Peter Kann's Thoughts On Newspapers

This past weekend's Wall Street Journal carried an extended editorial by the chairman of Dow Jones, part of NewsCorp, Peter Kann. Kann is a longtime Journal man, and his editorial contains so much historical perspective on the sector that it almost qualifies as an in-depth strategy piece.

Pity, really, because that sort of piece is almost nonexistent in today's Journal, post-Murdoch.

But, I digress.

The headline of Kann's article, "Quality Reporting Doesn't Come Cheap," has, as its main purpose, to belatedly lecture all of us on how the demise of newspapers will hurt society, because no other entity reports raw news anymore of similar "quality."

Kann meanders through the past, noting how newspapers were advised by "bright young managers" to give away electronic copies of their print editions. Long story very short, in a decade, print circulation fell disastrously, without an offsetting revenue stream from online sites.

Kann is quick to note that the Wall Street Journal, alone among US newspapers, has always charged for access to its online paper, beyond the day it is published, and ruminates that, perhaps if the NY Times, Washington Post, and a few others, had gone along with this, the entire industry would have followed, and they'd all be in great shape now.

But these passages, near the closing, reveal Kann's emotionally-tilted "analysis,"

"The reason any of this matters has little to do with the plight of newspaper publishers or even with the future of newspapers. The real threat is to the future of news—informative, relevant, reliable news of the wider world around us. And that is disappearing as newspapers, whose reporting staffs still produce most of the news, no longer can afford to do so. As their news budgets and staffs continue to shrink, the key question is what can fill that gap?

Television does not begin to fill it. To the extent broadcast networks ever tried they now have abdicated to so-called cable news channels. These, in turn, now devote most of their resources to covering celebrities, crimes and sundry social trivia and to prime-time programming that pretends to be analysis and informed opinion while mostly offering the spectacle of extremist heads yelling at each other. There are few resources and even less commitment to covering significant news beyond floods and fires.

The Internet is not filling news vacuums either. There are hundreds upon hundreds of online sites and blogs that claim to provide news, but virtually none of them even pretend to pursue the traditional news role of newspapers, which is to invest in professional staffs dispersed around a community and across the country or the globe to cover, analyze, and only then comment on, events. Actually, all they do is comment.

As to all the free online editions of our newspapers, their business model does not begin to cover the cost of significant news reporting. So the online editions with growing audiences—largely cannibalized from print audiences—rely on the poor print editions for almost all the news they give away.

Sadly, there is less and less of that, and the ultimate loser, of course, is the public."

I actually don't agree with Kann's diagnosis of cable news. On national topics, it is more timely and possessing of greater impact than print journalism. As I wrote about a year and a half ago, on the occasion of NewsCorp's purchase of Dow Jones,

"The reality is that print is a dead, bygone medium. The CBS franchise program, 60 Minutes, breaks tons of stories. How? By using television, not print. Do you think for a moment that the same program, as a print medium, could ever have lasted? Not a chance.

What Murdoch understands is that by marrying the Dow Jones assets and brands, particularly The Wall Street Journal, to his existing multimedia empire, he will enable those brands to actually create more value while doing even more investigative journalism.

The Dow Jones board's recent Chair has been trying to goose the company's performance, to little avail. My guess is that most investors understand that the old media pond within which Dow Jones lives is going to overwhelm the effects of any one firm's individual efforts. It's time for a more modern media vehicle to properly invest in and use the Journal's brand franchise.

No, the narrow version of the journalistic independence argument won't work for a publicly held company. Maybe if Ottoway and the Bancrofts wanted to take the firm private. But that's not what they want. They want top dollar and journalistic immunity from any economic realities."

Print media simply can't deliver the same punch that a live cam feeding a cable news channel's programming, then residing on its website, can. Nobody said newspapers can't continue to serve a very local function in society. But in the era of ubiquitous cable news, YouTube, video on cell phones, and the internet, print just can't compete on national news stories. And if it has superior opinion and analytical pieces, then it has value, and product, but it's not news reporting.

