| Panel explores marketing journalism in new media age BY MIKE UNGER In a media sea plagued by news of plunging newspaper circulations, falling ratings, and newsroom downsizings all happening amid increasingly intense pressure to increase profit margins, a few success stories have managed to surface. During a forum Nov. 7 cosponsored by the Kogod School of Business, School of Communication, and Washington Semester, executives for four of those thriving media companies shared their models for fiscal and journalistic success. Among those providing answers was Vivian Schiller, executive vice president and general manager of Discovery Times Channel. “I have a mandate to do smart programming for smart people. That is our business model for this channel,” Schiller said. Discovery Times has shown impressive growth in its two and a half years on the air. Rather than pour millions of dollars into marketing itself directly to viewers, the channel decided to reach cable operators, advertisers, and the trade press, saving money while building a solid reputation among industry insiders. “There’s so many outlets and so much competition for eyeballs, we talked a lot about how media entities are on a race to the bottom,” Schiller said. “So we decided to take the high road. This is a case of quality journalism as a business model.” While the Washington Post’s circulation continues to decline, its online cousin, WashingtonPost.com, has grown exponentially since its inception in 1995. The site now attracts 8 million people per month, dwarfing the actual newspaper’s readership figures. It has expanded the Post brand from a local to a national one, said Tim Ruder, WashingtonPost.com’s vice president of marketing. “We spend a lot of time and effort toward finding out who our consumers are. About 80 percent of our audience is not from Washington,”Ruder said. The emergence of blogging has perhaps been the most profound change in the shape of the media this century, essentially forcing Post.com and other “traditional” media companies to deal with this phenomenon. Paul Glastris recognized that when he became editor in chief of the magazine Washington Monthly. A revered institution among Washington’s political elite, the magazine had for years influenced opinion here—but never turned a profit. In 2001 it hired Kevin Drum to be its chief blogger. “It has been profoundly successful,” Glastris said. “We get about 80,000 hits a day on the Web site, which puts us in the top 10 of political blogs. That has allowed us to offer our magazine to a whole new demographic of people.” Satellite radio is among the newest of new media. After its launch in 2001, XM Satellite Radio reached 1 million units faster than any other electronic product in history, according to the company’s managing news editor, Scott Walterman. XM counts 13 news channels among its 151-channel lineup. “We’ve found that journalism is our biggest draw for subscribers,” he said. “In essence it’s all old mediums in a new pipeline. All the technology is cool, but at the end of the day it’s all about product.” |
