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April 29, 2009
The National
I have just returned from a trip to Abu Dhabi and Mumbai. Highlights of my trip included a helicopter ride over Abu Dhabi and a discussion of the Abu Dhabi bid to be the global headquarters of IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency. But for fans of mainstream media, we should take solace in the ambitious plans of the National, the new daily newspaper in the Middle East, based in Abu Dhabi.
The National was founded last year as part of Abu Dhabi Media Company. It has a free-standing board, immune from critique by the Ministry of Information by royal decree and proudly declares its editorial independence by writing articles critical of business and government as need be. The aim is to be the “quality broadsheet, an English language paper that serves the expatriate community and the aspirational class who happen to speak English,” said Martin Newland, editor of the paper and formerly editor of the Telegraph in London. It is published six days a week, with 80,000 circulation--25% paid and the balance dropped in high traffic places including hotels and airports. Daily sections include news, sports, culture, business, plus a seven section weekend edition with a magazine. The paper seeks to charge a premium for advertising that reaches people of power and influence in the region.
According to Tom Ashby, deputy business editor, “We are part of a media thrust that has also seen the launch of the Media Zone, twofour54 (that is latitude and longitude of Abu Dhabi) that has attracted BBC and Thomson Reuters for regional hubs.” There are 230 full time journalists at the paper, including 18 staff business writers and 40 foreign correspondents. Ashby told me, “We have recruited talent from The Telegraph in the UK, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and papers in Canada.”
The newsroom is set up in classic departmental style around a conference table in the middle. Story meetings occur at 10 am and again as needed given breaking news later in the day. Journalists are expected to file primarily for the print issue by 6 pm or as late as 10 pm on breaking news. There are several blogs on thenational.ae site including Beep Beep and In the Black, as financial reporters write short posts throughout the day. But the web site seems at present to be a shorter form version of the print paper. The news focus is Abu Dhabi, its government, its environment, its investments in the global economy. Ashby told me the paper plans a “multi-platform integration.” There is already a daily TV news program, “Inside the National,” utilizing staff talent from the newsroom. There will be more video incorporated in the sports and culture sections of the web site. The paper is evaluating ways to get more consumer-generated content, to take advantage of demand for hyper-local coverage.
The National is emblematic of the ambition of Abu Dhabi. The mindset of this city is to under promise and over deliver, in stark contrast to some of its neighbors. The keen awareness of environment is underlined by the planting of thousands of trees over thirty years by the late Sheikh Zayed, followed by the creation of Masdar as a carbon neutral city (disclosure: a client). To recruit talented professionals and their families to the city, the Government has contracted with the Louvre, the Guggenheim Museum, New York University and the Sorbonne to build cultural attractions and academic centers over the next five years. The city seeks to exploit its central location between developed and developing worlds; it is one of two leading bidders as the global headquarters of IRENA, the international renewable energy agency that has 80 nations as members. The trip was a welcome respite from the global recession. I would appreciate your comments as always.
Posted by Edelman at 2:51 PM |
Comments
very interesting. How was the helicopter ride?
Posted by: Betsy Gotbaum at May 30, 2009 6:12 PM
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| TrackBackApril 22, 2009
Newsweek: Daring Upward
I had breakfast this morning with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham (who won the Pulitzer prize for non-fiction this week for his book on Andrew Jackson), publisher Tom Ascheim and foreign correspondent Lally Weymouth (disclosure: close friend). Newsweek is re-launching on May 18, moving up-market, aiming to compete with the Economist and the New Yorker for a higher end reader. Here are the highlights of the conversation:
1) Newsweek will cut its rate base from 2.6 million guaranteed circulation to 1.9 million as of May 18, then move to 1.5 million by January, 2010. It will do this in part by raising its subscription price from $25 to $50 and also raising its newsstand price. Its target demographic is a reader with $100,000 annual income, a college or professional school graduate, with interest in business and politics. The magazine will have better paper stock (thicker, whiter) and a new design. This is exactly what was done with Newsweek International two years ago; it led to more advertising and higher circulation, while retaining the best core relationship.
2) There will be several deeply reported articles in each issue such as the recent piece on advertising executive Peter Arnell. Meacham said, “We will have articles that are truly additive to the conversation. We will not just chase the week’s news to add a detail or two.”
