sustainable media business models in the digital age

Sustainable Media Business Models in the Digital Age

Africa Media Leadership Conference 2010

September 26-29: Dar es Salaam

Guy Berger, Rhodes University, South Africa

Starting points

• Who cares about sustainable media business models in the digital age?

• Why would your stakeholders care?

• Why do you care?

• Me? I care because of what journalism means for me – and I assume what it means for society. Can you share this point of view?

• Here’s one sustainable story as example…

A newspaper story

‘Who are you outside the paper?’

Well, press freedom, journalism in general, and The Namibian in particular are so integral to my life that it’s hard to think of myself with a separate identity, really! … Media and democracy have been my passion and probably always will be.

I’m an idealist and always have been one. I’m also a strong individualist and I’ve never belonged to any group or political party…

If journalism could speak…

• How would it answer these questions?

1. Who are you?

Answer: I am social communication in public interest

2. How old are you? When will you retire?

3. Where do you come from?

4. Who are your parents? Your siblings?

5. Who are your friends? Your enemies?

6. Describe your home – what kind of dwelling?

7. How do you earn your bread – what sustains you?

De-constructing the topic

1. Sustainable

2. Media

3. Business Models

4. in the Digital Age

1. Sustainable?

• African media has always wrestled with this question… especially politically!

• But now there’s a new aspect.

• Ask Seattle PI … & Encyclopedia Britannica

• 2006-10: 38->26% in USA read a paper yesterday

• Dealing with death… we dream of Life eternal!

• What if we’re entering times when media houses aren’t sustainable; i.e. there’s no Lazarus story?

• When journalism struggles to float in a thrashing sea full of other kinds of communications?

2. Media (platforms)?

Physical layer:

• Paper is a medium: it can have many purposes

• Toilet paper is one purpose. It may carry media meanings – like patterns aiming to please. A medium!

• Internet is a medium with many uses – eg. e-commerce

• Are cellphones media? Or tools for personal comms?

• Are clothes media? Buildings? Voices and faces?

• Is it intrinsic that “media” carry journalistic meaning?

Connections layer:

• Is it intrinsic that “media” is 1:many? Mass media?

What’s this mean then?

• Media is not the platform: actually it can (and should) encompass many platforms – even those that are not as obvious as radio or print!

• Query “platform”: eg. audio is cargo, radio is just (one) vehicle, meaning a 3rd item. De-link them.

• “The Media” is also an institution – from both the producer and consumer point of view.

(So can cellphones really become media?)

• Media is/was mass circulation & public, not private, news. But these are dynamic categories!

3. Biz models & media institutions

• 3 models to date, often in hybrid:– Audience pays;– Advertisers pay for their own content to reach audiences;– State or donors pay to get media content to reach

audiences.

• Nowadays, there are issues like:– Separating production, aggregation, editing, dissemination– UGC (cut your costs of acquiring content);– Transactional revenues;– Selling services (like training, software, experiences);– Selling access to journalists (ouch, Washington Post!)– Freemium.

Just what business are you in?

• Medium or platform? Audio or radio?• Paid praise-singing?• Making money to publish, or publishing to make

money?• Community-building and citizenship?• Content supply?• Mediating buyers and sellers through advertising?• Communications facilitation – an ISP?• Global game?• Credibility of meaning?

Who are your competitors in these?

4. Digital age

• Revolutionises all aspects of the value chain:– Production (and re-production!)

– Distribution/transmission of product

– Consumption/use (comment, remix, recommend)

• Digital age expands who can play in the chain:– More media out there, and more non-media too!

• Enhances glocalisation

• It changes the character of play: interaction is the name of the game – sometimes.

More questions than answers

1. Sustainable – a mega-challenge

2. Media – complexities

3. Business Models – so many!

4. in the Digital Age – a new game

How to get a fix on changes and uncertainties?

Understanding the times

• The ‘value chain of meaning’

– John Hartley (2004).

Origination/ Production

Product and distribution

Consumer/ use

Understanding the times

• The ‘value chain of meaning’

– John Hartley (2004).

Origination/ Production

Product and distribution

Consumer/ use

Media house Outputs (“Texts”) disseminated

Audience

Teasing out the tangles

Three ways of making meaning valuable:

1. Pre-modern mode

2. Modern mode

3. Post-modern mode

1. Pre-modern mode

• Source of meaning comes from the author. Like truth from God in holy books.

• It only remains to be revealed.

• Priests, spin-doctors or government media exist to help audiences work out what was meant.

• To make this meaning stick, you need monopoly.

• With artificial media scarcity, authoritarian and fundamentalist societies operate this way.

• Power is held by state (or church) – or old media!

2. Modern mode

• Ultimate meanings come through pluralism and diversity of content – i.e. the truth comes through the multiplicity of texts.

• The breadth of the mix is sovereign arbiter of what is true meaning.

• The public reads and chooses rationally.

• Power lies in the best texts and their consumers ability to select rationally.

• Many texts now hail from non-media sources.

3. Post-modern mode

• Meanings are decided by audiences.

• Find out through pollings, ratings, surveys.

• Expect the unexpected: contrary readings.

• People do their own thing: eg. uptake of SMS; prevalence of piracy; what becomes a hit.

• Power lies with the active audience

• Sovereignty is with the self.

• Truth is fragmented across publics.

• Publics create. Not only read, but write.

Where power lies

Pre-modern Modern Post-modern

Origination/ Production

Product and distribution

Consumer/ use

Media house Outputs (“Text”) disseminated

Audience

Where power lies

Pre-modern Modern Post-modern

Origination/ Production

Product and distribution

Consumer/ use

Media house Outputs (“Text”) disseminated

Audience

Where power lies

Pre-modern Modern Post-modern

Origination/ Production

Product and distribution

Consumer/ use

Media house Outputs (“Text”) disseminated

Audience

Where power lies

Pre-modern Modern Post-modern

Origination/ Production

Product and distribution

Consumer/ use

Media house Outputs (“Text”) disseminated

Audience

Major mode of address

Pre-modern Modern Post-modern

Origination/ Production

Product and distribution

Consumer/ use

Media house Outputs (“Text”) disseminated

Audience

Authority Convincing Conversation

Making sense

• Our worlds combine all three modes:

– Some media & relationships make for authoritymodes of making meaning. (Established organs)

– Some play in the social space of discourses competing for priority and credibility (Providing a forum, versus providing attitude)

– Others facilitate interactive conversational process. (community radio, SMS comments)

• Many media merge all three aspects…

So what?

• Energy is in the places where the 3 intersect.

• The contradictions between:

• the pre-modern and the modern;

• the modern and the post-modern;

• the pre- and post modern.

• “I tell you” vs “we tell you” vs “let’s talk”

• Do you focus in on one, or a mix? What mix?

In summary

• Journalism – is that your point of reference?

• Sustainable – art of the possible amidst change

• Media – keep an open mind on its range

• Business Models – which are you in?

• in the Digital Age – new players/fields/games…

• Pre-modern mode: one truth, monopoly power

• Modern mode: convince people, pluralism

• Post-modern mode: converse, media uncorked

Signing off

• Custodians of journalism need eyes open…

in order to grow sustainability for journalism, even if that journalism is re-invented.

• In fact – it probably has to be reinvented:

– Must be more than pre-modern mode;

– Must really show stakeholders the value it adds;

– Must operate with multiple revenue streams.

– Must still keep eye on the ball: making meanings!

Thank you

Presentation online at

http://mzan.si/n4hw