However, earlier in his piece, Kann slipped this little nugget in,

"If publishers were at fault here for chasing ever larger audiences, editors and even reporters all too often were complicit. The list of modern journalistic flaws and failings is long, but surely includes the blurring of traditional lines between news and opinion and news and entertainment, predatory pack journalism, an undue emphasis on conflict rather than context, pessimism and cynicism (as differentiated from appropriate skepticism and criticism), social orthodoxy, elitism, flea-like attention spans, and more. Yes, the traditional newsprint medium was becoming less appealing, but its messages also were becoming less enlightening."

As a business person and strategist, once I read that paragraph, the rest of Kann's editorial became largely moot.

You see, what Kann unwittingly did, with these admissions, is essentially prove that poor management led to print news' downfall. The publishers made bad revenue strategy choices. The editors got carried away slanting the news, dumbing it down, and treating their customers as if they were morons.

Now, they complain that, having gutted their own product of much of its past value, nobody will pay for it.

Well, boo-hoo, Peter. You print guys did it to yourselves, and you got what you deserved. Newspapers are dying for a reason. Their operators lost sight of their strengths, screwed up their strategies, then lay weak and helpless in the face of advancing new technlology- cable news.

By the way, I doubt a Glenn Beck would find a supportive home in print, or have anything like the reach and punch he now has. And, yes, he actually reports news. And then also mixes it with analysis.

But I can't honestly say I believe, as Peter Kann does, that print could in any way rival the impact of well-honed video news and opinion programs now available to the viewing public- for free.

On Murdoch's Bid for Dow Jones

There was a very interesting piece in Monday morning's Wall Street Journal. It detailed the Ottaway's and retired Wall Street Journal executive Peter Kahn's opposition to Rupert Murdoch's offer of $60/share to buy Dow Jones.

On the surface, it appears to be a rather complex situation.

On one hand, Kahn, Ottoway et. al. sound antiquatedly quaint in defending journalistic integrity and independence. That's the sort of thing we used to hear from broadcast newsrooms, before cable television put them under.

In this case, blogging and cable TV have pressured print journalism. Why else the tie-up between CNBC and the WSJ?

Further, as a letter to the editor in today's Journal noted, the Bancrofts and The Wall Street Journal are all for capitalism, until it comes home to roost at their poorly-performing, partially publicly-held company. In that case, however, they argue for morals, standards, and eschew the same free market winds that they claim must blow throughout the economy.

For the record, the closing price of Dow Jones Inc. rose from $36.33 on April 30th, to $56.20 on May 1st. That's a 55% increase in the market price, nevermind Murdoch's promise of $60, which would be a 65% increase in the value of the stock. On an economic basis, it's clear that the time has come for someone else to create value with the Dow Jones stable of assets.

The nearby Yahoo-sourced chart of the Dow Jones stock price, versus the S&P500 Index for more than thirty years, tells a sorry tale indeed. The media firm has barely managed one-third the return of the market over this time, and has been flat for the last five years and declining over the last seven years.

On the other hand, there is the argument of journalistic independence. Critics say Murdoch will sell out the vaunted Journal staff that has won Pulitzer's for covering investigative stories in China. Kahn was reported to be concerned that, under Murdoch, the WSJ would not have earned those two Pulitzers for covering stories critical of China and its government.

Now, that sounds like something to consider. Kahn pointed to Murdoch's many actions calculated to placate the Chinese, so that his BSkyB service could beam into the country. He is reputed to have eliminated BBC from the satellite service, cancelled Chris Patten's last book deal, and sold the South China Morning Post, all to remove material offensive to the Chinese government.

Such accommodation worries Kahn.

At first, it worried me, as well. Do you force private equity to afford such ethics? Can Dow Jones afford this, on behalf of its shareholders, independently? Or is this something capitalism will simply cost out and, if necessary, eliminate as too expensive? Trusting someone else to do the investigative reporting and write the needed criticisms of China.


Then, while discussing this issue with my consultant friend, S, I stumbled upon the real answer. Murdoch's answer, actually.


The reality is that print is a dead, bygone medium. The CBS franchise program, 60 Minutes, breaks tons of stories. How? By using television, not print. Do you think for a moment that the same program, as a print medium, could ever have lasted? Not a chance.


