Digital Innovators Summit 2010

Question of earnings model for publishing houses remains unanswered

Many of the 50 or so presentations delivered at this year’s Digital Innovators Summit addressed nothing less than the very survival of publishing houses. The conference, which focused on digital media topics, was hosted by the International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) ) in cooperation with the Verband Deutscher Zeitschriftenverleger (VDZ) and the American consulting firm emediaSF. The Telekom conference center in Berlin provided the ideal ambience for over 400 participants.

Many of the conference contributions revolved around two major trends: firstly, it is evident that even the largest media corporations are simply playing follow the leader and are trailing behind the dominant players on the Internet such as Google, Amazon, Yahoo or Facebook. None of the publishing houses have created any innovations of their own, innovations of the kind that Internet companies are constantly producing. This has resulted in publishing houses losing substance and increasingly supplying their content, including customer data, to the global players, who then feed their own business models with this input. In some instances, publishing houses even include content from outside writing-service providers (“Schreibfabriken“), which they then pass on to the global marketers, which appears even more absurd.

It is remarkable how rarely the onliner editors at the publishing houses are talking about the unstoppable declines in print circulations. Only one presentation (Hearst, USA) demonstrated a case in which online activities succeeded in actually boosting subscriber numbers. As it would seem, there are two lives of a modern publishing house: in the first life, the declining print circulation is countered by enacting drastic saving measures, while in the second life, the page impressions are boosted. It is hard to make out a meaningful course of action here.

Secondly: there were very few contributions (a notable contributor was Bonnier, Sweden) that dealt with the issue of how publishing products can improve their essential core, and this raised the question as to how print products can make the transition to the digital era. The most interesting discussions on these topics took place informally. Here, there was talk of how Ringier in Switzerland has started to bring the print and online editorial departments back together again. And that the magic gains in circulation of a magazine such as “Landlust“ (a country lifestyle magazine) last year was due to a clear and deliberate decision of the editors to desist from using the multitude of opportunities the Internet offers. It was also heard that Bonnier emphasizes how important it is as a publisher to set limits on today’s immeasurable deluge of information. Interesting ideas that provide food for thought.

Dieter Reichert

Dieter Reichert is co-founder of censhare AG. In his function as CCO, he is responsible for the strategic development and worldwide marketing of the censhare publishing system. Over the course of 20 years he has acquired an in-depth knowledge and expertise in the publishing industry, and is a visionary and founder of various media specific IT companies.

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