New Platforms - New Revenues

How do we get money from new platforms established by editorial departments? Focusing on the initiatives in news media of all kinds and at all levels where there could be potential for revenue. What is worth pursuing and what might be best let go.

Chaired by: Raymond Snoddy, Media Commentator
Neil Benson, Editorial Director, Regional Newspapers, Trinity Mirror
Morgan Holt, Director, Huge Entertainment
Francois Pierre Nel, Director, Journalism Leaders Programme, UCLAN

Report by Tessa Norman and Amanda Greenwood

Newspapers need to take advantage of new online revenue opportunities if they are to survive, media experts agreed today.

Neil Benson, Trinity Mirror’s Editorial Director of Regional Newspapers, highlighted the importance of using in-house skills and not being scared of the unknown.

He said: “Revenues are disintegrating and we don’t know whether the new ones will turn out to be small pots of gold or mirages.”

He suggested new revenues could be generated by launching in-house PR agencies and providing multimedia campaigns for third parties through video, editorial and online.

“We need to be creative in leveraging our resources and skills, our localness and trust,” said Mr Benson. “I think we need to move more and more into web services and into the unknown.”

However, he stressed the need to choose campaigns which maintain the editorial agenda of the publication.

At a conference session entitled ‘New Platforms - New Revenues’, Francois Pierre Nel, director of the University of Central Lancashire’s Journalism Leaders programme, argued that editors would benefit from helping each other.

He said: “Stop talking about pay walls around content and start talking about reciprocity, how value is exchanged.”

He observed that competitors could sell each other’s content as well as their own.

Morgan Holt, Director of Huge Entertainment, highlighted the importance of using technology to target new audiences.

Mr Holt said: “I think what we should be doing is opening our eyes and opening our arms to the behaviour of those people who are consuming content, but aren’t necessarily consuming the content in the same way as their parents or grandparents.”

Media Commentator Raymond Snoddy urged the Society of Editors to “think outside the box”, decide which revenue options are worth pursuing and then to act decisively on their decisions.

He added that newspapers should look at the way users are engaging with content and making communities.

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