By John A. Byrne

I learned about the death of the American newspaper early in my life. I was all of 16, a gawky office boy at The Morning Call in Paterson, New Jersey, when I was caught inside the obituary of an institution: The daily that I had carried on my back as a newspaper boy, the paper where my ambition to be a journalist was born, was being closed. I remember that day in December 1969 as if it were yesterday. Teary-eyed, I walked through the sea of wooden desks and metal filing cabinets and into the chilly night. It was an awakening to see the reporters openly crying and consoling each other.

Newspapers die hard—and the obituaries over the next few years are likely to make us think of massive casualties in a war. Strip out the classified business, and you’ll find that magazines face many of the same problems as newspapers: ever rising paper (and for us even worse postage) costs, the swift migration of advertising from print to Web, the inability of online revenues to offset the decline of print ads, and often declining readership. Yet as bad as the newspaper business has fared to date, some observers say magazines are even further behind the transition.

A recent study by the Bivings Group shockingly discovered that a survey of 50 top magazines were behind newspapers in deploying Web 2.0 technology.¹ Whether it’s blogs, video, RSS feeds, or reader comments on stories, magazines trail newspapers in their adoption. “Newspapers fared better than magazines in nearly every category in 2007,” according to the study by Bivings, a consulting firm based in Washington, D.C.. “In general, we have found that magazines are slower at adopting Web 2.0 trends than newspapers.”

As the editor in chief of BusinessWeek’s online operations and the now much older kid who walked through a newspaper closing, I’m both perplexed and shocked by the magazine industry’s laggard status. We have every advantage in largely serving existing communities of readers in specific niches, from cooking and wine to sports and entertainment. Of course, I’m fortunate to work at a place that gets it—with 28 staff-written blogs, nearly 5,000 videos, plenty of RSS feeds, and a lively comment section where tens of thousands of readers weigh in with their views every month. It’s why our site now boasts double the readership of our weekly magazine: more than 10 million unique visitors monthly vs. a 4.7 million audience in print.

When we talk about other new ways to compete, most magazines don’t seem to know where to start. Aggregation? Forget it. Few editors want to link to other stories that send people away from their own sites. Curation? Writers don’t “curate” journalism or discussions. They report and file stories and move on. Verticals? Editors want content that appeals to the broadest swath of people and gets massive traffic. User generated content? Most editors still turn up their collective noses at stuff created by their audience. Computer algorithms that replace news judgment for the prominence you give a story? You’ve got to be kidding. And Twitter? What’s that?

As BusinessWeek has morphed from a brand that produces a weekly magazine to one that is pretty much a 24/7 multiplatform organization, the truths of our business have changed as well. Here’s what they are:

•   Context is as important today as content. It may, in fact, be the new king on the throne. That’s because the world is evolving into niche communities, organized around individual interests and passions. Keeping your audience deeply engaged in the journalism you do is necessary to induce loyalty to your brand.

•   We live in a world in which there are far too many stories chasing far too few eyeballs. What readers need in this environment is often help in organizing, sorting and sifting through all the articles.

•   Consumers prefer multiple sources of news and consult 16 to 18 media brands a week. That’s according to a McKinsey & Company study.

•   Creating more journalism isn’t necessarily the way you win online. It’s costly, and the gains in audience from putting up more stories are by and large incremental.

•   The smart and elegant organization of content through links and editorial curation has as much, if not more, value than simply publishing more of your own articles on the Web.

Responding to What We Know

How to best take advantage of these trends? In early September, we launched one of the most ambitious efforts ever to both stretch the BusinessWeek brand and to reinvent ourselves. We call it the Business Exchange. It allows our readers to create and organize around their own topics of interest, from active investors to youth advertising. The moment a topic is created by any user at bx.businessweek.com, a Web page pops up with links to stories and blog posts on that subject from all over the Web. No preference is given to BusinessWeek editorials. A story by one of our journalists is treated no differently than one from Forbes, Fortune, or The Economist or, for that matter, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, or The Washington Post. A blog post by a BusinessWeek blogger, moreover, gets the same treatment as one from Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider or John Battelle at Federated Media.

The “front page” or “cover” of each of these topic sites is not determined by an editor but by the community of readers. Whenever a user adds, reads, saves, shares or comments on a story or blog post, that activity is noted by a software algorithm that then places the content on what is essentially the front page. That way, only stories and blogs deemed the most active or useful are shown to the reader, who benefits from the wisdom of the crowd.

