It would be nice to think that certain people – when asked to appear before a House Of Commons select committee on the future of local media – arrived knowing what they were talking about.
Claire Enders is clearly not one of them.
She hasn’t done her homework.
http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/entry/419-dcms-select-cttee-hearing-draft/
Now, some of what she says is clearly very true. The 1300 local newspaper titles left in this country do, indeed, face a very challenging future. I suspect no-one who is about to give evidence today would deny that fact.
But some of what she would appear to be saying is dismissive of everything good and positive that’s being done online to the point of ignorance. Willful ignorance.
And the line about professional journalism ‘never being replaced’ … that we’re all going to have to supplement our livings by ‘washing cars or whatever…’ is, frankly, patronising bolloc*s of the highest order.
For someone who clearly has no need to wash cars for a living, Ms Enders needs to get out more and start to justify her lofty consultancy fees; to stop making crass and inaccurate generalisations and actually do some work on her chosen subject matter.
‘—Can websites save local newspapers?: “Absolutely not. the average income earned from a regional or local newspaper reader is about £100 a year, the average income on a website visitor is about £2 a year, and probably falling.
‘People are spending about five minutes a month on these websites; by comparison, people who read the newspaper spend about 12 hours a month – the websites do not substitute the printed page.”
Fine.
But if Ms Enders had started to ponder what the ‘great unbundling of newspapers’ might mean going forward, then those numbers can change. On average, it might be a two-minute engagement time, but you start to deliver niche interests to a passionate audience and those numbers begin to work back in our favour.
Last time I looked, I had some c35,000 uniques, on average visiting three-and-a-half times a month and when they did, average ‘engagement’ time was the better part of seven minutes. Varied, by month; by the team’s performance – January, when the transfer window opens, we have an absolute ball…
As will the football section of any ‘ThisIsSomething’ site… big, sticky content delivered online to a passionate, niche audience.
And once unbundled from the broad and damning brushstroke delivered by Ms Enders, those people deliver the kind of demographics advertisers like. I’ve got the British Army signed up on a 12-month deal; cos our core audience is 16-30 males. Bingo.
And I’m not the only one; TrinityMirror, Northcliffe, etc… they have all, likewise, twigged what you can do when you start to unbundle your content in niche directions… British Army, mobile phones, DVD sales… re-bundle that content up in different ways and there’s a lot more you can do to delight your advertiser.
‘—Can’t the online grassroots help?: “It’s not really possible to replace professional journalism … people already engage in blogging, but they’re going to have to make a living through the day – washing cars or whatever.”
‘Adam Price MP pushed the promise of citizen journalism but Enders was still pessimistic: “Blogs are personal statements … less than four percent of news ever originates on a blog, blogs are commentaries on what’s going on, they don’t originate stories … you don’t see bloggers doing hard work …
‘Some of the regional channels… ThisIsSomething… one of the discussion areas they started had to be shut down because of racism … I don’t see that as a positive phenomenon. I have a lot of respect for everyone who’s out there in Bloggerland, but this is not a substitute.”
It’s actually hard to know where to start with those lines.
I have a lot of respect for everyone who’s out there in ‘Bloggerland’ … it’s just that I don’t see any of you working hard and when you’re not working you should be ‘washing cars or whatever…’
That really sounds like respect to me, Claire. Big respect.
The fact that for those of us that do work at this online living have already proved that our professionally delivered and packaged content has its own syndication value has clearly passed Ms Enders by; I’ve sold my content into the Telegraph sports desk… build yourself an elegant enough network and you can ‘feed’ any number of higher news portals with big, sticky content that they can’t source from elsewhere.
It’s why the Washington Post bolted on TechCrunch to their online offering; does no-one on TechCrunch work hard? Spot of passionate niche thinking, a smart piece of re-alignment and re-organisation into a more elegant, long-tailed networked platform and away they go – fit for their 2009 purpose.
And if you can do that with technology, why can’t you do that with football? With hyper-local news?
And then fill the space around it with hyper-local advertising – helping the kind of hyper-local advertisers that Ms Enders’ beloved Google all-but ignores when it comes to their own needs for a new, hyper-local, online home to call their own?
But what do any of us know, eh Claire?
We should all be washing cars.
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[...] Claire Enders’ prediction that half of the UK’s regional newspapers will close in five years and her comments on bloggers], Johnston Press chief executive John Fry remained staunchly optimistic about the [...]
Lower, please.
[...] Claire Enders’ prediction that half of the UK’s regional newspapers will close in five years and her comments on bloggers], Johnston Press chief executive John Fry remained staunchly optimistic about the [...]
Rick – I am amazed that you have chosen to waste your time trying to stick pins in Claire just because she suggested that most bloggers would not be able to support themselves full-time on the basis of their blogging, in contrast to journalists that are paid a wage by their employer to work the streets of UK cities. Claire did not presumably mean to include persons such as yourself, whose views are widely solicited and which have located a market in the printed press. Arianna Huffington is also a very successful blogger. But many bloggers are not so lucky. But frankly, your comments reveal alot more about your own methods, which have fallen prey to the usual Internet hyperbole which consists of wildly insulting and dissing anyone you don’t like, in a manner that not only would be inconsistent with the usual standards of journalistic speak, and frankly, stink high, very, high of the lamentable sexism that seeks to turn any female appearing in public into an object of ridicule and dripping sarcasm. I think another go at jorunalism school Rick with the ethics bit needing a really good stiff brush-up so you learn how to speak about women in a correct and not condescending manner. Or may be a bit of washing cars would wash the dirt out of your prose and turn into substance…
Notafan,
In all honesty it could have been Clive Enders and I would have said exactly the same thing… ‘washing cars’ was the phrase in question… that’s what caused offence.
And I stand by my response to it.
That was patronising and dismissive in the extreme of a lot of honest, hard-working souls out there who are trying to make this web thing work for the betterment of their communities.
And if you can’t see that and think it was some ill-informed snipe at the fairer sex then, well, you’re wrong.
All the best, etc
R
@Notafan:
The only generalisation I see here is labelling someone sexist because they criticised a high-profile woman for her views in an angry manner.
The only sexism I see here is suggesting that Rick should ‘learn how to speak about women in a correct and not condescending manner’.
Everyday I’m extremely aware of sexist undertones in blog and news comment: this most certainly wasn’t one of them.
More people should take Rick’s lead and assess public statements for their substance, irregardless of the sex of the person who made the comments.
The most interesting thing about Ms Enders prediction is that it bodes extremely ill for DC Thomson employees, given that she is the wife of Christopher Thomson, Deputy Chairman of that company. Presumably she has her hubby and his family in mind when she talks about kindly newspaper proprietors who are condescendingly keeping newspaper journos etc in a job. It might be as well for the Thomsons to bear in mind that if it wasn’t for the family firm, then they’d all be out of work, being pretty much unemployable, otherwise. Fortunately for them, (or unfortunately, given the current financial crisis), DCTs is really an investment company that has a side-line in publishing to keep the Thomson children amused, using the hardworking staff as rich kids playthings, not giving tuppence for the fact that they’re gambling with normal peoples’ liveliehoods.