What Murdoch understands is that by marrying the Dow Jones assets and brands, particularly The Wall Street Journal, to his existing multimedia empire, he will enable those brands to actually create more value while doing even more investigative journalism.


The Dow Jones board's recent Chair has been trying to goose the company's performance, to little avail. My guess is that most investors understand that the old media pond within which Dow Jones lives is going to overwhelm the effects of any one firm's individual efforts. It's time for a more modern media vehicle to properly invest in and use the Journal's brand franchise.


No, the narrow version of the journalistic independence argument won't work for a publicly held company. Maybe if Ottoway and the Bancrofts wanted to take the firm private. But that's not what they want. They want top dollar and journalistic immunity from any economic realities.

The likely best outcome for the Journal and the rest of Dow Jones' media assets is to join a modern, global multimedia entity which can leverage their values further than is possible currently, while affording investment in them to retain their current competitive attributes. More than anyone else in media, Murdoch fits this description.


The crocodile tears over a potential loss of editorial independence and a standalone media presence are misplaced. This is about a too-small, old media company which has failed to properly take advantage of its best brands to create shareholder value. It's time for the Bancrofts to put up or sell. Either commit to investing in Dow Jones to enable it to consistently earn superior returns and realize its brand values, or sell it to someone who can.

The New Anti-YouTube Consortium

The recent alliance of MySpace (NewsCorp), NBC, AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo for video clip distribution, obviously presents a competitive presence to Google's YouTube unit.

The Wall Street Journal article on the subject, from 23 March, included this passage,

"This is a game changer for Internet video," said News Corp. President Peter Chernin in a statement announcing the deal. "We'll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch." News Corp. and NBC said the four portals account for 96% of the monthly U.S. unique users on the Web.

In the past, I have found Peter Chernin to be distinctly "old media" in his outlook, and I believe that continues here. Despite Chernin's rather pompous statement, I'm not at all sure the alliance is a "game changer."

If anything, YouTube was and is the "game changer." Does anyone seriously think this recently-announced alliance would have occurred, but for the competitive pressure and observed consumer behaviors brought about by YouTube's popularity? When Google bought it, that only added to the sense of urgency on the part of old media interests who own old content. My prior posts about this, found by clicking on the labels for "old media" and "new media," discuss some of these issues. Older, as-yet unlabeled posts, do so as well. Of the newer ones, this one, here, perhaps best reflects my thinking.

That is, this alliance reflects a broad "hunkering down" of old media behind its own walls, hoping to stave off the inevitable move by consumers to view short, compressed video clips of its own choosing. Paul Kedrovsky has likened this to the Napster-originated trends that have eviscerated the music business sector of late.

So, if anything has been game changing, it would seem to be YouTube's allowing consumers to expect short clips to be viewable for free.

However, take a step back, and ask yourself, 'what do the alliance partners stand to gain by their rejection of YouTube, that they could not have had through an alliance with YouTube?'

It seems to me that it is simply advertising revenues. Pure and simple.

Like Amazon, or eBay, YouTube has staked out, developed, and established a single, highly-visible, valuable piece of online real estate. For all Chernin's puffery, consumers go to YouTube for video. They go to the other sites for a plethora of needs, but it's unclear that video is one of them, or a salient one. Visits to the various sites are not all 'equal,' in this sense.

More to the point, do I, or most consumers, really want to have to guess, or try to keep straight, which sites have which content? When visiting YouTube, I just search, and view. Pretty much any significant, recent news clip will be there. Plus much entertainment, as well. How do I determine, in advance, the URLs and specific content type of each of the 'alliance' sites?

I still contend that the networks', and all video library owners,' best alternative was and is to revenue share with YouTube and distribute on that site. It's unclear that the financial economics of all these other video distribution sites will pan out, whereas, when they are concentrated on a provider's site, the content owners simply collect a payment for their share of ad revenue, plus any sales revenues from consumers who choose to buy the clip they are watching on YouTube.

So, in conclusion, I think that I am underwhelmed by the NewsCorp-Yahoo-NBC-MSN-AOL alliance. It smacks, to me, of old media trying, once more, to lasso a consumer behavior trend that is already out of the gate and roaming far afield from the old consumption models for video content.