secretary-general of All-Pakistan Newspaper Society and managing director of Jang Group.
Dhariwal spoke of TOI’s experiments with pricing their present circulation of just under five million copies and their profits that are growing by 23 per cent per year. As against the NYT business model that gets 55 per cent of its money from circulation and 45 per cent from advertisements TOI’s big ticket is advertising with 90 per cent from ads and ten per cent from circulation.
“We have no crisis of newspaper declining” Dhariwal said citing a growth of digital readership by 30 per cent last year.
This is in contrast to Pakistan where the last five-seven years have seen a “flat circulation and decline in newspapers” as the younger audience seems just not that interested in newspapers. Ali stated among other issues a problem with journalists “who write only for themselves” and an inability of print media to compete with TV that has a much greater penetration in Pakistan. Digital media is still seen as a stepchild with no impressive numbers in Karachi and Lahore even though mobile phones have seen an unparalleled growth.
The advent of 3G is expected to change the way news is consumed. By all forecasts though there is a long way to go before Pakistan can compete with the West when it comes to news consumed digitally.
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