You got to have soul

Posted by Julian Evans on June 7, 2006 at 2:11 PM

That was the message of Juan Senor of the Innovation International Media Consulting Group, when presenting the 2006 Innovations in Newspapers report. Senor said: "Papers need to keep their SOUL. That means Sensuousness - use paper that feels good, that smells good, that doesn't make your fingers dirty. Omnipresence - your paper should be available everywhere. Unique - it should differentiate itself from the competitors. And Local - it needs to be connected to the local community."

Here are some of the key points Senor made in his presentation -

- Don't be afraid to cannibalize yourself. If a digital company is going to do something your consumers want you to do that would impact on your profits, strike a partnership with that company, even buy them.

- You don't need to be first into digital innovations. Google wasn't the first search engine, Dell wasn't the first to make PCs. They were the first to offer quality versions of the innovations.

- Think margins, not revenues. Yahoo and Gannett both make large revenues, but Yahoo makes much bigger margins, and so bigger net profit.

- Shift from a mechanical to a digital mind-set. News companies are in the business of writing news, not necessarily printing it on paper.

- Aim for niche markets, such as immigrant populations in western cities. Papers targeted at them have been doing very well.

- Hire 'digital natives' to bring in innovations into your company.

- Work with third parties to feed them your data. Don't trust that news aggregators like Yahoo won't move into content. Senor thinks they will, so could be outstanding competitors.

- Don't rest on the laurels of a strong brand.

- Give readers a sense of ownership by allowing them to participate. Senor looked at the case study of enlaCe, which is a citizen journalism supplement of the Basque paper El Correo. It has proved very successful in attracting young readers, who feel ownership in their ability to contribute stories, photos, reviews etc, which eventually get printed in the weekly supplement.

- Convergence. Papers are more and more combining online and print teams. The Guardian, for example, is moving into a new office so as to be able to do that.

- New converged offices should be open-space, informal, with chiefs working at 'super-desks' in the office rather than tucked away.

- Papers should remember what they do well that the internet can't do, such as big photo spreads and cartoons.

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