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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— June – July 2013
P
RINT media face a fight. This matters
because they are an important medium
of information and investigation in
democracies whose institutions are con-
stantly under pressure from Big Money to censor
or distort the Truth.
On top of subversion of their news hegemony
by social media such as Twitter, Facebook and
blogs, newspapers and magazines face, white and
quivering but vaguely defiant too, an alarming
decline in advertising and circulation.
Because of the significant delay in printing,
by the time they dribble by cover of night in to
the shops, newspapers today find that much of
their news content is out of date. So bolstering
their online editions seems like an intelligent
preemptive move.
If only mainstream media had realised this
sooner perhaps the cleavage between ‘old’ and
‘new’ media would not have been so defining.
The recent move to embrace digital on the
part of most mainstream news outlets, how-
ever, follows years of ‘Titanicism’ in Irish print
media. No one wants to contemplate the end of
a venerable newspaper but the cultures are often
contrarian. The possible demise of a newspaper is
hardly acknowledged until insolvency shimmers
close out of the night. This was true in advance of
the Irish Press group’s disappearance in the mid-
nineties. In spite of obvious warning signs, no
one could cogitate that such an institution would
cease to exist. But it did.
More recently, the Sunday Tribune and
The Star On Sunday have made their exit. The
Examiner group only staved off collapse with a
dubious ‘pre-pack’ resuscitation at the expense
of their printers – and not a few journalists.
The Sunday Business Post, one of the pearls
of the Examiner group, with an emphasis on
high-quality content and news is the exemplar.
Proselytising, lecturing and advising on business
and politics, it was itself primly overstaffed, and
sank into a pit of outrageous debt, threatening the
livelihoods of its workers. It remains to see who
may pull it out but a dream-team deal between
the Irish Times and Tom and Ted Crosbie, who
are atop the wider Examiner group now, seems
to have buckled.
Perhaps a Russian oligarch is needed, in the
style of Alexander Lebedev, who bought the
British Independent group in (for £) and
has sustained losses of £m since.
Costs of newsprint, printing, distribution and
the commissions to newsagents are shrouded in
a mystique that dates to the hegemony – the word
media
Digital media tightens the squeeze on complacent print media
michael sheridan
Big Bang at the Echo!
Interwhat?
itself hints at a cultural problem – of the printing
unions. All need to be analysed.
Convergence of old and new media has been
lethargic and fractious. In January, a row between
a righteous and wrong-footed Irish newspaper
industry and an equally righteous but rampant
online community led by the journal.ie, devel-
oped over the use of content taken from the
mainstream then aggregated, ‘scraped’, and
summarised by other sites. Linking, it seems, is
acceptable – “the lifeblood of the online world,”
according to Hugh Linehan, editor of irishtimes.
com, quoted on broadsheet.ie. Anything more
could be illegal.
Mainstream news outlets such as the Irish
Times seem truly wide-eyed (if purse-faced)
at how their role may evolve in the digital era.
A quick search of irishtimes.com, for example,
shows only four mentions of “broadsheet.ie”, and
ten of “thejournal.ie”, despite huge readership
on both sites. Three times the number of Twitter
followers for @TheJournal.ie as for @IrishTimes
bespeaks the phenomenon.
In a recent Irish Times op-ed, its former edi-
tor, Conor Brady, wrote knowingly: “Politicians
like Quinn and Rabbitte are long enough on the
road to recognise what is happening. They know
that whatever flaws there may be in traditional
news media, they discharge an essential function
– and it is not yet clear that the new media can or
will adequately replicate it”. Broadsheet head-
lined its disrespectful, but non-larcenous, link to
the piece “Who let Grandpa On the Internet?”.
There are risks for traditional newspapers
moving into a digital world in which advertising
cannot bring in cash. This is in no small part due
to the leakage of advertising to new social media,
whose service is predominantly free. Indeed the
internet culture of ‘free’ exacerbates the problem
for old media by suggesting information is a basic
right and that payment is an affront.
Quite apart from this worrying reader
culture, for marketers, is the reluctance of
advertisers to follow from print to digital in an
already stagnant market.
Some media, such as buy-and-sell magazines,
are ripe for transfer from print to digital, as
contact between the prospective buyer and seller,
by email, can be teed up on the same medium as
the advertisement – the internet.
So, for example, the hugely profitable Trader
Media Group will next month print the final edi-
tion of Auto Trader, the bible for second hand car
sales. The magazine went from a circulation of
, in January to , last month.