3) The tone of the magazine will change to be more opinionated and analytical. “We will report and opine more,” said Meacham.
4) There will be more emphasis on business coverage. The goal is to be more global-minded and economics-oriented. “We will be more like the Financial Times than the New York Times,” said Meacham.
5) The columnists will be grouped together in a section called the Take. There will be a section on Business called Enterprise. The third section, The Culture, follows arts and other “pursuits.”
6) The Newsweek web site will have more user-generated content. Users will be able to communicate with each other. Ascheim said, “We want to be a place for serious discussion of issues. This will be prompted by excellent and provocative content.” There will also be photo galleries such as the Obama Election Gallery, the number one stop on the site.
Those of us in the PR community will have to re-think our media strategies for clients to include Newsweek as a serious place for business and politics, along with Business Week, Forbes, Fortune and the Economist. We also will help clients contribute to discussions on newsweek.com, thereby engaging reporters as well as stakeholders, publicly and in real-time.
The broader implications of a smaller, more elite audience are profound, in that mass consumers of news are now skipping the evening network broadcasts and will not be served by news weeklies. We will have to find other ways to reach the broader audience on issues; in particular through company web sites to provide journalist-quality depth of information on issues such as environment or healthcare. We also will help clients to participate in existing communities from the WEF’s Facebook page to Twitter. I would appreciate your views as always.
Posted by Edelman at 2:53 PM |
Comments
Seems they're defining their offering to attract advertisers. No harm there. In a busy world where messages are getting shorter, it seems counter-intuitive to follow wordy New Yorker. PR professionals are learning to keep it short. Shouldn't they?
Posted by: Brian Berkman at April 23, 2009 12:02 PM
As "mass consumers of news are now skipping the evening network broadcasts and will not be served by news weeklies..." will the trend be toward continued communities of interest, and less ability to forge diverse coalitions? If all of us read only sources with which we agree, and there are fewer and fewer mass sources containing varied opinions and perspective, it seems to me that we become a country of isolated groups, rather than a unified country. Setting aside the PR implications, this seems a bit chilling to me. Perhaps I'm mistaken...
Posted by: Sean Williams at April 29, 2009 5:46 PM
What really stood out to me with all the new ideas that Newsweek has about social media was doing was the user-generated content that will be on the Newsweek Web site. I think that is a good move for "Newsweek." A lot of the business world is user generated now and it would only be appropriate for Newsweek to have a Web site to do the same thing. It's very obvious that "Newsweek" wants to appeal to a certain target audience. A target audience who consists of people with around a $100,00 annual income and a college or professional school education. This would be a great target audience for people to be able to get on the "Newsweek" Web site and discuss serious issues going on amongst each other. My dad is a perfect example of the clientele Newsweek is trying to reach with all these news ideas and everyday I see him in conversations with people about his company, the economy, etc. and I think it would great for people like my dad to be able to have conversations like that but with people all across the United States and the rest of the world.
Posted by: Whitney Babcock at May 4, 2009 10:59 AM
The greatest asset to Newsweek’s re-launch could be the addition of user-generated content. Communication between consumers and employees of Newsweek will be valuable to all involved. Reader’s get the chance to voice their opinions and Newsweek gets feedback. Everyone loves to give their opinion and thoughts so why not give readers the opportunity to do so. I will be interested to see how Newsweek’s changes turn out.
Posted by: Kathryn Sutton at May 14, 2009 8:41 AM
I believe it is overall a good decision for Newsweek to better direct its resources towards more specific audiences. Although the price jump does seem a bit steep, we will have to wait and see how it all plays out for them in the end.
Posted by: Adam Faragalli at May 14, 2009 9:09 PM
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| TrackBackApril 14, 2009
Silicon Alley Insider
I just got off of the phone with Henry Blodget, the former Wall Street analyst who runs Siliconalleyinsider.com, covering digital media, technology and advertising. From a standing start 18 months ago, the site attracts more than one million plus unique visitors a month, so that it ranks second behind TechCrunch and ahead of GigaOM, VentureBeat, All Things D and other tech sites. The operation employs seven journalists in a newsroom in New York City; each is expected to file seven to ten articles a day. Blodget and Kevin Ryan (disclosure; a good friend), founder and former CEO of DoubleClick, created the site as part of Businessinsider.com, which gets 2 million unique visitors a month. Here are excerpts from our discussion:
1) We are broadcasters in print. We start work at 6 am and are constantly posting stories throughout the work day from 9 am to 5 pm. We work the opposite schedule to print reporters, whose content is up at midnight or on the door step at 6 am the next day. We do real time reporting. Our reporters are always thinking how they can post another nugget, how they can blend short and long form content.
