So Look Who's a Publisher Now

Content marketing guru Joe Pulizzi joined me on a webcast I hosted for Nstein in early month on a burgeoning marketing sector: content marketing aka custom publishing. The webcast was part of the monthly Double-Down on Digital series Nstein is offering this Spring on how publishers can tap into new revenue streams -- providing they have an agile digital content supply chain.

Content marketing is a subject that fits this blog so perfectly as it answers the question of "so just who is a publisher?" The answer is: anyone. Anyone with a story to tell and a means to tell a story. Case in point, the uproarious viral video series by JetBlue targeted at corporate big wigs whose wings have been - ahem -- clipped. The series is clever, timely and positions the company beautifully.

More conventionally, brand advertisers rely on print for custom -- which has now extended to newsletters and the Web. Some do it up big, like Proctor & Gamble's teen site Being Girl. The site is loaded with frank, age-appropriate content geared to girls entering puberty and through their teens. Launched in 2000, the site receives more than 3 million monthly visitors from around the globe and is customized for 44 different countries.

I spoke with Bob Arnold, the global being girl digital marketing manager for BeingGirl, and asked him about the site, his audience and the content. Arnold said the site seemed like a natural fit, given the company's depth of knowledge on FemCare. The entire site is produced in-house by P&G staffers and the "editor-in-chief" role seems to fall on the shoulders of Iris Pregger, PhD in women's health studies. She and her team scope and write the age-appropriate content for girl. Indeed Pregger has a column "Ask Iris" that Arnold says "receives a couple hundred questions a week."

The articles are informative, although obviously tilted toward product. I asked Arnold how hard it was to navigate the balance of information versus corporate stewarship. "For us, we wanted to make sure we provided a value -- and shape business behind that," he said. "If you make consumers first, ultimately they will reward you." The real eye-opener for Arnold, who does not portend to be a publisher, was that this market was so under-served. The other issue was dealing with a seemingly day-to-day morph of his audience. "In this day and age [teens] attitudes and tastes change rapidly, and it challenging to keep up with that," he said.

BeingGirl's success doesn't surprise Pulizzi who sharpened his teeth in custom publishing when he was head of that division at Penton Media. His mission was to corral the advertisers who wanted to communicate directly with its customers through entertaining or informative content and bring them into the Penton Content Supply Chain.

According to Pulizzi, most companies don't take the P&G route of creating this content inhouse. "They really don't want to be pubishers, they don't have the will, the expertise or the knowledge," he explained. Advertisers are looking for help, and publishers are uniquely positioned to provide it. "At Penton, we were really good at telling a story and we wanted to grab a slice of that content marketing pie," he explained. At Penton custom publishing brought in about 20 percent of annual revenues. "Advertisers are going to get this done -- the question is who will get they turn to?"

Rocky Mountain Low

The decision by the E.W. Scripps company to close the Rocky Mountain News on February 26 -- a month shy of its 150th birthday was more evidence of a vastly troubled industry. The mourning in Denver for the favorite voices that were silenced, was the exact way I felt in 1982 when Cowles Media stopped the presses on the Buffalo Courier-Express. (That paper resulted from the union of the Buffalo Courier and Buffalo Express, whose vast archives extended back to 1828, and whose ownership included a guy by the name of Samuel Clemons, aka Mark Twain.)

1982, you might recall, is the year that economists harken back to, usually in the context of "the worst economy since 1982." Some numbers:

• Median houses: $83,000
  
• a gallon of milk: $2.24
• a gallon of gas: $1.30

Whether 2009 will win the dubious distinction of surpassing 1982 as worst year, there is no doubt that the perfect storm of a bad economy and changing technologies kills businesses and hastens transformations. What changing technology impacted newspapers in 1982? Hot metal typesetting (truly the very first movable type!) to phototypesetting -- also known as "hot-type" versus "cold-type." The cold type process eliminated the need for a skilled set of laborers who deftly created lines of copy for press. Adapting to the technology required negotiating with unions, investing in technology and dealing with the criticisms that phototype was a generation less than hot-type. (There would often be a blurriness that drove readers nuts.)

The other technological change that impacted the C-E was, believe it or not, television. The evening news on TV had seriously eroded evening newspapers, causing many of them to move into the morning slot -- such as the C-E's competitor, the Berkshire Hathaway-owned Buffalo (Evening) News. A decade of plant closings and subsequent exodus from the Buffalo area saw the population plummet and advertising shrink. Sound familiar to today's woes? The C-E had actually invested in cold-type but hadn't been able to implement it because of union constraints. And suddenly the voices of syndicated Chicago columnist Mike Royko and New Jersey's Jim Bishop were eliminated from the Buffalo news diet. Over the next decade many two newspaper towns shrank to one. Denver dodged that bullet for yet another decade before succumbing last month.

This traipse down memory lane is not to belittle the sorrows of newspapers today. Rather it is to show natural evolutions that occur following every technical advancement. Savvy papers moved from evening editions to morning, and savvier ones realized that they could use those presses they reserved for news to print commercially for others. Still the savviest will be those who follow the upgrade path available to them, and while it won't be easy, it is still a more graceful morph than, say, the horse and buggy to a car.

Yes, the models have to change, and yes the infrastructures have to change, and yes union contracts will have to be rewritten. But there is an upgrade path. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, all but out of the pulp business, is seriously talking about going all digital. It wouldn't surprise me if Hearst migrates its San Francisco Chronicle into web only as well. ImpreMedia's Hoy New York went all digital in January. The Detroit papers are both ceasing home delivery save for Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. They are evolving: losing their tales that are heavy to transport.

The next step is modifiying the notion of church and state. Notice I didn't suggest eliminating church and state, but modifying it. There is room for a little integration, a little cooperation. And how about democratizing news -- so that not just reporters determine what is news worthy. Perhaps the model will be to open up the gates for users to assist as field researchers, while a writer/editor follows up and fact checks. We all trust readers during catastrophes -- why not create a process for readers to assist in the newsgathering process? HuffingtonPost is popular for its voices -- and the voices it aggregates.

The Rocky Mountain low being felt right now will not be just an isolated event in the news industry. And we will look back at this time as a transformative one, as going all digital will not be a last-ditch gasp at life -- but a viable alternative. The voices that ceased in the '80s when the presses were stopped, were not silenced with the shuttering of the RMN, but have morphed into Inside the Rockies and I Want My Rocky, two new sites by former writers. No doubt the ownership and business model may change. So while yes, in 2009, just like in 1982, some organizations will be hastened to die, some will hang on, others will adapt -- and some pure-plays will be borne. "Without failure, the culture of risk fades. Without risk, creativity withers," says NYT Columnist Roger Cohen who points out that churn is the American way.

Or to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of the death of newspapers is greatly exaggerated.