But the online version has posted no fewer than
million hits per month. The evolved future is
bullish for some.
A notable print bear is Sir Martin Sorrell,
chief executive of WPP, a global communica-
tions group. Speaking at the Financial Times
Digital Media Conference in London, he said
that advertisers should seriously consider slash-
ing the amount they spend on newspapers and
magazines, and accused Google, Facebook and
Twitter of being media owners masquerading as
tech companies.
His accusation has been vindicated by
Twitter’s advertisement for a head of news. No
surprise – the Twitter Feed is constantly quoted
in old media.
WPP had found a huge mismatch in the
amount advertisers spend on newspapers and
magazines compared to the time consumers
spend reading them.
This data related to the US, where WPP spends
$bn annually on advertising, but Sorrell con-
tended most of the world was going the same
way. WPP spends $bn globally, so it might be
expected to take an interest in the data and the
patterns.
TV-viewing takes up around % of con-
sumers’ time – perfectly proportionate to WPP’s
investment of % in TV. Outdoor advertising
and radio also broadly match up.
“The two big anomalies are newspapers and
magazines”, according to Sorrell. “We are still
investing %, but consumers are spending only
-% of their time. That has to change”.
WPP spends $.bn with News Corporation
annually, but this is closely followed by Google
which snaffled $bn last year. Sorrell said that by
the end of next year Google is likely to outrank
the Murdoch empire.
Confirming that techology companies are
“media owners masquerading as technology com-
panies”, apart from the huge spend on Google,
WPP spent $m on AOL/Yahoo and $m
on Facebook. Sorrell said that if he was to invest
money in stocks for his grand-children, he would
buy Google and Amazon.
The US media usually herald the future
for Ireland. Data compiled by the Newspaper
Association Of America shows that while the
industry took in $.bn in revenue in ,
this was down % on the $.bn taken the
previous year, while advertising revenue fell by
%. More worrying in the context of Sorrell’s
remarks, print advertising at % remains the
highest source of revenue. Sales of print copies
Newspaper vs. Google Ad Sales
“
The two big anomalies are
newspapers and magazines.
We are still investing 20%,
but consumers are spending
only 7-10% of their time.
That has to change
— June – July 2013
media
contributed % of revenue.
Newspapers must now search for new sources
of income, and many have turned, in this regard,
to digital consulting for local business as well
as facilitating online transactions, which now
account for $ of every $ of revenue. American
newspapers, in other words, are transform-
ing themselves in the teeth of this brave new
e-world.
Ireland is following, according to the newly-
hip Irish Times’ voguishly-titled chief innovation
officer Dr Johnny Ryan, speaking at the ‘Open
Innovation .’ conference in May.
The newspaper will be making a multi-mil-
lion-euro investment towards adapting for the
digital age, Ryan told Silicon Republic. David
Cochrane, founder of (the execrable) politics.
ie, will manage online communities, and start-
ups are being increasingly incorporated into
the newsroom. But the Irish Times has content
problems: many of its journalists have lost their
verve and it has shockingly losts its ascendancy
in Dublin to the Indo. A recent reshuffle of editors,
with a boost for quality-conscious Paul O’Neill,
signifies a late awareness of the deficiency.
Aside from supposed efforts to embrace ‘new
media’, advertising remains a big problem with no
obvious solution. INM’s Annual Report for
shows that on the island of Ireland, advertising
revenue for the group’s publications declined
% compared to .
The Irish Times’ financial statement for the
year to December showed that the adver-
tising cliff was less sheer, with a drop of .%,
though in a vertiginous landscape where it has
borne total recognised losses just shy of €m
due to an embarrassing expansionist period, led
by management but apparently supported by
compliant editors. The report, which at
the time of writing has not yet been published by
the ‘Trust’, is unlikely to show an improvement in
advertising. The Trust, which has never delivered
on its admirable charitable objectives anyway, is
vulnerable to a commercial overhaul in an insitu-
tion whose commercial side ominously has let it
down badly and seems to have no vision for edi-
torial excellence.
Meanwhile INM has an infamously precarious
share-ownership profile and a lead shareholder,
in Denis O’Brien, who seems to be promoting an
editorial charter apparently
conducive to softening the
cough of big-ticket investiga-
tions, while he scarifies the wits
out of the Ireland’s admittedly
rather spineless investigative
elite with threats of litigation
– suggesting at the least a com-
promised vision for news.
