Changing with the Times

Changing with the Times

“You find the future in the past if you look hard enough,” says Mark Thompson, Chief Executive Officer and president of The New York Times. It is a common belief that newspapers’ going out of print is a direct effect of changing times. In many ways, this is true. However, the reasoning for lessening print publications is rooted in the same basic marketing strategies that the media have always followed.

Traditional print newspapers have always thrived upon meeting the reader in their daily lives. After all, without the readers there would be no reason to share the news. Writers and producers of the news know that, often, consumers do not seek out the news themselves. Therefore, in order to stay afloat, these news sources must find a way to come to the consumer.

While many print publications are struggling to keep up with consumers, the Times is managing to not only stay afloat, but also thrive in a world of mass digital news consumption.

In the past, life was centered around the daily papers. If you wanted to find a job, you looked to the paper. If you needed look for a new apartment, you looked in the paper. Now, all those things and more are done online. According to Thompson, “ads once brought in as much as $235 million with very little overhead costs, but that figure slid to just $6 or $7 million in revenue in recent years.”

This decrease in ad sales was a major push towards a digital way of thinking for the Times. Executives knew that, in order to keep up with consumers, they would need to reevaluate and reconnect with the modern consumer’s lifestyle.

“It’s all about the user experience and it’s all about engagement,” says Thompson. In 2015, the company set out to make $800 million in digital revenue by 2020 and they are already on track to blow that goal out of the water. As of the end of 2018, the Times made $709 million in digital revenue. With a total of $1.748 billion at the end of the fiscal year in 2018, this shows that digital revenue “accounted for just over 40% of the total.”

With such great numbers coming in from the financial side, Thompson set a goal to reach 10 million subscribers by 2025. This goal seems to be in reach for the company as its number of digital subscribers has grown to 3.3 million as of 2018. This number is up 27% from 2017. The Times now has over 4.3 million subscribers, which is an all-time high for the company.

Another record breaker for the Times happened in the fourth quarter of 2018 when digital advertisement made more than print advertisement. Digital advertising sales jumped 23% to $103 million while print advertising dropped 10% to $88 million.

Thompson says that these gains in revenue will be put back into newsroom operations. At a time when many news companies are being forced to make cuts due to lack of funding, the Times take the opposite approach.

Our appeal to subscribers — and to the world’s leading advertisers — depends more than anything on the quality of our journalism. That is why we have increased, rather than cut back, our investment in our newsroom and opinion departments. We want to accelerate our digital growth further, so in 2019, we will direct fresh investment into journalism, product and marketing.

Thompson also believes that the Times’ legacy has played a hand in its success in the shift towards primarily digital platform. “An intense news cycle has always sold newspapers and made TV news ratings shoot up,” Thompson says. In this world where every news company is racing to get the most recent information out first, it pays to be a credible company that consumers trust.

Another possible reason for the Times’ continued success is the diverse material that they offer consumers. Recently, over half of Times’ subscriptions came from the cooking and crosswords. According to journalist Tyler Bishop, one of the highest priorities for digital publishers coming into 2019 was growing their audiences. According to Bishop, the main focus for many digital publishers was “traffic, but more specifically, quality visitors.”

The Times is a legacy company, and their diverse offerings of news, opinion pieces, crosswords, and more make them more appealing to consumers. According to Thompson, these subscribers are “the kind of person who is our kind of person.” While other news companies and digital publishers are struggling to get the audience they are reaching for, the Times has the advantage of having a solid, diverse, consumer base to work and grow with.

According to the New York Times’ 2020 group:

While the past two years have been a time of significant innovation, the pace must accelerate. Too often, digital progress has been accomplished through workarounds; now we must tear apart the barriers. We must differentiate between mission and tradition: what we do because it’s essential to our values and what we do because we’ve always done it.

This team of journalists at the Times take deep pride in their work and understand that the same qualities that brought print subscribers will “lead people to devote valuable space on their smartphone’s homescreen to our app, to seek us out on social media amid the cacophony and to subscribe to our newsletters and briefings.”

In the world of publication, many companies see themselves as either print-first or digital first. The New York Times, however, sees themselves as a “subscription-first business .” The company does not want to get lost in a battle to “maximize clicks” or “win a pageviews arms race.” Rather, they are focused on producing the same strong journalism that they have for over 150 years. This business plan has secured them a front-runner in print journalism for many years, and the same business plan is what they hope will keep them a front-runner during this time of digital change.

Publishing Engaging Facebook Content

Content creators must know how to publish effective content on Facebook in order to engage an audience. According to “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2018” by Elisa Shearer and Katerina Eva Matsa, “Facebook is still far and away the site Americans most commonly use for news, with little change since 2017. About four-in-ten Americans (43%) get news on Facebook.”

How you write your content, what you include in your message, and when you post are critical in ensuring your Facebook audience likes, shares, and reads your posts.

How You Write

Your posts should be roughly 111 characters, according to CoSchedule. CoSchedule’s Social Message Optimizer is a free tool you can utilize to gauge whether your content is designed well for social media.

Write a positive message to maximize potential audience engagement. According to Scott Ayers, “The items that get the most shares on Facebook tend to be those things that are positive, inspirational and/or funny. People might agree with your negative sentiments—but they will hold back the Likes, Comments and Shares because they don’t want to be perceived as negative.”

Use an emoji 🙂 in your content. After I typed in a test post in CoSchedule’s Social Message Optimizer it explained that using one emoji would have made my post stronger. Ayer’s conducted an experiment on emoji use and found that posts had increased “engagement 23.78% higher with emojis” and also had “clicks 28.87% higher with emojis.”

