Plenty of specters hang over the world of print media at mid-year: staff cuts, declining revenue, the usual hand-wringing about what to do about the internet. Plus: Murdoch, Pearson, Burkle, the Bancrofts, and "everybody talking to everybody else about everything." USA Today and the Wall Street Journal want to launch glossies, the New York Times wants to shave column inches, literally--go ahead and insert your "industry at the crossroads" metaphor here.
Yet, despite all that, the Mid-Year chatter has been somewhat positive. As Editor and Publisher relates, "While there was downcast news coming out of the meetings hosted by the Newspaper Association of America, executives were upbeat while addressing the challenges facing the industry." The negatives aren't being ignored--items on the table for discussion have included declining classified ads revenue, instability in some important markets (notably housing), and circulation slump. But there's a general sense that the industry is rallying their collective spirits. McClatchy began their presentation with a video set to the music of OK Go, for Pete's sake!
The quotable notable of the Review has been Belo CEO Robert Dechard, who blames the media for portraying the print landscape as a "kind of Armageddon." "The newspaper business is going to settle out, one way or another," Dechard predicted, and one way it may be settling out is--ta da!--online. The conclusion of one roundtable discussion was that "Circulation may be declining, but when newspapers' Web sites are taking into consideration, the audience is growing." Media General COO Reid Ashe, took it a step further, "For many things, the Internet is now our primary medium."
Gannett's presentation was especially positive in this regard. Chairman/CEO Craig Dubow declared that the company had "made solid progress in transforming itself in a very short time," and that "the changing media landscape and new consumer behaviors are creating great opportunities." Gannett's "Information Center" initiative was touted as showing early promise, and USA Today proclaimed itself a "success story," with its website drawing eleven million unique visitors each month.
Yesterday, we talked about the good work being done by Editor and Publisher's Pauline Millard in identifying online ideas that work. If industry executives want to maintain this buoyancy of spirit, and perhaps even right the balance sheet, they'd do well to bookmark her today. Some may already have: The Washington Post (who Millard praised yesterday), announced today that they would be allowing their video content to be widely disseminated by readers and bloggers making the embed code available. Fortune, they say, favors the bold.