All the members of each topic community are recognized—by photo, profile and their contributions to the network. Indeed, if you admire a member of your community, you can peer over his shoulder to see what stories he is reading, saving, adding or commenting on—if he chooses to keep that activity public.

Our reporters and editors do not report, write and edit for the Exchange. But they do help to curate the content, adding relevant stories, blog posts, white papers, academic reports, and other reference materials to each topic. If you cover the stock market and an important story breaks on the New York Stock Exchange, you’re expected to immediately search the Web for the best coverage and add it to our topic on Wall Street. A journalist might pose a question or make a comment to help fuel a conversation on the latest news and analysis rather than pick up the phone and start calling his or her sources.

Of course, this is no replacement for original explanatory journalism that remains at the core of what we do at BusinessWeek. It follows the dictum by Jeff Jarvis, the CUNY journalism professor and blogger, who advises media to “Do what you do best. Link to the rest.” In a world where time-constrained professionals are trying to keep up with an overabundance of information in their specific fields, the Exchange serves a highly valuable purpose. No less important, it connects like-minded people from every corner of the world in an online community that enriches the journalism at the center.

In this way, content becomes a roaring campfire that gathers around it a thoughtful and engaged group of people. It’s still at the center of the party, sparking compelling insights, opinions and storytelling that make journalism more memorable and meaningful than ever. But the conversation has become as important as the journalism. In other words, the context of journalism has become as important as the content. That’s because the Web is not merely a new distribution platform for information. It entirely changed the game. In this new game, journalism ceases to be a product, like a table that is handed down to an audience. Instead, journalism becomes a process that fully engages its readers—in the beginning, by asking them for story ideas; in the middle, by asking for the community’s help in reporting a story and, in the end, when the published story sparks the larger conversation among readers and journalists who greatly expand on the story.

It’s ceding a level of control and much more influence to your audience and benefiting from giving up total control. The outcome, I believe, is deeper and more meaningful engagement with your readers who also become sources who can enrich and improve journalism. This engagement, in turn, leads to new ideas, such as the Business Exchange, where a news organization lets the community tell us what topics it wants us to gather content and expertise around.

Little more than six weeks after our pubic launch, the Exchange already had a broad and fascinating array of more than 600 topics and thousands of registered users. The imagination shown by our users in creating unusual topics exceeds our wildest expectations. There’s “Conscious Capitalism,” “Bailout,” “Recession Job Search,” “Genetic Testing,” and “Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance.”

In the 18 months during which we were developing and building the Exchange, we called it “the microvertical.” And that’s exactly what it has turned out to be—a series of microcommunities around very vertical topics. Consider the number and variety of “green” topics: “Green Building,” “Green Cars,” “Green Computing,” “Green Investing,” “Green Technology,” and “Green Travel.” And then there’s “Renewable Energy,” “Solar Energy,” “Wind Energy,” “Hybrid Cars,” and “Biofuels.”

Running Into the Future

Recently I experienced a flashback to that day when I walked out of the Morning Call newsroom nearly 40 years ago. I was in a classroom with some of the smartest people in digital media at the New Business Models for News Summit at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism. It was yet another conference dealing with the analog-to-digital transition of journalism, and our group was devoted to the scary subject of “newsroom efficiencies.” Our case study? The Philadelphia Enquirer (a make-believe newspaper) had just folded, and we were charged with coming up with a replacement product. The group solution: Do away with print altogether and create an online site with 35 editorial employees to replace a daily newspaper with an edit staff of 200. All of the 20 “content creators” on our staff would have to take photographs, shoot, edit and produce video, do audio overdubs and on-camera video stand-ups, as well as report and write. Based on traffic and revenue projections, the group figured it could afford an editorial budget of $2.1 million. That translated into an average salary of just $60,000 a year for a “content creator,” and at least one person in the room argued that salary was too much.

This new Enquirer replacement, incidentally, would heavily rely on citizen journalism and pay-per-click freelancers. There would be no global or national news, sports or entertainment, but rather a linking strategy to third-party content to cover those important subjects. The “content creators” would focus largely on local politics, education, sports and human-interest stories.

