@Society of Editors: Andrew Neil: Net revolution is ‘the new Wapping’

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 November 2006 at 20:41
Tags: Journalism, Society of Editors

The UK media is the best in the world because it is the most competitive in the world,” says Society of Editors president Charles McGhee, opening the conference and welcoming to the stage publisher and broadcaster Andrew Neil — a Scot, McGhee reminds us — to give the conference’s opening lecture.

Neil says the media industry has been dominated by conferences where traditional media publishers and editors have discussed managing decline in the face of disruption from the Internet. This, he says, was the collective equivalent of puting a towel over its head, lying down in a dark room and pretending it was all just a bad dream.
It is time, Neil argues, time for a new mindset that doesn’t see the net as a threat but a new opportunity.

Running through the international online successess of the Guardian, Observer, Economist and Financial Times, Neil says the English language gives British newspapers an important advantage in expanding globally.

“Newspaper tend to prosper when they embrace the net,” he says. They need to become 24-hour news machines to thrive in that world.
However, “the usual voices oppose change, just as they did in the Wapping era”, Neil says.

He reminds his audience that just 20 years ago, journalists were not allowed to even touch a computer keyboard, a notion younger jounrlists have trouble imagining, and a story Neil haredly believes himself when he recounts it.

“We are in in the midst of a new Wapping, without pickets and riots, but even more radical that the first Wapping,” he says.

The days are long that they could file a story and head to the pub by six. Today, that ethos will soon have your newspaper bellyup and in the graveyard.

Financial and editorial susccess can no longer be measuresd only by newstand sales measured by ABC figures, nor exclusinvely by the revenue from paper products, he says. New measures of sucess, that take the net into account, are necessary.
Newspapers’ attitude to their web sites are in transition from defensive measure — and a pure cost — to “a potential gold mine”. Onlne advertising is booming but are only a small percentage of toal ad revenues. The ads and the revenues, says Neil, will follow the eyeballs. If online advertising does not go to traditional news organisations’ online journalism, then they will have only themselves to blame.

Neil also touches on the sometimes tense relationship between Google and content producers whose material supplies the basis for the search engine’s massive ad revenues.

“I think it is time for a conversation with Google. They have the money, they should pay for it,” says Neil.

There has never been a better time to be a journalist, Neil argues. Smart young journalists of the future will no longer serve one employer in one media. The best journalists will “be brands in their own right” and have multiple employers in order to have no boss.

The Q&A, Roy Greenslade challenges Neil’s view on Google, saying that a possibility would be for the search engine simply to stop pointing to newpaper sites if they attempt to force Google to share its revenues.

“The days of allowing our content to be accessed for free are gone,” he says.
SEO is not a great way of driving readers to your site, Neil says, becuase they just go away again after reading the one thing they are interested in.

“If Google are willing to talk to the broadcasters about copyright on YouTube, we should at least talk to them,” he says. Or perhaps Google can advise newspapers about how best to leverage our assets.

It is necessary to build a business model that rewards reporting, becuase if news gathering becomes a mere commodity, few people will bother doing it.

These discussions could start tomorrow, when Nathan Stoll, the Google product manager for Google News, joins the conference. He will have his work cut out for him if Neil’s view is representative.

Update: The Herald reports Neil’s lecture.

Tags: Journalism, Society of Editors