What to Include

A call to action is a sign of a strong post. Ayer’s writes that “my experience is that if you give people a little push and some clear direction, you will see results.” For example, if you want people to sign your petition you shared on Facebook, tell them to click the link and what to do from there.

Include a link to engage more people on Facebook. CoSchedule’s Social Message Optimizer states that a link “is the best-performing message type for Facebook.”

When You Post

According to CoSchedule, posting on Saturday and Sunday typically increases a post’s engagement by 32%; furthermore, Thursday and Friday can increase a post’s engagement by 18%.

“More upbeat content does best on Friday” according to data explained in Mark Schenker’s “7 Facebook Engagement Strategies to Get You More Customers.”

9:00 AM, 1:00 PM, and 3:00 PM are the best times to publish your content on Facebook. These times are both explicitly stated in Schenker’s article and on CoSchedule.

According to Schenker: “1 pm posts receive the most shares,” “3 pm posts get the most clicks,” and “the most engagement occurs later in the week and on weekends from 1 to 4 pm.”

To publish powerful and engaging content on Facebook:

Keep your post around 111 characters.
Write something positive, and/or write positively.
Use an emoji, but keep them under control.
Tell your audience what to do, give them direction, and encourage participation.
Include a link.
Post around 9:00 AM, 1:00 PM, and 3:00 PM.
Post later in the week.

Why Copyright Protection Isn’t Protecting E-Books

E-book publication is threatened by the assumed “free” nature of the internet. For individual publishers, attempting to protect their work on their own, it’s nearly impossible due to the internet constantly changing. Authors want to to be able to put their books out but manage it as well.

Effects of Piracy for the Author

According to E-book Piracy Is Rampant And Impossible To Stop, there are situations where an individual is publishing a novel and, moments later, finds pirated copies through a mere Google search.

The Authors Guild explains “how the major contributing factor to the rise in book piracy and counterfeiting is that the law does not hold internet platforms accountable for the illegal activities that occur through their marketplaces…” The acting policy’s lack of foresight puts the burden of fighting piracy on the backs of authors.

The first suggestion is to ignore piracy altogether. Then there is the suggestion to contact the site manager directly. Dave Chesson suggests that it is easier to reach the poster of the pirated work, or the host site, rather than attempting to contact the DMCA.

The What To Do If Someone Steals Your Book offers the final suggestion to submit a formal complaint with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

For authors, the effects of e-book piracy can be devastating. As recently as July 2019, Adam Rowe on Forbes.com wrote about the loss of money through e-book piracy. According to U.S. Publishers Are Still Losing $300 Million Annually To E-book Piracy, “$300 million in publisher income is lost annually as a result of online piracy.” Even if an author only loses $500 to e-book piracy, that can be a month’s groceries or rent.

Protection for Authors

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was enacted in 1998, at the beginning of the digital age. DMCA is not an autonomous system, but one that authors must submit notices of piracy to, along with a host of other information. An individual contacting a government organization is hardly a drop in the water, compared to the larger corporations they deal with daily.

However, there is an organization called DMCAForce which provides anyone with the capability to be proactive about protecting their content, rather than retroactive, as with the government organization. The article mentions “unique algorithms we create a digital fingerprint of your content.”

DMCAForce is perhaps one of the most accessible forms of protection against e-book piracy. It gives the author copyright protection for up to 5 pieces of content. They also provide higher levels, of increasing prices, for individuals with more copyrighted material, or corporations.

Digimarc, founded in 1995, provides several innovative solutions for attempting to protect authors against piracy. They are well-known for their digital watermarking, along with their specific technology used to locate these watermarks. Although they are invisible to consumers, Digimarc actively searches various well-known piracy sites for these watermarks, for individuals that use their services.

However, they work for larger corporations, so they do not provide services to self-publishers. Digimarc has partnered with companies like Walmart and Rakuten OverDrive to “identify and understand emerging market needs and demonstrate immediate and sustained return on investment.” They are marketing their company of fighting piracy as a significant return on the cost of their services. Digimarc decreases the likelihood of obtaining these e-books for free, thus rerouting people from paying for them.

Kitaboo suggests that individual publishers should set up Digital Rights Management to protect their E-books. DRM “ensures that the digital documents, e-books, and web-based content protects against data leakage, theft, and misuse. It’s a data encryption method which prevents anyone from accessing content without a proper access key.”

CapLinked protects PDF’s and Microsoft Office files through their DRM’s, which blocks downloaded content behind a wall where users must sign in to view the document. The author can revoke access to downloaded materials through this service, which might help with fighting against piracy, for those who attempt to put up protected e-books on piracy sites.

Why Are These Efforts Not Working?

Piracy is evolving and refusing to truly cease-and-desist. As a result, E-book piracy is still taking up to $300 million from publishers in the United States alone.

Michael Kozlowski writes extensively on the poor job done by the government, or anti-piracy companies, attempting to fight against e-book theft. Pirates can instantly provide free downloads for books as soon as their published on the internet.

Once these downloads are found, individuals may attempt to contact the publisher, citing the copyright issue and asking for the content to be taken down. If that does not work, then the next step is to fill out government forms.

Most people wish publishers would fight harder against piracy. According to E-book Piracy is on the Rise in 2019 publishers, “take pirates to court and shut down entire sites instead of arguing over individual titles.” Kozlowski writes about the newest form of piracy for 2019, which is mainly undetectable by traditional forms of copyright detection. The article mentions pirates “provide adverts that for a small fee can send a list of requested E-books, right to your email address” and “since there are no links to infringing content, the entire process is immune from most anti-piracy laws.”

For individual publishers, attempting to protect their work on their own, it’s nearly impossible due to the internet constantly changing.