No stopping traditional media culling

Prologue: I was deeply saddened that BluInc Media, one of Malaysia’s most established magazine publisher since 1974, called it a day on 30 April 2020, citing challenges arising from the digital disruption and COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier on 21 April 2020, the Edge Financial Daily – a reputable business daily – published its last issue, citing “the double onslaught of the shift to digital news and the current lockdown of the economy because of the COVID-19 pandemic”. Unfortunately, more publishers are bound to follow the footsteps of BluInc Media and the Edge Financial Daily in the near future.

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Reality is fast sinking in that there is little room for traditional media (newspapers, magazines, tv stations and radio) to survive the fierce business environment in the post-COVID-19 era.

Of late, it has become a global phenomenon that the current economic turbulence stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic has become the final nail in the coffin for many traditional media operators.

This is somehow an irony given that many media houses had already invested substantially to shape up (by embracing digitalisation a.k.a going online) yet still have to ultimately ship out (ceasing operations).

Probably, deeming their shutdown as an irony is an understatement considering that the pre-COVID-19 period (which goes as far back as the late 1990s in tandem with the debut of social media) has already proven tumultuous to many of the industry players.

While nobody doubts that traditional media is still relevant in today’s digital age – especially to provide check and balance to the dominance of social media – the stark reality is simply that traditional media is unable to match social media’s ultra-flexi ecosystem and landscape.

Hence, failure is the only certainty no matter how hard traditional media try to match social media. Period.

Breaking the barriers

That old habit dies hard perhaps best explains why traditional media find themselves losing their influence to social media these days.

Having risen from rank-and-file, senior management personnel (i.e. editors or desk managers) are trained with strict adherence to journalistic ethics, hence their having a regimented mindset (not to mention human ego).

Contrast that with the new tenets of journalism as portrayed in the social media – any Tom, Dick and Harry can be a ‘reporter’ so long as he/she is able to post a report or content (even without prior knowledge of how to write a proper news report).

Moreover, ‘purist’ editors need to gradually adapt to the thin line drawn between news content and giving into advertising pressure.

Traditional media is indeed a creature with bizarre attributes. Contrary to what many media consultants think, a mere transformation from print to online media has hardly resolve financial woes of the publishers. Neither would it guarantee social media penetration.

The secret formula lies in radically re-configuring the existing business model, i.e. identifying new revenue streams vis-à-vis investing in the workforce of tomorrow, focusing on the customer’s experiences and grow through partnerships and collaboration, among others.

The issue of pursuing an advertising (free viewing) or subscription model (to subsidise the digitialisation cost or to offset dwindling advertising income) will not arise if all the above measures can be justly implemented.

Lean and mean operations

For starters, the newsroom of traditional media which job hierarchy typically comprises an editor, few reporters/writers and one or two sub-editors can never match the headcount of an online media that leverages social media to expand its audience base.

At the latter, multi-tasking is the norm with the founder probably doubling up as the editor while the content is created by a single in-house writer or a pool of freelancers. Or better still, most of the content are republish or curated (with or without acknowledgments) from third party materials or sources (including online portals of traditional media).

A recent personal eye-opener was that yours truly was ‘politely’ told by an online financial media that the company preferred to hire someone with a track record of providing social media content despite his wealth of experience as a financial editor. *

This points to the bitter reality that it would be an uphill task for an old school journalist to acclimatise his/her diction to meet the compact or condensed social media writing style which occasionally disregard correct language usage (in favour of the SEO rule).

Moreover, going the extra mile to verify news source or content accuracy is also deemed a secondary concern in the social media sphere as convenience and speed are two key standard operating procedures in today’s virtual newsrooms.

Total overhaul

Looking into the crystal ball, my reckoning is that starting on a clean slate by setting up a new subsidiary which specialises in social media branding (otherwise a social media-dedicated team) would be the best bet for traditional media companies whose owner have pockets deep enough to make a social media dive.

To ensure efficiency, the social media outfit must be detached from the conventional newsroom environment and be granted full autonomy to fulfil its functions lest ‘the curse’ (interference) which hinders traditional media from embracing social media successfully cannot be broken.

I envisage a three-staffer set-up helmed by a social media-savvy millennial head with minimum three years of journalistic exposure as ideal to look into cross-sharing and rehashing content from the mother company (i.e. news breaking items or exclusive interviews with a renowned personalities), promoting presence by engaging audience across targeted social media networks, customising experience and tracking responses, among others.

While the above modus operandi may improve the success rate of traditional media that are keen to expand their social media presence, the future is by no doubt illusive given “the rise of digital colonialism”.

Sharing Malaysia’s experience, Ho Kay Tat, the publisher & CEO of the Edge Financial Daily which ceased publication on 21 April 2020, revealed that many companies in the country are shifting their ad spend to social media, mainly Facebook and Google, which now control 80% of the digital ad revenue.

“The rise of the duopoly has not only disrupted but also ‘destroyed’ the economics model of the news business,” he justified, noting that both social media networks “do not invest in generating content and news but make money off of those who do”.

While publishers fight back by making their news available for free on these digital platforms, Ho explained that they earn “little to no money” from it.

Besides “destroying” the media ecosystem, Ho said both Facebook and Google are also exempted from paying taxes in countries where they are making money from as they operate out of Silicon Valley.

This is compared to Malaysian media companies that are paying local taxes and have numerous employees to feed.

* The writer has since been exploring ways on how to fix the imbalance by achieving the best of both worlds, i.e. utilising his vast journalistic experience to conquer the diction of social media (this is a story for another day).