The Philadelphia solution is an outcome I never want to see—not anywhere. A strong and vibrant fourth estate is not only essential to a fully functioning democracy but to the efficiency of a society. But the only way we can change that outcome is to embrace and champion change and innovation in our profession. We need to recognize that this is one of the most creative of times in journalism and, along with that wave of change, one of the most terrifying transitions for many media brands. This period has the opportunity to be our Renaissance. We need to reinvent and transform journalism—and the business model that supports it—to secure a successful future.

For a traditional media company, the Exchange is a revolutionary departure, one of many we and other magazines need to make to succeed in a new and different world. I know one thing: I never again want to be a part of another media obituary.

Comments

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Posted by Vinay Sarawagi 12/22/2008, 11:00 PM Amazing read. I agree with John: “Aggregation? Forget it. Few editors want to link to other stories that send people away from their own sites. Curation? Writers don't "curate" journalism or discussions. They report and file stories and move on. Verticals? Editors want content that appeals to the broadest swath of people and gets massive traffic. User generated content? Most editors still turn up their collective noses at stuff created by their audience. Computer algorithms that replace news judgment for the prominence you give a story? You've got to be kidding. And Twitter? What's that?” The question is if the old newspaper and magazine houses that cherish history of exemplary journalism will accept this new role or we will see this change at their cost? I wish they listen to the buzzing alarms!

Posted by ahoving 12/23/2008, 08:47 AM remember carbon paper?

Posted by Pete Koolman 12/23/2008, 08:59 AM I am very interested to see where the princasting project is headed. www.printcasting.com. ...Crowd sourced, local printed news. Very interesting. The Bakersfield Californian was awarded a grant from the Knight Foundation to develop 'printcasting'. Could this be the future of local and print news?

Founder Dog Art Today Posted by Moira McLaughlin 12/23/2008, 11:31 AM Your article was very enlightening coming from the opposite angle too. I am a blogger (Dog Art Today, http://dreamdogsart.typepad.com/art/), ...and many days I feel like one of those mythical content creators at the Philadelphia Enquirer, tasked with writing, editing, advertising, marketing, formatting, photograping, and even creating video (I've made 3 films for my blog). But, thinking about my blog as… "The smart and elegant organization of content through links and editorial curation has as much, if not more, value than simply publishing more of your own articles on the Web." …well, that changes everything. Your quote is going above my computer. Thank you.

PR Manager Posted by Jennifer Windrum 12/23/2008, 12:19 PM Now THAT was a fantastic article. So refreshing to see a media outlet that "gets it." It really goes without saying that many news outlets still have their heads in the sand. Some will never get it. They won't be around. There just aren't very many smart, progressive and risk-taking editors like you out there. Hats off to you and your staff!!!! I'm signing up for Business Exchange now!!!!

Consumer Posted by UserGen 12/23/2008, 01:06 PM "User generated content? Most editors still turn up their collective noses at stuff created by their audience." I think its OK to turn noses up to user generated content, but editorial departments need to stop turning their noses up to "user suggested" content. When readers call and say we'd like to see a story written about this or that, rather than saying we'll think about it, try actually printing it - think then people might buy more if they are actually given what they want? I saw a paper's sports section die because its editors were so 'sure' about what they thought constituted 'news,' that all of its readers migrated to user generated Web sites as they were better at taking suggestions for stories. I know a CEO who once bought every copy of the NYT he could find - newsstands, paper machines, grocery stores etc.. - after his company was featured in it. He then sent those copies to all of his main customers. He BOUGHT what appealed to him. The Internet isn't killing print, it's just giving people what they want. Print is killing print by not listening to its audience. There is no magic equation for saving your print editions, sell people what they want, not what you think they should have.