2) This is a conversational medium, and our reporting standard on a story requires us to have a single credible source who says something interesting. If we can't verify it immediately, we often go with it and say clearly that it hasn't been verified. Most times, the story is correct; if it needs to be amended, we do so immediately. This is the way information travels by phone on Wall Street. It allows us to fill a niche between industry scuttlebutt and formal news reports.
3) Commentary is critical. There are many places that report the news; our readers appreciate our opinions whether or not they agree. Our breakthrough was the coverage of the Microsoft Yahoo proposed merger. We did 20 separate articles on the first day. We published spread sheets giving detailed analysis on the deal.
4) We focus on larger companies. Our competitive edge is business reporting plus strategic analysis. Our broad site, The Businessinsider.com competes with Forbes and Fortune. We will take an announcement of a new product, then discuss the competitive implications.
5) Our readers include Wall Street traders, technology companies, professional services firms that work for tech clients (headhunters, lawyers, consultants). They are a true community; they are often good sources of stories.
6) We do not feel that video content is central to our value proposition yet. Video in business media is still a weak link. We will be improving our game, capturing video snippets of CEO interviews, not the 45 minute discussions on CNBC, but material of value to viewers in hurry.
7) We respond to relationships with PR people. We are not going to burn you. Just treat us fairly and help us where you can. If we hear something about your client, we will likely call before we go with it. But we don’t react well to strong arm tactics and we will not seek your approval before writing a story.
8) Our staffers have general business background and domain expertise. They can do financial analysis as well.
9) Our future is to move into green tech, deep tech, bio-technology. There is much room to expand the concept. The goal at Businessinsider.com is to be to business press as the Huffington Post is to daily newspapers.
This kind of medium will require PR people to change their game:
• We will be feeding a news machine that is most similar to Washington DC, with a constant appetite for news. We will have to segment announcements, so that the news stays fresh. In this way, we will straddle mainstream media and the digital challengers, offering each the opportunity to opine on a given event.
• We will have to persuade our clients to be more public with more news. News is less an event and more a continuous flow of information informing the ongoing discussion; we must correct misstatement with alacrity.
• We should aggregate information from inside and outside the company to provide a definitive source of information about a product or issue from the client’s own web site.
• We can provide short-form fact-based video interviews, as long as we ensure transparency on the source of the information, because there’s no way eight reporters can be everywhere with cameras.
Let me know what you think.
Posted by Edelman at 9:48 AM |
Comments
Richard,
I liked this a lot.
Always interesting to get ..inside.. a business like the Insider.
Thanks for sharing the story with us.
Seb
Posted by: Seb Haigh at April 16, 2009 4:44 PM
The Internet has created an insatiable appetite for news and it is going to be up to the PR professional to feed the beast. This kind of medium sparks a lot of thought about how PR people need to adapt.I think PR professionals are faced with an ever-changing gamut of ways to communicate with target publics. How might we do this? Perhaps through direct business-to-consumer outlets including various facets of social media from Twitter, to blogs, to cloud communities. Who knows? I agree that companies are going to have to provide more content more often. The struggle will be making sure that companies don’t get boring. If each news bit is indeed new, how long can this cycle perpetuate?
Posted by: Marissa Yennie at April 20, 2009 6:38 PM
I definitely think PR people need to change their game. New technologies are coming up and they need to learn to adapt quickly. I also think it is great that business will share more information, but I feel that the constant flow of information will cause problems. If a company does not have exciting or interesting news, what news will come out that day? Stressing constant news could make the company put out useless or boring news.
Posted by: jennifer at May 4, 2009 12:03 PM
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| TrackBackApril 6, 2009
It Seemed So Promising
Carlos Gutierrez, former US Secretary of Commerce and former chief executive of the Kellogg Company, addressed the spring session of the Arthur Page Society on Friday. His message was extremely positive; he had learned the importance of having communications professionals at the decision-making table while in government, and intended to take that lesson back to the private sector. Yet later in his remarks he made a further commitment, to a centralized system of communications and simplicity of message, thereby undermining his purpose in making PR a true partner.
