What Rupert would tell the DLF

What Rupert might tell the DLF : why libraries are like newspapers, and how we avoid lining the pet cage

Peter Brantley

Jan 2008

DLF

Prelude

“ In 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.”

- “ From Major to Minor ,” The Economist , Jan 10 08

“ Generation Gap” by Joi Ito, on Flickr

let’s talk newspapers (and a little about magazines)

why newspapers?

‘ cuz they make information available

(kinda like libraries)

with higher purpose

"The newspaper's duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”

- Washington Post

"In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such a course be necessary for the public good.”

- Washington Post

Newspapers Joi Ito

“ Shipping bits not trees” on Flickr

newspaper ad revenue is plummeting .

offline advertising is moving online .

the result is not good news for news .

Current (2008) forecasts put online advertising spending at $25 billion for 2008, constituting 10% of all ad spending.

“ ONLINE AD SPENDING WILL GROW at nearly four times the rate of the overall advertising economy during 2008 “

- Mediapost , Jan 7 08

... it’s hard to make money on online advertising ...

three 3 ways to build an online media business to $50m in revenue

- Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed , Feb 26 07

1 one

• A broad reach site

(general social networks, news site)

not much targeting, broad audience

“ run of network advertising” = $1 RPM

(revenue per thousand impressions)

50 BILLION pageviews yearly for $50m ...

or, just over 4 BILLION a month.

(In Jan 07, according to Comscore

(U.S. #s), < 10 companies had this

page count.)

2 two

• A demographically targeted site

(Latino lifestyle portal, men’s sports)

RPMs tend to be low single digits online

Let’s call it $5

10 BILLION pageviews a year,

or just over 800 MILLION a month.

(Microsoft had 792m U.S. pageviews

in Jan 07. You need to be bigger than

that. )

3 three

• A site with endemic advertising opportunity

(a movie site that movie industry scores

(or a car site that car industry scores

(or a travel site that hotels, airlines score

This garners very high RPMs ...

Let’s call it $20

2.5 BILLION pageviews every year,

or over 200 MILLION every month.

could the WSJ go free?

The WSJ would have to see

a 12X increase in online traffic

to offset the loss of

print advertising

income.

“ Turning WSJ.com into a free site would require a 12x increase in traffic growth to offset the lost revenue, according to a new report from Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang. WSJ.com revenue is currently pegged at $78 million annually, based on an estimated 989,000 subscribers paying $79/year. Including non-subscriber traffic, the company claims 122.4 million monthly page views. Based on an estimated CPM of $6 and a few other assumptions about sell-through rate and ad impressions per page, Wang arrives at the 12x conclusion. “

- Joseph Weisenthal, Paidcontent , Jan 2 08

psst ... the fine print

What would you do?

Luckily the Wall St. Journal

does not now have to answer

only for itself !

The paper has the advantage of being part of

a larger enterprise, a much larger enterprise.

New York Times says:

“ The strategic challenge for newspapers is not cutting costs, but how to attract a larger share of online advertising and make money off the millions of people who read them free online.”

“ They wish.”

- Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine , Dec 18 07

“ That has long been the cry of editors of papers including the [NY] Times: preserving their newsrooms as they operate now, protecting their ways. ...

They ... keep ignoring the obvious opportunities presented by the networked internet to operate more efficiently and ... more broadly ... .”

"Newspapers are tied too closely to defending their print products and have not seen the Internet as an innovative and competitive tool to go out and compete,"

says Gordon Borrell, chief executive of Borrell Associates.”

- Emily Steele, Wall St. Journal , Dec 18 07

“ Your competition is the Web.”

“ It’s Facebook and MySpace and Twitter and blogs and iTunes and IM and Ning and Digg and Delicious and e-mail and Flickr and Yelp and Amazon and now is not the time to wave them off ...”

- Ryan Sholin, Invisible Inkling , Jan 11 08

“ The Orlando Sentinel and Tribune Company went halfway around the track in the right direction ... when they decided to stop devoting staff to national coverage of Nascar races, putting their priority and dwindling resources instead on local, which I believe is where they should be. As a result, they lost their Nascar writer, Ed Hinton, who they boast is the best in the nation. ...

“ What I think they should have done instead is set up Hinton in business. If Hinton’s the best ... then I’d have proposed creating a blog and site for him and selling ads into it and syndicating content onto my newspaper sites where I’d also sell ads and share revenue there, too ...

