Out With A Bang

Fair play to Patrick Smith of PaidContent for spotting this gem on the IBM website…

http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/entry/419-ibms-digital-restructuring-plan-saves-trinity-mirror-30-percent-on-midl/

Cos clearly when times are hard and every penny needs to be accounted for, it’s time to get the consultants in. And without the experts from IBM, who would have ever concluded that one of the travails facing the provincial newspaper industry is that it’s ‘fragmented’?

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/SJDN-7MEG8E?OpenDocument&Site=default&cty=en_us

Among many a managerial consultancy gem to be found in said document, one or two are worth mulling over… not least how the cost efficiencies introduced by way of central hub and multi-media many-platform thinking are getting ‘news’ to market that much quicker…

‘These innovations reduce staff numbers and help cut costs, but increase the news value by cutting the time from a reporter finding a story to it appearing online and in print…

Alas as and when IBM and Trinity roll their new way of news-room thinking out in Liverpool they might hit a small snag. Particularly when it comes to their staff-lite print product.

That what IBM and all those consultancy fees might have given them with one-hand time-wise, the M62 and the M60 will take away with the other….

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=135

But the other line of note for was IBM’s view of where the TrinityMirror model was ‘fragmented’ – ‘Like all contemporary multi-media companies, TrinityMirror was a fragmented business with titles having their own editorial, advertising and production teams…

TrinityMirror is, indeed, a fragmented business. But its not the internal fragmentation of their business that is their greatest challenge.

I’m no IBM consultant, but why not do a body-count to circulation-patch study across your ‘editorial, production and advertising teams…’ and – without making a single journalist/sub/ad-rep redundant – assign each and every one of them a ‘patch’; do it by postcodes; get data sourcing.

Keep one or two specialists up your sleeve; otherwise – subs desk included – everyone’s out of the building; working from home. They get half-a-dozen postcodes each.

And then – to avoid the ‘fragmentation’ that IBM so fears – they each do the lot. They write, sub and source advertising.

So, to keep boots on the ground, let’s re-train some of the advertising bods to become local, beat reporters – let’s swap skills; you show me how to get an ad off a garage owner, I’ll show you how to write an engaging 60th wedding report. You do B11 through to 16 and I’ll do B16 through to 23…

And, you know what, to get even more bodies on the ground, to get our faces right under peoples’ noses, let’s re-train some of the printers too…

And whilst we’ve actually got bodies out there, actually on the ground – talking to people – let’s see who’s out there that we can link to; whose got a decent blog running out of B12? But let’s meet them; let’s swap stories in the coffee shop.

Who’s fragmented now? We’re all SWAs, not MMJs. Subs, writers and ad salespeople. All rolled into one. And we’re all out there; on the front-line; selling and meeting, talking and buying.

There you go.

The ‘fragmentation’ that continues to haunt us all is not internal; those walls we can pull down; it’s called multi-skilling; looking at your contacts book as a list of potential advertisers – recognising that the parish council chairman is also the local garage owner… and from the other side of the fence, recognising that the local garage owner is also the parish council chairman…

The fragmentation that even the boys from IBM have yet to master – or, indeed, even mention – is the external fragmentation; that, oops, can’t do this in WS12, that’s Express & Star land… oh no, L14, that’s the Leicester Mercury… outside our patch.

All those local, medieval circulation fiefdoms that have been so religiously plundered for the better part of 300 years. That’s the biggest issue; that’s what will strangle the provincial newspaper industry worldwide.

That’s the gauntlet you should be laying at IBM’s feet.