Darwin on Change Posted by Maurice Cardinal 12/23/2008, 01:15 PM It's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one with the greatest capacity for change - Charles Darwin This quote applies to publishing as well as General Motors. Major change often occurs through a series of small paradigm shifts that increase exponentially in frequency during the latter phase of the evolution. Consumers now have the power to drive change, and in the publishing industry, POLITICS and other events that have DIRECT IMPACT on the public will be the fulcrum on which the pendulum swings. In 2008 the Beijing Olympics represented a line where consumers changed direction instantly setting up momentum for Vancouver 2010 and London 2012 to knock mainstream news media right out of the equation and force a major paradigm shift in general across the publishing industry. When this house of cards falls the rest of the deck will quickly follow. In August 2008, it became public knowledge the IOC colluded with the Chinese communist regime to manipulate press freedom and obscure human rights issues, and in an instant billions around the world knew for sure the relationship between publishers and advertisers was biased beyond acceptable limits. Up until that point most people only suspected it. Since winning the Vancouver 2010 Bid in 2003, magazines, newspapers, and television companies that do not directly benefit financially through IOC contracts have published our perspective, however, the company holding the primary Olympic agreement as the official publishing supplier still "Bans & Pans" us. It is as if we do not exist. It's important to note magazines were the first publisher to relate our side of the story, then television, and finally newspapers outside of IOC influence. If Vancouver 2010 doesn't drive the last nail in the IOC/Media coffin, London 2012 will, assuming of course newspapers will even still be an integral part of news communication as we know it. You can read more about news media and the Olympics at my blog . . . http://www.olyblog.com/f/08/SocialMediaF12012008.s ... In 2006 I also published a book about the incestuous relationship between news media and the IOC. Considering the recent growth of social media, it makes even more sense today. http://www.leverageolympicmomentum.com/LOM/Citizen ... btw, in less than two months Twitter has opened a new world to me, and condensed five years of research into 140 characters !!

Photographer Posted by Brad Trent 12/24/2008, 10:09 AM Well, as a current “content creator" at your magazine, I have to wonder how the new Web 2.0 is gonna affect guys like me. Am I bound to lose work to staffers who are expected to do everything including taking inventory, answering the phones and cleaning the community toilet?!! I mean, I can take a pretty good picture, but my writing is for **** and video baffles me.....and honestly, I don't wanna be a note-scribbling, video-producing photographer who also makes lunch for the staff every other Thursday...I just wanna take pictures! I guess there's no arguing with success and not to take anything away from BW's 10 million unique visitors, but with very few exceptions, I have yet to be wowed with print magazines when they attempt an online product. The design elegance found in a hard-copy magazine gets tossed when the web designers take over and what is left is invariably a mish-mosh of facts and figures and small photographs that does little to draw the viewer in. What's missing is the flow of a 'real' magazine. And the tricks online has to resort to in order to get advertisers interested (like hanging up a page with an ad for 15 seconds before taking you to content) makes me shut down immediately! I'm hardly suggesting online has to mimic a 'real' magazine, God knows Zinio ain't working, but there has to be a more visual way of providing content. The only memorable examples of successful online 'magazine' design I've seen have been, of course, fashion related! Beautiful graphics, exciting use of photography and illustration and inventive type layouts...just the sort of thing to make me want to read a magazine and exactly what is missing from most attempts at transitioning paper magazines to online products. But then, you can only read so many fashion mags before you start to actually care what Mary Kate and Ashley wore at Butter last night...... Happy Holidaze! BT in NYC

Journalism Teacher Posted by What4 12/24/2008, 11:55 AM We children of the '60s and '70s have to be careful not to fall again into easy optimism about the wisdom of crowds and mass movements. Surely readers pay reporters and editors to read more widely than the readers have time for, to think more deeply, to be more fully informed, to have more fingers on more pulses -- and to advise readers what we need to be paying attention to. There is no way to add up "what readers are paying attention to" and get "what readers need to be paying attention to." Only editors can calculate that sum: It's editors' business to look out for readers, not to reflect them or give them a place to chat. One end result of a similar approach is the celebrity tabloid. Will Business Week become the business version of tabloid journalism -- people paying attention to things because other people are paying attention to them, ideas that are famous for being famous? I am not convinced by Byrne's approach, and I eagerly hope to be proved wrong. Meanwhile, for anyone listening, I urge your publication to send more reporters on more stories that the combined editorial wisdom holds to be crucial for readers to know about. Your job is to help readers think better about this complicated world, not to reflect what they already know how to think. They can do that over lunch any day. If this BW model succeeds for the next three years, I'll send John Byrne the 2 cents I'm betting that it won't.

DPE Posted by Rick 12/24/2008, 02:28 PM Evolving. Ur doing it rite.

