What does the future hold for the media industry? The rapid development of AI technology and emergence of social media apps like TikTok has already had a big impact on the day-to-day work of journalists. As a result, publishers are making efforts to change and adapt.

Press Gazette’s annual Future of Media Technology Conference delved into these issues and highlighted publishers and organisations that have been thriving. Here are key talking points from the day on collaboration, retention, audience, and subscription models.

The need for publisher collaboration

The media industry is a competitive one, but there are occasions when publishers and journalists need to come together. Carly Steven, global head of SEO at MailOnline, shared a recent example where a Google spam update effectively turned off significant revenue streams for publishers. 

‘The way that publishers came together to put pressure on Google and insist on having conversations with them was great. I’m not saying we got the solution that we wanted but it helped us make decisions about how we reacted to that threat together,’ Carly explained.

Rich Caccappolo, CEO of DMG Media, also mentioned the need for collaboration during his fireside chat at the beginning of the conference. When talking about issues with Google turning off cookies and their privacy sandbox, Rich said ‘One of the big mistakes we made is that we allowed ourselves to be commoditised. We allowed our inventory to be bought at scale and we never put in place an attribution management closing loop. 

‘I think that we should band together as publishers and figure out attribution.’

Knowing your worth

Pricing point is a difficult one to get right. Yet, many publishers and outlets are opting to stick with higher price points. At Politico, subscribers usually pay in yearly or two yearly cycles. These packages have various policy areas, with a relatively high price. Kate Day, deputy editor-in-chief of Politico Europe, explained the benefits of having such a specific audience to write for:

‘It’s an amazing point of focus for a newsroom to make sure that you’re really putting your journalistic effort into delivering the very best journalism you can provide for your users. The biggest value from our journalism is the scoops. If we’re finding out what the Government’s going to do, why and who’s driving the decision making, better than our competitors, then we’re really providing our readers with something that is worth a good price.’

Tom Kerr, editor of The Racing Post, spoke about the ‘aggressive price rises’ that his team had undertaken to show the outlet as a premium product. He believes that ‘if you’re offering the quality of content, if it’s unique, if it’s distinct, if it demonstrably provides value to a discerning audience, then people are willing to pay for it.’

The importance of audience

With such a variety of different platforms to consume content on now, winning and then retaining an audience is more important than ever. Paul Rowland, editorial director at Reach plc, feels there is still a print legacy at many outlets which they need to identify and shift to being audience first:

‘It might be around content strategy or content format and thinking; you’re publishing entirely digitally, but this piece of content is in this format because it used to be a newspaper. That shows the process hasn’t been completed. Audience first is a more appropriate way to think because it means you’re being relevant to audiences where they are.’

The best way to know if content is relevant to its target audience is through engagement. Stewart Robinson, managing director of Full Fat Things, spoke about a publisher he is working with that has moved away from their own subscription platform to using Patreon. This has helped with increasing community numbers and more interaction, as well. Stewart said, ‘I think it’s because a lot of consumers are just looking at platforms like Patreon, where they expect that direct interrogation of what’s happening, and they are getting it from this brand.’

Speed and efficiency gains with AI

AI continues to be a popular talking point when it comes to the future of the media. Many outlets are already using it to help with speed and efficiency in the newsroom. David Dinsmore, COO of News UK, explained how outlets at the publisher have utilised AI, with the The Times developing a copilot that would help with headline suggestions, light subbing and summaries. This has since been rolled out to The Sun and other titles.

News UK also developed a speech to text tool which transcribes interviews in seconds. These AI based tools all help make the news process more efficient and around 35% of the company are now using it on a day-to-day basis.

Nina Wright, chair of Harmsworth Media and the Professional Publishers Association, said her team has been experimenting with similar tools in regards to text to voice, SEO, CMS tagging and translation work. She also stressed that ‘AI can’t replace those highly skilled journalists. It can’t ask those difficult questions and speak to sources. Its most fruitful use right now is in distribution.’

There are some companies looking to push things further with AI. Graham Page, sector lead for media, tech, telco & sports at Q5 Partners, said that ‘the more adventurous are starting to think about where they can take really structured data and turn it into a news article. The obvious place to start is weather and sports might be the next place to go, especially a data heavy sport like cricket.’ However, Graham does believe that there is scope for even more innovation with AI and journalism:

‘I think we’ve been making what we do today efficient, rather than saying, what would it look like if we started from scratch?’

Journalist wellbeing

Mental health and wellbeing has gradually been getting more attention from employers over the last few years. However, Lindsay Nicholson MBE, former editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping, believes that there is still room for improvement in the media industry:

‘I don’t think many employers take the view that they need to look after their staff and protect them in the long run. It doesn’t help us in producing content for people out there in the real world, if we’re just this bunch of frenetic people constantly working 12-16 hour days. I would think the more enlightened employers should realise that they can support and help their employees to have a longer, smoother career to work through.’

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