Keynote presentation to MINDS conference (business intelligence for news agencies), Paris, October 2015

1. Agencies, networks and
intermediaries:
who does what in news?
George Brock
Professor of Journalism, City University London
MINDS conference
Paris, October 8th 2015

2. Disruption in news
• Exciting and horrible – both at the same time
• Downside:
• Assets become liabilities
• Risk of “disintermediation”
• Volatility is not short-term: extended, repeated
cycles of change
• Not just new competitors – not even clear where
competition may come from
• Risk of attention switch every few seconds
• Many business models in ruins

3. But there is an upside
• Engine of opportunity
• Rewards risk and experiment
• Consumers compare and choose
• The past has usable lessons
• Thinking from first principles
• Those advantages outweigh the disadvantages

4. How can that be?
• Horrible headlines:
• UK’s 9 national papers: circulation 35% down in 5
years to mid-2015
• Trio of terror: adblocking, ad fraud, viewability
• Lost advertising income not replaced by new
• Millennials (under 34) have abandoned print
• Many don’t pay for news (and they snack)
• There is no longer an unchallenged oligarchy of
newsrooms (print and terrestrial TV) with
resources

5. What was the “golden age”?
• Late 20th century was historically exceptional
• We are back with the norm: improvisation,
change, experiment
• Technology + business models meant
specialisation:
• In distribution/transport/broadcast, news
agencies/wholesaling, printing, content inputs
(aka newsrooms)

6. “Specialisation” = who does what
• The most efficient way to allocate capital,
talent and resources to meet a demand
• The demand for…news and opinion
• Two things to bear in mind:
– That demand is still there: the need for, and
consumption of, news and opinion has not fallen
(journalism audience largest since 15th century)
– Continuing innovation means that resource
allocation and specialisation haven’t yet been
settled

7. If demand is stable, why disruption?
• Digital rewrites the ways to meet the demand
• Digital is the engine of opportunity: people
can, and will, try new stuff
• Value/price of information has fallen as supply
has increased
• Basic shift away from cross-subsidy by ads and
to paying direct for content
• New business models don’t automatically
come along when previous ones collapse

9. How to succeed when disrupted
• Preoccupations with the routing and distribution
of content are obstructing focus on valuing
what’s distributed
• When disruption “unbundles” a package (agency
news feed/stream, newspaper, news bulletin)…
individual elements must be valued again
• Accept this risk and the risks of quality-controlled
experiment
• Three examples why the value and significance of
reliable news and opinion matters and is valued

10. Learning through experiment
• Reuters columnists vs Reuters investigative (eg
wealth of Ayatollahs)
• Buzzfeed’s slogan: “error is useful” (but in
investigative?)
• Economist: blogs vs Espresso
• One that isn’t going well: BBC + Facebook and
Snapchat….

14. It’s not all clickbait
• Gate-keeping decisions in search and social
are being inspected
• More people (young people) are prepared to
pay (Blendle, Piano)
• "A global village will have its idiots and they
will have global range.” (astronomer Martin
Rees)
• “Re-intermediation” (aka editing skill) is
needed to manage abundance

15. You have value
• Words still encode the most complex and demanding
meanings
• Agility, flexibility and ability to seize opportunities
when they occur is crucial
• You won’t even spot the opportunities of you don’t
have good, real-time intelligence on info consumption
and technology
• Brock’s four core tasks for journalists: verification,
sense-making, eye-witness and investigation
• Fact-checking the torrent of stuff flowing through all
those devices

16. Why are we still calling them “phones”?

17. The mould is not set
• Business models hard to see: strong nerves required
• Publishers don’t control distribution – but not yet clear
who does
• Spread rigour: eg engagement measurement?
• Data? Podcasts? Email newsletters?
• Imaginative, high-quality experiment (failure allowed
for) based on core strengths
• Think timeless qualities, not old technology: mix legacy
and opportunity
• Premium or mass – or both?

18. From the man at Facebook…
• “There’s an important place for news
organizations that can deliver smaller bits
of news faster and more frequently in
pieces,” he wrote. “This won’t replace
the longer and more researched work,
and I’m not sure anyone has fully nailed
this yet.” Mark Zuckerberg, 2015

20. Instant Articles, NowThis, Apple News,
Snapchat, YouTube NewsWire…
• New distributors have reach – but vast reach
and cutting edge algorithms aren’t everything
• Faites vos jeux
• Audience vs independence?
• The Atlantic: we’ll figure it out
• 2015: mobile changed the question
• In or out?

21. They’re in…
• “…One of those trends might be that people
consume media within the places where
they’re also networking with their friends. We
just want to figure that out … and establish an
audience in those places and show that we’re
the best at making things that people love to
share.” BuzzFeed Distributed head Summer Anne
Burton

22. So are they…

23. • “It is the imagination, ultimately, and
not mathematical calculation that
creates media; it is the fresh
perception of how to fit a potential
machine into an actual way of life
that really constitutes the act of
‘invention’.” Anthony Smith,
Goodbye Gutenberg, 1980

24. Last suggestion:
• Listen to...
• 1) Users
• 2) Staff
• 3) Journalists
• 4) Shareholders
• ...in that order, and that order only.

25. Native advertising
• www.georgebrock.net
• @georgeprof
• george.brock.1@city.ac.uk
• http://www.koganpageusa.com/product/Out-
of-Print,2286.aspx