President, The Gazette Company Posted by Chuck Peters 12/27/2008, 01:44 PM Thank you John, for the articulation of your thoughts driving the creation of Business Exchange. I was referred to Business Exchange because one of our company leaders thought Business Exchange was operating with the same mindset with which we are trying to approach our work at The Gazette Company, as we try to transform a traditional newspaper, television and online company into a Complete Community Connection. I have been describing our progress at http://cpetersia.wordpress.com ... I have been participating with Business Exchange regularly, and like the way it points me to relevant articles on topics of interest to me. However, as we create C3 (Complete Community Connecton), we are trying to go a step further, so that we are not limited by packaged articles, but can get to relevant facts and concepts, in context. When I read Brad Trent's comment, I was struck by how he seemed to be stuck in a "product" mentality, which limits the experience for the users. I would also encourage him to try participating in Business Exchange. It might change how he approaches his current role. I look forward to observing, and maybe even helping, Business Exchange evolve.

Confusing Journalism with Publishing Posted by Online Editor 12/29/2008, 01:01 PM There are some good points in this article, but it contains an enormous misconception. Journalism isn't changing, publishing is changing. What BusinessWeek has so proudly done is turn itself into an easily reproduced commodity by creating an aggregation site--something I and anyone else can do with any number of RSS readers, or Google or Yahoo. By buying into the short-sighted notion that the really important thing to do is to aggregate content rather than produce it is, BusinessWeek has bought into the ultimate publisher's dream: eliminate the journalists. The idea of having the readers create their own content takes that fantasy to wild new levels. Imagine the savings! To be sure, there is a market for public discussion, and advertising money will flow there too. But that's competition for publishers of journalism, not "new journalism." Anyone who thinks that "crowdsourcing" is new has never been sent out as a cub reporter and told not to return without a story. The idea that getting story topics from the public is somehow "new" is a sad comment on the journalism of the last 20 years. Maybe reporters should be required to spend time after work in their local bar. The silver lining for journalists (the really, really good ones) is that after many painful years of being badly squeezed, this popular aggregation model will have wiped out most of the content providers (like the newspapers that feed AP, for example), and there will once again be new competition for good journalism. (And good copyediting, where no one who writes about their "pubic launches" can make editor-in-chief.) And while the payment and publishing models may be very different by then, good journalism will be handsomely rewarded. Who knows, maybe some modern version of the long forgotten James H. McGraw will decide to bring the best of those journalists together and provide them with the combined resources they need to produce some really astonishing and valuable work that attracts a curious and intelligent audience of readers. Advertisers just might pay handsomely to be associated with that sort of content, and the publisher who owns the brand would profit accordingly.

Online Editor ICIS Posted by Simon Robinson 01/02/2009, 10:48 AM @usergen Always give the public what it wants and you'll not go far wrong. Just be careful that if you're playing to the the back row of the circle you don't upset the people in the stalls. @Journalism Teacher You can easily find what people are interested in on the web.The tricky thing in future will be to behave as a newspaper editor and have the courage to try giving them content that the might like but which the software doesn't tell you. Just as it takes courage to hunt on the fringes or away from the pack. @Online editor Advertisers will pay to be associated with information that people want and need. They may not pay as much on line as on paper, but then production costs are lower. There is a need for journalism just as there is a need for farming. It may be though that the web will be like the tractor and seed drill which greatly increase value and gave people the opportunity to get jobs in secondary and tertiary industries. That's where the money is.

Editor and publisher, Combined Cycle Journal Posted by Bob Schwieger 01/02/2009, 11:00 AM Business Week has been twisted up in its shorts for years, controlled by company executives who know virtually nothing about media. The real problems began, I believe, when BW morphed into a magazine of meaningless executive profiles--e.g., "How John Smith turned around Acme Towel." All nonsense. But it did get lots of advertising from those who were profiled wanting to parlay their exposure into higher stock prices and perhaps sale of their respective companies to get the windfall gain. The M-H executive corps thought they were geniuses. Real business journalism would have been on top of the disaster that struck in 2008 years earlier. But research was put on hold and other cost-cutting measures were adopted. "Editorial is an expense and the budget should be XX% of revenues and that's it." If you focus on what's important to run a successful media organization--researchers/writers/editors and a FEW motivated salespersons (not a bunch of whiners who always need something else (higher circulation, etc) to sell a page of space--you eliminate half the staff and have plenty of money to dig into and write about what's important. And that gets readership. Then you move the entire operation from the monument on Sixth Avenue capable of choking off any original thinking to more modest quarters befitting an editorial operation. Next, look at all the people who are paid from the BW trough who are not in editorial or sales and start by eliminating the non-essential. That "staff" component could be cut in half overnight and probably in half again a year later. To sum up, editorial products die when owners (management) lose their way. Submit a comment - Jump to top of list