How a firm survives and even thrives with its initial limited resources always confused me, but after reading Picard's chapters, I have more idea of what's going on in the business world and reconfirm that I'm definitely not a business person by birth but need to study harder. What comes into my mind after realizing the detail of money flow, credit management, etc. is how we study media economics and, further, media management and how we learn from the complexity of media business. Due to the various managements of media firms, probably we need to have a comprehensive case study of certain media firm to realize the reasons why it succeed or failed and where the problems come from. (Is that what business school does?)
For example, like the suggestions or strategies in the article "Our plan to fix the New York Times", the author tries to adopt the Wall Street Journal's partial business model to the NYT and treats it as the panacea. It's necessary to learn from the successful firm but probably they need the comprehensive case study or analysis of why the Wall Street Journal succeed instead of just focusing on the simplified cutting cost and raising subscription fees. It's so easily for us to focus on certain or most obvious outcomes such contents and the adoption of new technology of the whole business without knowing the money flow, the inner management, or the financial structure, etc. So, I think using a comprehensive case study to analyze the media firms could provide us a broader view or stimulate our imagination when coming up the alternatives to help the media industry.
Showing posts with label Blodget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blodget. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Sandra-HMF, Blodget, Picard
First I try to use what we learn about the determinants of supply and demand to see why the threat or fear of news business exists.
From the determinants of supply parts:
1. Price of related goods/services (too many substitute goods, and the news business needs to create more complementary goods or use the news or resources they have creatively)
2. Taste (which the ads can manipulate, so why not the news business creates the taste of audience, or make your products more attracting or special to them)
3. Maybe there's no problem of number of buyers because they want more and more subscribers; however, they possibly have the problem of which group do they really focus on. It seems like they try to draw all the attentions as decades ago, would it make the special niches disappear because too greedy to include everything and miss the focus or what they are good at or what they can do best under limitation of resources?)
From the supply part:
1. What are the prices of resources? It seems they always say they spend so much money in producing the product, but with the advanced technology, doesn't it help at all in cutting budget or saving time and energy in gathering information, reaching news sources, or producing news? Just saying cutting budget or cutting the number of reporters is not a rational enough strategy, must realize where the big profits they earned in the past go? Is it really because the huge amount of reporters' or editors' expenses, or is it because of the failed investment in other areas or just disappear in anywhere else?
2. As the number of suppliers increase, how can one news company compete with them (other business, bloggers, and free access, etc.), not just asking people to pay more or take readers' responsibility to pay, but how to make yourself survive and fit their changing needs in the changing environment?
The connection of three articles:
From the responses of active readers to Blodget's article, most of them (readers, consumers, audience) keep mentioning the content matters. Picard also points out the products reporters or newsmen created need to change or be differentiated, and the new skills they need in the new era. That's also what I feel for a long time. To me, content and the quality of news product matters a lot and are the roots of the industry. Platform is just a way for us to reach out those news stories (of course we know there're lot of meanings behind the adoption of the technology and the platform will change our daily life, but not the focus in this case).
It's important to use, adopt, and have the skill of masteing the new technology; however, how to equip the journalists or journalists-to-be the new professional skills to survive or to be creative in current environment is crucial, which is not just the way to put the information online or in print, but the knowledge to process, analyze, and organize all the information and find its meaning to the audience. With more and more people know how to gather news information and with the increasing competitive suppliers, what make news or news workers "professional" or valuable in the market and how the school or the academic field could help rather than criticizing them is a big thing and always interests me when I first stepped into this area. The two articles are so related because one just purely states from the owner's perspective and those budget-cutting, raising fees terms or strategy, which is the mainstream in today's business but also causes lots of troubles, but the responses and Picard's article voice out from users' perspective.
I have no answer or better way to save newspapers right now, but I do think trying some more creative ways that related to content, and keeping what makes news different and valuable to others are the niches of the news business. Without values, a business cannot last long.
(sorry, I didn't expect it would be so long... the topic just too intersting... :p)
From the determinants of supply parts:
1. Price of related goods/services (too many substitute goods, and the news business needs to create more complementary goods or use the news or resources they have creatively)
2. Taste (which the ads can manipulate, so why not the news business creates the taste of audience, or make your products more attracting or special to them)
3. Maybe there's no problem of number of buyers because they want more and more subscribers; however, they possibly have the problem of which group do they really focus on. It seems like they try to draw all the attentions as decades ago, would it make the special niches disappear because too greedy to include everything and miss the focus or what they are good at or what they can do best under limitation of resources?)
From the supply part:
1. What are the prices of resources? It seems they always say they spend so much money in producing the product, but with the advanced technology, doesn't it help at all in cutting budget or saving time and energy in gathering information, reaching news sources, or producing news? Just saying cutting budget or cutting the number of reporters is not a rational enough strategy, must realize where the big profits they earned in the past go? Is it really because the huge amount of reporters' or editors' expenses, or is it because of the failed investment in other areas or just disappear in anywhere else?
2. As the number of suppliers increase, how can one news company compete with them (other business, bloggers, and free access, etc.), not just asking people to pay more or take readers' responsibility to pay, but how to make yourself survive and fit their changing needs in the changing environment?
The connection of three articles:
From the responses of active readers to Blodget's article, most of them (readers, consumers, audience) keep mentioning the content matters. Picard also points out the products reporters or newsmen created need to change or be differentiated, and the new skills they need in the new era. That's also what I feel for a long time. To me, content and the quality of news product matters a lot and are the roots of the industry. Platform is just a way for us to reach out those news stories (of course we know there're lot of meanings behind the adoption of the technology and the platform will change our daily life, but not the focus in this case).
It's important to use, adopt, and have the skill of masteing the new technology; however, how to equip the journalists or journalists-to-be the new professional skills to survive or to be creative in current environment is crucial, which is not just the way to put the information online or in print, but the knowledge to process, analyze, and organize all the information and find its meaning to the audience. With more and more people know how to gather news information and with the increasing competitive suppliers, what make news or news workers "professional" or valuable in the market and how the school or the academic field could help rather than criticizing them is a big thing and always interests me when I first stepped into this area. The two articles are so related because one just purely states from the owner's perspective and those budget-cutting, raising fees terms or strategy, which is the mainstream in today's business but also causes lots of troubles, but the responses and Picard's article voice out from users' perspective.
I have no answer or better way to save newspapers right now, but I do think trying some more creative ways that related to content, and keeping what makes news different and valuable to others are the niches of the news business. Without values, a business cannot last long.
(sorry, I didn't expect it would be so long... the topic just too intersting... :p)
Pete Blodget
While Blodget makes a strong argument in favor of a Wall Street Journal-style Web fee, his suggestion of trimming the newsroom budget by judging productivity on page hits is flawed. An example of this is Huffington Post, where scandalous celebrity stories routinely get the highest clicks.
While the New York Times obviously isn't going to start writing about celebrity gossip, there is a parallel phenomenon visible on their "most emailed" list, where the most emailed articles over the last 30 days are for the most part lifestyle pieces. Placing a higher value on writers that produce those types of stories will possibly impact the value of the paper by changing its focus. A similar argument can be made against the suggestion of shutting down bureaus.
As for the subject of charging for access to the site, David Carr of the New York Times makes the point that this may work for the Wall Street Journal because of its usefulness, but not so much for say, the New York Post, which is largely an indulgence. It's an interesting point, but it also makes me wonder if it is useful, in the sense that celebrity gossip bloggers often get information from the Post's Page Six.
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