BookyMedia

I’ve worked in a pretty decent range of media companies on a good selection of titles and I think the overarching philosophy at all but one of them can be summed up as this: fuck the reader, make them click.

From my first full-time staff position on a b2c mortgage magazine through to regional and national newspaper websites, it’s pretty fair to say that getting people to click around the site is the most important goal of any media company that operates online – I will defend the Guardian here, as in my experience I was never encouraged to send users down click mazes to appease advertisers. In fact, on the contrary, the only time senior editorial encouraged us to promote particular pieces of content, it was for journalistic reasons rather than commercial ones.

It wasn’t long after launching the now-closed thelondonpaper website that we were told focussing on London-based news and issues wasn’t bringing in enough clicks and we had to think more internationally. One launch editor quitting later, and we were ripping off the obvious celebrity guff from US bloggers – luckily this was around the time of Britney Spears shaving her head so management were happy with the page impression bump. But at what obvious cost? A story that would only deserve a standalone pic in the paper, nestled next to the London-focussed splash, would be the website’s main focus. Obviously, web readers are more international. But that’s not exactly much use to advertisers who want them to click on links to buy stuff that may not be available in their country.

And thelondonpaper is obviously not alone, not just in my experience, but in the media industry as a whole. While this is happening in print too, online journalists and editors are under far more pressure to look away from a title’s unique selling point and look to more mass-appealing content. And it’s no surprise that readers/users/customers or clickers are getting even more cross with an industry that was already on a par with traffic wardens.

But I honestly hope that might be about to change. Like most people in the media I laughed when Rupert Murdoch said he’s going to introduce paywalls across all of his digital titles. But now, looking past the obvious flaws in much of his argument and the hypocrisy of accusing others of content stealing, I actually hope he makes paywalls work.

But why? Since advertising has failed to bankroll newspapers’ digital operations, companies have been forced to try to get as many eyeballs as possible looking at their content. If you need eyeballs in high numbers, you need mass-appeal.

As we now know, attempting to satisfy everybody creates a homogenised media that actually gives nobody what we want. But as soon as the payrolls go up, taking commercial pressure off editorial shoulders, numbers of eyeballs will cease to be the most important metric. Who knows, perhaps even something fluffy and warm like time-spent on a site or unique readers might be the most important thing to media management.

Another positive externality in my dream of the future would be the focussing of content on subject areas where people are seen as experts, like thousands of Wall Street Journals. Rather than quoting Jeff Jarvis’s famous ‘do what you do best and link to the rest’ while chasing clicking on TMZ to rip off their Tiger Woods story, perhaps journalists will actually become specialists again.

We know that people are more willing to pay for unique content that they can’t get elsewhere, so it isn’t a crazy thought that payrolls will force media companies to back away from spending time making content they won’t be able to charge for as it’s freely available everywhere else. Sure, it’s a crazy thought and it will result in a lot of closures, but it’s not a revolution if no blood gets spilled.