@Society of Editors - Does Gavin O’Reilly ‘get it’?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 November 2007 at 11:19
Tags: Independent, Independent on Sunday, Society of Editors, Society of Editors

Media commentators and “teenage scribblers in the investment banks” are failing to correctly analyse the newspaper industry and are failing to move beyond a simplistic analysis that describes changes in media consumption as “a gladiatorial spat between print and online”, Independent News & Media chief operating officer Gavin O’Reilly argued in a forceful opening address for the Society of Editors conference last night.

Free newspapers and strategies based on short-term promotions like DVD give-aways, rather than the internet, were the primary cause of print circulation declines, O’Reilly argued. Many free newspapers are not doing well financially, and circulation form promotions is marked by lower margins he argued. Furthermore, the commentators and analysts were failing to look at the trends in the metric that matters most: circulation revenues.

O’Reilly named the Andrew Gowers, Roy Greenslade, Peter Preston and Peter Wilby,”the newer crop of business media journalists” and City media analysists (who are all under 25, apparently) for pushing a new conventional wisdom that printed newspapers are dead or dying.

But O’Reilly also provided a heavy dose of the online scepticism. Online advertising remains relatively minuscule at $21 billion, with 65 per cent going to the three major search firms — Google, Yahoo and MSN — leaving content publishers scraping for the remaining 35 per cent.

Little is known about how people actually spend their time online, he added.

“Are they ploughing through pages of well-crafted prose, or watching mindless videos on YouTube, or social networking or searching for a plumber or blogging or booking a ticket to Spain on EasyJet, or buying car insurance or paying their gas bill, or sending e-mails?” he wondered.

“An yet, somehow in the melee of the mindless rush to all things online, we run the risk of losing sight of what we do and what we do well,” he said.

The commentary about the future of media rarely starts with consumers, he continued.

“Instead, it starts with the media luminaries, the futurologists, the advocates for change and flimsy predictions - who are as unoriginal in their thesis as they ever where”.

“For those of us who might seek to legitimately champion the future of print within this media maelstrom - we are often castigated to the realms of Neanderthal-like people who just don’t get it.

“Well Ladies and gentlemen — I assure you, I get it. I for one know that the future of newspaper companies will be what it has always been built upon, and that’s our content. And do I mean user-generated content? Well, that will clearly have its place - but I’m really talking about unique comment and analysis, well-crafted and well edited content that has faced the rigours of a well-honed editorial process.”

The unique selling point of the newspaper of the future is “built upon journalistic skills that re not simply a God-given right of someone with attitude sitting in a garage in front of a computer, but rather a skill that is learned and earned,” he continued.

Trustworthy journalism, he continued, would become even more relevant in an age when people “are being bombarded daily with information overload and too often, sadly, the lowest common denominator wins out”. Newspapers are “the ultimate browser” that do the hard work of identifying the most important information for you.

INM, O’Reilly said, wants to grow and invest across all media, including print. To do so, INM is being a “low cost operator” and believes in online as “an incremental sources of both audience and revenues”.

He repeated his frequently-made suggestion that Google should have to secure opt-ins from publishers before aggregating their content, and described ACAP, the new system for automating permissions to online coverage, as a step towards ensuring this.

He also called media organisations to arms over the growing restrictions on the coverage of sporting events.

Tags: Independent, Independent on Sunday, Society of Editors, Society of Editors