- Jeff Jarvis, “ Halfway ’round the track ,” Buzzmachine , Jan 02 08

ramifications

not good. ( actually, a tragedy )

“ $23B zapped in news stock value ”

Alan Mutter, Newsosaur , Jan 1 08

( or ... a maelstrom in four slides )

“ The market value of the American newspaper publishers entering 2008 as independent, publicly traded companies has fallen by $23 billion, or 42%, since the end 2004. ...” (1/4)

“ Nearly half the slide in the market capitalization of newspaper stocks came in 2007, when the shares lost a collective $11 billion, or 26%, of their value. Thus, newspapers lost nearly as much value last year as they did in the two prior years put together.” (2/4)

“ The vaporized value of newspaper shares in 2007 exceeded the combined $10 billion market caps of Gannett and McClatchy, the nation’s two largest publicly held publishers by circulation.” (3/4)

“ [T]he $23 billion drop in shareholder value since yearend 2004 equals the current total value of all the common stock of Belo, Gannett, Lee Enterprises, Media General, McClatchy, the New York Times Co. and the Washington Post Co.” (4/4)

writers strike out on their own

“ To me, this is a very exciting time. The shifting winds are bringing with them new opportunities to reshape the form our journalism takes, and to reignite the enthusiasm of readers. The web provides us with endlessly rich tools to pursue our craft, and to create communities who engage in dialogue with writers, readers and with the people we cover. ”

- Sharon Waxman, on her departure from the New York Times ,

“ Making Changes ,” WaxWorld , Jan 10 08.

a sidestep of note ...

it’s not just newspapers.

but magazines. (also.)

print advertising is drying up,

because online is a better option.

even fashion.

even fashion.

even fashion.

- Angela Layana, Flickr

“ Ex-Jane Editor lands at Yahoo” Michael Learmonth, Silicon Alley Insider , Dec 18 07 Holley Brandon

“ For a long time I thought glossy magazines were immune to threat of online journalism. Unlike business mags, glossies rely so heavily on photography that I believed they would remain safe in print, no matter how many people were flocking to the web. “However, Holley's move to Yahoo ... just pounds another nail into the coffin of print. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the only place a woman like Holley can make money is the internet -- no glossy magazine can sell ads against the kind of content she runs -- intelligent, irreverent stories that those who want more than what the typical women's interest publication offers. On the internet, that won't be a problem, because that's where smart people get their information. ” - Comment #1 , “Lauren”

red departs the woods “ Hoodwinked,” 2005

“ We have no desire to screw a category of people, to trick them or something. We legitimately want these partners to be successful.” He [Brin] believes that “the nature of these ... functions” may change, just as the role of librarians has.

- Sergey Brin, Google, as quoted in Ken Auletta,

“ The Search Party ,” The New Yorker , Jan 14 08

“ When you have a technology that is as engrossing as the Internet, you’re going to have winners and losers. I’m not trying to sound arrogant. I’m trying to sound rational about it. The Internet allows people to consume media in a different way.”

- Eric Schmidt, Google ( The New Yorker article)

- Google at 66%, Hitwise , Jan 08

and let’s compare last-gen library metrics

LoC, Reading Room Visits, FY96-FY04

(Internal strategy document)

ARL, Median Ratio, 1995-2003

Reference Queries to Full Time Students

ARL, Median Ratio, 1995-2003

Total Circulation to Full Time Students

what would Rupert say?

kick butt

with the

warm, fuzzy

internet spaces and

the new media centers

outsource

redundancy

build things

that will advantage

core values

1 Making information publicly accessible

2 Preserving a record of the past and present

No one else will do them.

libraries must now strut our stuff with a different verve

1 Help put education in the hands of those learning.

2 Assist scientists in the discovery of our world.

both are really

about a new

sensitivity to

dA:tA

Intervene with simplicity

Embrace the unexpected

de Havilland Mosquito

“ Their initial design had started off as something very similar to ... existing heavy bombers, armed with three gun turrets and a six-man crew, powered by two ... engines. However the resulting design had very poor performance. The designers started looking for ways to improve it, including the addition of another pair of engines. After more work on the concept they started moving in the other direction instead, trying to shave off everything that was unneeded in order to lower weight. As each of the gun turrets was eliminated the performance of the aircraft continued to improve, until they realized that by removing them all the aircraft would be so fast it would not need guns anyway. What emerged was an entirely different concept, a small two-engine, two-person aircraft so fast that nothing in the sky could catch it. “

- Wikipedia , Jan 18 08

this endeavor

might require

the creation of a

whole new spanking

form of organization

because libraries suck at change.

“ The bigger the university, the more complex its structure and the more it relies on specialists. They are not used to working across boundaries and have more clout to resist change. “