Secretary Gutierrez began by recommending a key role for communicators as players in the corporate decision-making process. In every meeting he had in the White House, a senior member of the public relations team would be present, often quiet until the end, when he or she would counsel on the viability of the policy. “In government, communications people are policy people; they know the details as thoroughly as those charged with the implementation of the policy,” he said.
He contrasted this with the positioning of PR folks in the private sector. “In business, communicators aren’t always business people nor are they close to the strategy of the company. Communications is a strategic tool and communicators must be as prepared to discuss finance, marketing or distribution as the people responsible for those areas. Communicators must be in the game to be valuable. That is the CEO’s responsibility.”
He added that many CEOs fail to understand the value of communications. “This is not about role-playing or acting. Every meeting is a chance to communicate.” He gave the example of the Congressional hearings for the Big Three car makers in December. “A senator asked a simple question; are all of your car lines profitable? The CEO responded by saying ‘at what level do you mean, EBITDA or what?” Gutierrez contended that the simple question required a simple answer, not a response one would give to a financial analyst.
But it is with this notion of simplifying answers that the Secretary went off course. He said, “In the corporate world, we mistake complexity for sophistication. There is a beauty in simplicity; it is an art and a science.” He touted the Bush Administration’s daily, one page report with talking points on every policy maker’s desk by 8:30AM as a model for the corporate sector. “Thousands of Administration people received this update; each message point had a headline and we were always on the same page.”
Professor Jerry Swerling of University of Southern California asked the key question on many Page members’ minds. “Don’t you think there is risk in over-simplifying? Don’t some issues require serious debate?” The Secretary’s response was, “People can’t admire something they don’t understand. I am not suggesting taking away substance. People in companies don’t know why things are happening. It is everybody’s business why we are closing a factory or making an acquisition. It has to be expressed in simple, basic language.”
It is inspiring to hear that the Secretary sees the value of PR people at the top table, advising the CEO. But we must bring to that management group the complexity of our world, the views of stakeholders including critics, because true engagement depends upon substantive discussion. It is a mistake to rely excessively upon simplicity. One should aim for consistency without robbing the process of integrity. This can be achieved only by an extensive debate of the issues.
I agree with Secretary Gutierrez that information should be conveyed with the context and language to which audiences can most easily relate. We must avoid jargon that creates a barrier to understanding. But PR is not a command and control amplifier that conveys simple messages consistently. That’s advertising. PR informs, listens, and facilitates dialogue among stakeholders to achieve enlightenment.
Posted by Edelman at 4:38 PM |
Comments
Well said, Richard. The role of PR is to facilitate dialogue with various stakeholders, who are likely to relate to an organisation from a number of different standpoints, and none of whom will be satisfied with corporate one-liners.
Posted by: Maja Zupan at April 9, 2009 8:59 AM
Great to see you at the AW Page Seminar. We are trying to increase engagement for the AW Page Blog. Please see my post today.
http://www.awpagesociety.com/awp_blog/
There is a lot you can say about Charlie Gasparino’s talk. Since you had a good question, I thought you may want to chime in. I welcome your comments to the post.
Paul
Posted by: Paul Capelli at April 9, 2009 10:24 AM
I think the question might be in the definition of the word "simple". I do not think PR practioners should be aiming for simplistic sound bites that come out in one-liners, but I do think it is our job to take complex issues and open them up to all stakeholders. To do this well, one needs a deep understanding of the complexities. It does not mean that the message itself cannot be stated simply.
Posted by: Kate Henderson at April 13, 2009 11:38 AM
I couldn’t agree more with this blog post. PR practitioners should not try to complicate an issue or use jargon. We should make the issue as easy as possible for the public to understand, but it isn’t the job of PR practitioners to “dumb down” an issue. The public needs to understand the CEOs point of view as well and the public should know all of the details, even if they are complicated.
I am pleased, however, to know that Secretary Gutierrez realizes how important communications and public relations specialists are to government and to every company. He is right by stating that most CEOs do not understand how important public relations specialists are to companies, but without public relations, most companies would not survive.
Posted by: Jessica VanWinkle at May 4, 2009 11:22 AM