Three ways to look at the impact of social media on news

1. Social Media, News, etc…
3 ways to look at what social media is
doing to/for news
Ben Wirz, Knight Foundation
@bthewirz

2. Background

3. How News was traditionally done

4. Traditional news made possible by
traditional revenue model
Revenue
25% Subscriptions
Write/edit
News
75% Advertisement
Market,
Print &
Distribute
Audience
Engagement
Costs
15% Content
Creation
75% Marketing &
Distribution
• High cost of distribution, natural geographic monopolies, limited audience choice
& aggregated bundles of content
•Mostly one-direction
4

5. Old news model created lots of:
-strong, professional, editor-driven news
-wealth (and style!)

6. But then along comes…
…the
internet
-Cost of distribution goes to 0
-Advertising divorces content
-65% of online ads go to Google(50%)
& FB(15%) (Source: emarketer)
-Content is unbundled
6

8. No cost of distribution = people read what they want,
(and a lot of what they want is squirrels)
-"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more
relevant to your interests right now than people dying in
Africa." - Mark Zuckerberg
-All news sites combined get ~1% of web traffic

9. News Biz gets tougher, struggle for
audience & revenue
Revenue
0-30% Subscriptions
70-100% Advertisement
Content shared & aggregated
Content
Creation
Social Sharing
Marketing &
Distribution
Audience
Engagement
Audience contributes content
Costs
60-70% Content
Creation
10-20% Marketing &
Distribution
*eg Salon, HuffPo, Alaska Dispatch, BaristaNet
9

10. Ongoing Disruption
Global newspaper industry is down 40% ($51B) in revenue since 2006
Sources: Mary Meeker, 2013 Internet Trends, Ken Doctor Newsonomics of 2014

11. 30% cuts to newsroom staff over last 10 yrs
= a lot less Local and Regional news:
-Government
-Education
-Healthcare
-Arts & Culture
Source: Steven Waldman, FCC, Information Needs of Communities

12. The problem facing American journalism is not
fundamentally an audience problem or a
credibility problem. It is a revenue problem.
-Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism
$180M/yr invested in
journalism by foundations
2007-2010
$1.6B/yr editorial cuts by
legacy newspapers.
Source:”The Information Needs of
Communities”, FCC, June 2011
12

14. What social media means for news, Take 1:
-Better channel to distribute news

15. A lot of people use social media
-1.2B Monthly Active Users
-728M log in daily
-Growing 18%/yr (Sept 2013)
Source: Facebook Q3 2013 Quarterly Report
-215M Monthly Active Users
-100M log in daily
-Growing 44%/yr (Oct 2013)
Source: Twitter S-1 IPO Filing

16. No cost of sharing news socially
That was then…
… this is now

17. Using social media to distribute news
Can attract new audience at little cost
(Remember: new audience = new revenue)
Sources: Parse.ly Authority Report, Sept 2013
Chartbeat, Understanding Social Sources, Oct 2013

18. Turns out: some people like getting
news this way…
Source: Pew Research: The Role of News on Facebook, October 2013

19. …especially young people…
Pew Research Journalism Project: Twitter news consumers young mobile & educated, Nov 2013

20. …but people read topics they like*
(not brands) and don’t come back…
*Choice of what to
read has shifted from
editors to readers.
Sources: Chartbeat, Understanding Social
Sources, Oct 2013, Pew Research: The Role of
News on Facebook, October 2013

21. And most people still don’t even get
their news online.

22. -So social media does
present a new
channel for
distributing traditional
news (20% of online
news traffic)
-But distribution is
driven more by what
people like than what
editors choose
-And distribution of
traditional news is
only part of what
social media does

24. What social media means for news, Take 2:
-A new source of news

26. Easy Story--
-Vegetable cart repossessed
by policewoman
-Self immolation (Dec. 17,
2012))
-Family protests (Dec. 18),
posts videos on Facebook
-”We are all Bouazizi” goes
viral
-Ben Ali leaves Tunisia
(January 13, 2012 )
-Arab Spring

27. Actual Story:
Credit: Ethan Zuckerman

28. • No traditional
editors initiated
this story
• No traditional
means could stop
this story (eg
Gafsa)
• But “going viral”
required much
more than just
Facebook.

29. Social media = new currency (literally)
Caroline Criado Perez: 1
Bank of England: 0

31. What social media means for news, Take 3:
-A new model of news

32. Social media (and the internet) are
making startups rethink news model
Mission/Brand
Create
Distribute
Consume
32

33. You (the people) can now consume,
create & distribute
Consume
Create
Distribute
33

34. New news
orgs built on
social media
Majority of traffic from FB
~100% local news
-Fastest growing
digital news site ever
-Built to share
FB traffic = Google traffic
User base = Authors
-Majority of traffic
from Pinterest
-Articles optimized to
be pinned

35. People like to share real news
Source: PolicyMic/KnightFoundation The 15 most shared stories on Monday , June 2013

36. Key questions for KF:
?
What kind of news will news orgs built around social media
make?
Is some news being left behind?
What is social media news better at?
What do people need to know?