MARK JURKOWITZA S S O C I AT E D I R E C TO R

P E W R E S E A R C H C E N T E R ’ S P R O J E C T F O R E XC E L L E N C E I N J O U R N A L I S M

Building a New Revenue Model

Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism

Building a New Revenue Model

The Core GoalIndustry wide, newspapers are struggling trying to replace lost print dollars with new digital dollars

Building a New Revenue Model

Success StoriesThe industry numbers are grim, but there are outliers

What can we learn from them?

Building a New Revenue Model

What Successful Papers Are Doing• Focusing on growth areas—even if they are small

• Building non-traditional revenue streams

• Retooling sales staff, from who is hired to how they are paid

• Changing the culture, not just talking about it

Building a New Revenue Model

Successful Papers are Focusing on Growth Areas • These include mobile, video and smart targeting

• They aren’t bringing in much yet, but Borrell says targeted display will dominate local online by 2015

Building a New Revenue Model

“You place your bet on every screen” Bigger papers are doing more in the growth areas

Building a New Revenue Model

44%

75

All Newspapers Largest Newspapers

Who is Selling Video Ads?

Building a New Revenue Model

Who is Selling Smart Targeted Ads?

42%

100

All Newspapers

Building a New Revenue Model

Successful Papers are Generating Non-Traditional Revenue• These revenue streams include everything from “retail malls” to “digital agencies”

• Outliers have a better track record in non-traditional

Building a New Revenue Model

“You can’t be a little bit pregnant in a transformational era”

One executive on the need to invest seriously in non-traditional revenue

Building a New Revenue Model

Successful Papers are Changing their Sales Staff

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16

Print Ads Digital AdsMix of Both Print and Digital Ads

Building a New Revenue Model

Hire More Digital SellersRecruiting is a challenge, but outliers had as many digital sellers as print sellers

Building a New Revenue Model

Retrain the Sales Staff• Digital coaches and managers

• Digital proficiency testing

• Closer tracking of sales performance

Building a New Revenue Model

Make Digital Pay Off for The Sales StaffSignificantly changing compensation to encourage more digital selling

Building a New Revenue Model

“Culture change. It’s huge. But I don’t think it’s happening

as much as people say.” 10 out of 13 news executives identified

internal cultural tensions as the chief obstacle to success at their company

Building a New Revenue Model

“The most difficult thing to do is change a corporate culture”

“No one is willing to take that chance”

“Who are going to be the leaders and who are going to be the followers”

Building a New Revenue Model

Successful Papers are Transforming, not Talking• Don’t fear staff turnover

• Paid online content can facilitate change

• Streamline and speed up decision making

• Act aggressively, communicate clearly