Information Analysis Is The New Revolution (£)

Every industry has to deal with artificial intelligence (AI) powered Information Analysis which is a significant aspect of the new technology revolution. This is very important and will allow your business a clearer understanding of the way the Digital World will affect its market, products, services and personnel.

Most industries have only shallow shadow thoughts on the concepts of the effects that will take place, but a serious strategy is what is required, as it will affect every industry and service dramatically over the next decade.

This is already occurring in the publishing industry and many of the current brands and publishing titles have not understood the consequences.

The old and current school is still believing that what people most want is the current news from a particular view point that is promoted by particular brand of newspaper and their current websites.

Many newspapers suffered a severe decline in print advertising sales as clients trimmed their promotional budgets. And in digital media, Facebook and Google took the larger share of advertising income.

For instance, the UK’s Guardian needs to cut close to £54m in costs as its finance information suggests that, at the newspaper’s current rate of spending, it probably will use all its £758m trust fund in the next decade or less.

This is an organisation that concentrates on its editorial presence and capability and has its finances problems as a growing shadow in the background. What it does not really comprehend is that the technology and the costs of the old style editorial, without advertising and paid for readership, needs to be changed and substantially re-organised and changed. 

The Guardian has long suffered from over-optimism about revenues and an ingrained inability to control costs which, goes deep into the organisation’s structure however, aspects of this structure and understanding affect many businesses.

Historically the Guardian has never been a big-selling newspaper: in the UK it is tenth among the 11 national dailies in Britain, however on the Web it is second to the Daily Mail, and is close to the New York Times success. The paper is king of traditional news reporting and has taken this success into the new web media.

The Guardian began relatively early on the Internet and in 1995 it had a lot of new ideas such as blogs and taking reader information and publishing it and, soon after it had a 24hour service, with new material constantly being put up on the Web and it maintained over four million readers. The Guardian’s total traffic was around 67m unique browsers a month, was it was increasing by 65-70% a year. 

The influence and impact of the Guardian was considerably improving. However, the method of its media impact now suggest this is an old model and it is on course for its destruction. Print circulation was tumbling. In 2005 the average daily circulation was 400K. But by 2012 this had dropped to just over 200K - a fifty percent drop.

Critics suggested that although the Guardian is owned by a billionaire, given its current losses it should not continue to follow the same strategy, which understands editorial but not financial and technology management. The Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust, which was established in 1936 “to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity”. 

The Trust became a limited company in 2008, however it remains trust-like, and all the shares held by the trustees. It does own other assets like Auto Trader magazine, which is financially very effective which can usually cover most of the Guardian’s debt and losses. 

The ideal that Guardian journalists often believe, that their service is more important than any profit, is enshrined in the Scott Trust’s constitution.

This process had kept the Guardian’s website free. Whilst commercial rivals and examples began to rival place their content behind paywalls. In 2011 the New York Times, which has been through much the same trauma as the Guardian, moved to a porous paywall or freemium model which meant a reader had a number of articles free (20 at first, now ten), but after that you need a subscription. 

Within a year, the New York Times had 450K digital subscribers. The Financial Times and The Economist also have a similar porous paywall and the commercial success has been significant.

The Guardian uses this notification and asks when you are on its site:

"Since you're here ...

…we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but far fewer are paying for it. And advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

Fund our journalism and together we can keep the world informed.
Become a Supporter
Make a contribution"

The Guardian has therefore tried to change its subscriber process in a similar way to the more web successful publishers, but it has not changed its website. A position it shares with the Mail, the Telegraph, the Washington Post and many others. 

This process is going on across the industry and publishing is hardly alone but it is significant that one of the first industries to be effected by the Web has not significantly changed their old standards, methods and commercial models.

If it continues with its current strategy, then the Guardian is set for a commercial and personnel disaster, along with a lot other businesses, that act in similar ways to the Guardian.