BOTW: How news is becoming a collective industry; and SMI's latest bloodbath
Welcome to Best of the Week, kicked off on board flight VA1292 out of steamy Cairns and wrapped up this morning back in chilly Evandale, Tasmania.
I spent the tail end of the week in Far North Queensland for the Local & Independent News Association’s annual summit in Port Douglas.
Today: The publishing industry finds a collective path; and another month of horrible adspend numbers suggests we’re yet to find bottom.
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Tropical topics and media collectives
Although I was at LINA as a speaker, to talk about Unmade’s experiences of running a newsletter-first strategy, it gradually dawned on me that I was among my tribe.
If the Digital Publishers Alliance represents the middle of the publishing market, then LINA is the little guys, mainly running local news mastheads. LINA launched with some funding from the Judith Neilson Institute before that blew up, and has more recently received some government funding.
At the first day of the event, held in the modest surroundings of the Port Douglas Community Hall, I couldn’t shake a somewhat melancholic feeling.
We were hearing from speakers all working so hard to serve their local communities and just about finding ways to make a living from it.
During the breaks, people would talk about how inspiring they were finding it. These are the people actually discovering viable ways of delivering on what should be journalism’s obligation to democracy - sitting in council meetings and providing the local scrutiny that has often been lost as the local newspaper business model crumbled. None of them are getting rich doing it.
The reason for that initial melancholy, I think, was because earlier in the week, I’d written about how much untaxed advertising revenue has been leaving the country via the likes of Facebook and Google.
It was hard to escape the feeling that all of those people were working so much harder than the folk sitting in the offices at Barangaroo and Pyrmont, and for a much greater public good. A whim of diverting 1% more of all that big platform revenue towards those independent publishers would solve the problems of the people sitting in that community hall.
Additionally, they’re all waiting under the shadow of what happens when Facebook, as seems inevitable, soon blocks news on its platform.
Gradually though, as the two-and-a-bit-day gathering progressed, I began to cheer up. These publishers are beginning to find ways of battling through; they’re not waiting for help that may never come.
One new dynamic I’ve noticed both from LINA and the DPA is the emerging power of the publishing collective.
At the association level, LINA and DPA are achieving far more now for their members than Magazine Publishers of Australia and Publishers Australia managed in the last few years of their existences as dying industry associations. MPA and PA often felt like they were going through the motions in the face of disruption they did not have the appetite to confront.
A key difference I’ve noticed with both LINA and DPA is the word “collective”. They’re zooming in on what they can achieve if their members come together.
That includes in prosaic practicalities like addressing the price of email services, technical support, or way of building a joint advertising offering. And also being a voice to government around the News Media Bargaining Code which has often been dominated by the interests of the big end of town. There’s also an opportunity to have a joint scale to get the attention of media agencies.
The future of publishing is looking smaller. But at least it has a future.
Editorial note: A speaker previously quoted in this article participated in the event on the understanding he would speak under the Chatham House Rule. Unmade was not aware of this and had not agreed to it (although we often do when asked). Nonetheless, as a courtesy to this speaker, we have removed his comment from the online version of this post.
Rock bottom delayed
I’m not somebody who could usually be accused of having an optimism bias when it comes to the advertising outlook.
Two months ago, I make the mistake of straying towards positivity, and speculated that we might have reached bottom for the market.
Boy, was I wrong. Guideline SMI, which covers the advertising spend via media agencies, released its latest monthly data on Wednesday. Even taking into account an earlier Easter, bookings were well down on March 2023.
TV was down by 14.6% for the month, radio by 8.1%. Newspapers lost a painful 22%.
Of the main traditional media, only outdoor almost held its ground. In total the overall market was down 6.6%.
I suspect the SMI data fed into Nine’s gnarly share price, which has only been this bad once before, early in the Covid crisis in 2020. The $5bn market capitalisation that CEO Mike Sneesby inherited three years ago has more than halved since then, to $2.3bn.
Another piece of data from SMI added important context. This is an Australian, not global problem. The US and Canadian markets have been back in growth for the last three months.
However, Friday saw the week end in positive territory, with the Unmade Index, our tracker of locally listed marketing and media stocks, up 1.08% to 531.8 points.
Yesterday’s best performer among the larger stocks was real estate platform Domain which rose 4.32%.
Dr Spin: What they steal in the shadows
What Dr Spin most appreciates about Media Week’s coverage of AI issues…
… is the originality of their work…
Who needs large language models to steal from human originality, when trade titles can do a perfectly good job on their own?
Read more about AI in media and marketing on Unmade:
CotW: Coercive control
In each edition of BotW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their Campaign of the Week
LBB’s APAC reporter Casey Martin writes:
Entropico has produced a campaign the NSW Government to raise awareness surrounding coercive control. Four 30 second videos showcase coercive control in different relationships and how the signs of abuse manifest.
The campaign videos are backed by months of strategic planning and research and it shows. The ads are clear in their message, powerful and well put together.
In case you missed it
On Monday we listened in on the first talk break of the Kyle & Jackie O Show’s arrival in to Melbourne. It was quite something:
On Tuesday we discussed how the platforms are sending most of their revenue offshore and untaxed:
On Thursday we talked to the latest startup in the increasingly competitive market mix modelling sector:
On Friday we invited the Unmade community (that’s you) to tell us about how you’re using AI at work.
Time to leave you to your Saturday.
Abe Udy and I will be back with an audio-led edition of Start the Week on Monday.
If you have five minutes today, please do complete our survey on how AI is being used in the industry. Every answer helps us build a better picture.
Have a great weekend
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media