Significantly, INM is to
recruit an editor-in chief to
oversee the operations of the
three titles. The new role will involve oversee-
ing a reduction in the pool of resources shared
between the Herald, the Irish Independent,
and the Sunday Independent, and the possi-
bility of bringing all three newsdesks together,
though INM management has stated its com-
mitment to maintain the three separate titles.
Along with the new supremo, the group is seek-
ing additional voluntary redundancies, likely
to be finalised in June – though unlikely for the
moment to include O’ Brien’s ‘brave’ antagonist,
Anne Harris, ‘brave’ editor of the still soaraway
Sunday Independent. All of this will serve not
only to tighten the O’Brien grip over the opera-
tion, but also to erase the antipathy towards him
in-house, an eccentricity of a sort that is unique
in world newspapers.
Paywalls have also offered a potential solu-
tion, but huge problems remain. The Washington
Post, which is soon to bring in an online paywall,
is losing upwards of $m annually and the divi-
sion of his empire between print and publishing;
and television and film does not bode well. The
former will no longer be subsidised by the lat-
ter, exposing it more openly to the vicissitudes
of market forces.
Already the Post is looking for editorial redun-
dancies, as is the Daily News, a trend spreading
all over the country and elsewhere in the world.
Newsweek has drifted off the shelves forever.
After eighty years, the daily Variety ceased its
print publication. Publisher Michelle Sobrino
explained the conundrum that faces all print
media: “We were delivering a print product tell-
ing you stories you have already read on our
website – financially, it didn’t make sense”.
This is the problem currently facing the Irish
newspaper industry. The websites of the lead-
ing papers such as the Irish Independent and the
Irish Times have recently seen increased invest-
ment, embracing more use of videos (including
a new sports ‘show’, ‘Second Captains’, reconsti-
tuted from Newstalk’s ‘Off the Ball’ radio feature),
blogs, and Twitter, for example, in an effort to
leverage the strength of their content into new
media.
Nevertheless, newspaper and media groups,
which are currently facing a crisis of credibility
post-Leveson, must now also face the shocking
realisation that they are vulnerable to the same
market forces as any company – this may seem
obvious, but economic reality has evaded this
worthy sector for years.
Circulation in the Irish Times was down .%
in the six months to the end of and a fur-
ther % since then. The Indo dropped .%
and then %. Ready or not, there will be big job
cuts in the industry. Industry standard-bearer
Independent Newspapers is laden with huge
debt built up by the crazy expansionist policies,
self-serving inflated dividends and mismanage-
ment of the O’Reilly dominion. INM’s net debt at
the end of last year was €m, and plans were
recently announced to reduce this by asset sales,
job cuts, asking shareholders to stump up €m,
and debt forgiveness from its alms-giving state-
owned banks in the region of €m. Analysts
say it is a big ask, and by no means a given. The
Irish Times too is now looking for voluntary
redundancies, without the benefits available in
previous offers.
It is a truism of the media that however much
they target bankers’, politicians’ and civil servants’
salaries, they fail to apply the same level of out-
rage to their own proprietors, management, top
journalists, and indeed new websites. Needless
to remark, such hypocrisy does not escape the
attention of the public. Perhaps the bombast is a
legacy of the megaphone press barons. Combined
with the pettily bureaucratic atmosphere handed
down by the unions the culture is dangerously
dysfunctional for a sector under siege.
In late May, at the launch of the annual report
of the Press Council of Ireland and the Office of
the Press Ombudsman, Conor Brady called on
the Government to consider an agreement with
Google to set up a fund to aid the newspaper sec-
tor, as was agreed by the French government in
February.
The agreement would be based on Google
paying around €m for the rights to list news-
paper headlines and short excerpts from articles.
Brady pointed to the self-defeating cuts being
made across the industry, and the democratic
risk involved in reducing newspaper and maga-
zine resources.
Less grandiose is the vision of Denis O’Brien’s
close associate, ascendant board member of
INM, Lucy Gaffney who recently stated that the
group will have to think as they do in the US and
Britain, boosting revenue streams and merging
newsroom operations. To paraphrase Marshall
McLuhan, the paywall seems now to be the mes-
sage. It needs less complacent messengers.
“
Conor Brady called on the
Government to consider
an agreement with Google
to set up a fund to aid the
newspaper sector
