Cretaceous-Tertiary time for papers?

Two straws in the gale blowing round media and new media, both pointing in the same direction, and one’s blown away:

The Reader’s Digest has filed for bankruptcy in the US. This may be about the reinvention of the dentist’s waiting room as much as anything else, but RD lives on the sheves of second hand book dealers around the world in the form of conedensed books. I haven’t read one in years, and associated the brand primarily with prize draws to sell subscriptions back in the eighties. However it was a great brand in its day, and had a faithful and sizeable following — at 8·2 million considerably larger than anything on the UK print media scene. In June it had prudently revised its guaranteed circ figure to 5·5 million, with worse to come.

RD was the Google newsfeed of 1922, and it certainly soared in its prime. Over 75’s will take a cup of kindness yet for the sake of “humor in uniform” or “laughter is the best medicine?” RD’s radical restructing / demise shows the intensity of the winds of change sweeping through print media. It may be that the magazine died by becoming too comfortably embedded in its clientele. Reinvention is a necessity, not an option.

Anecdotally, five years ago I took stock of a carriage of morning commuters travelling into Marylebone in May and noticed about 40/60 reading paying Fleet Street Titles, mostly Telegraphs, Mails and Times, with half a dozen Guardians. A carriage of sixty people on the same service earlier this year had only five newspaper readers out of 65, two Mails, a Times and two Metros (a new model freesheet with which some say the streets of London are paved). Most were reading books, playing with phones or ipods and doing puzzles. The fact that more than twice as many people in the carriage found it more engaging to stare out the window than to read a Fleet Street paying title indicates the depth of the problem.

This brings me to Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that all his titles will start charging for online content by next year. I can understand why and sympathize. All hard indications are that his present business model is melting under him faster than the polar icecap. He’s already tried diversifying into the yacht hire business, so, Children, this is serious.

The rub has to be how to charge — the devil is most certainly in the detail. It is not easy to fix your roof in the hurricane season, and the music and video industries’ experience is not entirely encouraging. FT is probably the most interesting payment model in the UK, and this may be a way to go. Whether people would shell out for gossip, and if so how much is another question. Will his new subscription income match the amount he will have to spend on lawyers?

Perhaps an inexorable content evolution is happening. The hot journalistic added value is progressively not to be found in the story, which is likely to surface through hot media way before anywhere else, but rather the op-ed aspect of it.

The money shot will be in the quality of writing and comment in depth, not the scoop — the breadth and connection, not the novelty.

People will always pay for particular premium content, but not mass produced Flat Earth news. I suspect that the only UK site I would subscribe to, if I had to, is BBC news. Hang on, I do subscribe. It’s called the Licence Fee and I’m glad to pay it. After a couple of decades economising on journalists, recovering high added value will be difficult on various levels for Fleet Street.

Corporately it will need companies to back out of the cul-de-sac labelled production economies and promotions and invest heavily and counterculturally in good present and future journalists — not something they have shown any particular desire or proclivity for doing. I’m not sure any of the Fleet Street stable have the journalistic resilience to produce anything worth paying for, but I’d love to be wrong.
We’ll see.

PS Thanks to Jeff Jarvis on 24 August, for three more nails in the US Newspaper Coffin — Coupons and Circular (Valassis), Movie listings, and death notices...

h/t the Disney Dinosaur — who found out the hard way all about dwindlng resources and the need to change...

Joe Sixpack? Schmixpack! Who he?

As US election fever mounts, enter Joe Wurzelbacher, or is that burger? Big Joe is an ornery plumber from OH, who’s going to end up paying Big Tax if Obama gets in and hits on people earning over $250K. Ivana Trump hated turning out her pockets (No she didn’t. See correction below. It was Leona Helmsley. Ed) She used to say “Taxes are for little people.” Joe ain’t little. He’s a rather well paid plumber. Disturbingly plutocratic, actually, especially without being registered. Like most ornery Joe Sixpacks just now, “nobody knows the trouble he’s seein’ Nobody knows but Croesus.” Really? Confused? You will be.

Remember Monty Python? —

“my Parrot’s called Holy Roman Empire.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he isn’t Holy, he isn’t Roman and he isn’t an empire.”

Well apparently, in the cold light of day, Joe ain’t Joe, he ain’t no plumber, and on his income he’d actually profit from Obama's tax plans, if he paid his taxes; but apparenty he’s, er, is a tad behind with the IRS... D’oh!

Users this side of the pond may recall various British politicos’ efforts to pimp their campaign rides with heartrending tales of ornery woe. Remember Neil Kinnock and the “War of Jennifer’s ear?” Remember IDS’ 94 year old lady who never had her nightie changed? Churchgoers, remember former Durham Bishop David Jenkins’ “boy with no shoes?”

Left or Right, UK or US, this whole tactic starts out big, but always seems to phut out into pantomime. Will the real, but strangely elusive, Joe Sixpack ever stand up? Strikes me, however, that if he does, he probably won’t have earned $250,000 of personal income last year.
So it’s back, folks, to brass tacks — time for a real American Joe Sixpack hero:

Clergy HR: Eat your shorts, B P Richfield

We use Claire Pedrick of 3-D Coaching, regularly and increasingly, to help and counsel clergy with a variety of professional developmental needs. I met Claire yesterday, among other things, to scope some generic trends affecting clergy welfare, including the impact of new diversity and equality legislation next year.

As laid out by Harriet Harman there are four threads to a bill for the next session of parliament. The current complex raft of equality and diversity legislation (107 statutes, I’m told) is insanely spread out, and driven entirely by giving individuals rights which they are not always willing or able to enforce. The government’s thinking is that this is a systemic problem, and calls for a systemic solution. They intend to pull things together and take positive action in four areas, rather than simply relying on employment tribunals:

1. Greater Transparency
2. Enforcement
3. Public procurement
4. Preventative systemic action — training etc.

This sounds really good, though the devil is always in the detail. There is, of course, work to do about genuine occupational requirements — ensuring the Pope’s a Catholic, and you don’t get The Deerhunter as director of Greenpeace. I don’t imagine it’s beyond human wit to work that stuff out. For common or garden purposes, I see this as a really positive way forward for everyone. As work continues on our own Committee for Racial Justice (which I chair) on developing our own rigorous diversity agenda, to turn it from a motherhood-and-apple-pie aspiration into a way of life based on Biblical and Moral values, I can see benefits in all four of these areas.

Just spare a thought for poor old B. P Richfield. Dinosaurs ran for a few years in the early nineties until Disney inexplicably pulled the plug on what was, IMHO, the best TV they ever did. B. P. Richfield was the ultimate boss from hell, a Palaeolithic Alan Sugar, CEO of the Wesayso Corporation. B. P. ran on high octane Theory-X, and was, of course, the first great mentor and management guru of a generation of bishops. Here’s the kind of workplace encounter he used to initiate:

B.P. Richfield:	SINCLAIR!. I oughta kill you and your whole family, but I'd probably get in trouble with the union. As it is, there's only one thing I can do to you: you're fired, Sinclair, fired, fired, FIRED!!!.
Earl:	Fired? That means I don't have to come to work anymore. Oh, this is the happiest day of my life.

I was delighted to come across evidence, however, that even BP had mellow moments, especially after chewing the Happy Plant: