In my year-end prediction for 2017, I wrote about the continuing pressure that Facebook was exerting on the media industry, both from a financial perspective and a cultural one, and how this was forcing many publishers into a kind of devil’s bargain: Benefit from Facebook’s reach, but only at the cost of handing over all of your content, as well as control over your future.
If anything, this pressure has intensified—not just because Facebook continues to grow, but because it and Google continue to vacuum up the lion’s share of the digital advertising market. According to one recent estimate, the two will account for 185 percent of the growth in the digital ad market this year, meaning many of the existing players will be forced to shrink.
Over the past year, some publishers have been able to hedge this reliance on Facebook by expanding their subscription offerings. The New York Times is the most obvious success story—it has almost doubled the number of subscribers in the past year. Other outlets have also seen success, including the Washington Post, and The Guardian has managed to sign up ** readers for its membership program.
In many cases, the rise of Donald Trump and his almost daily attacks on the press appear to have been a big part of driving more people to sign up for these kinds of subscription and membership plans, causing what some have called a “Trump bump.”
This is good news, of course. Anything that helps media companies survive and challenge the powerful should be celebrated, even if it only comes because the country has been pitched into a never-ending vortex of fear and hypocrisy by the president of the United States. But there are downsides to this as well, and I think those will become obvious over the coming year.
One of the obvious downsides is that while fear and/or dissatisfaction with Trump may be boosting the fortunes of some media outlets, it is also boosting the fortunes of many publications on the “alt right” side of the spectrum, not to mention outright racists and trolls of every stripe.
For these kinds of outlets, political and social polarisation is the name of the game, and misinformation is the weapon of choice. And no matter how much fact-checking and verification happens, there will be those who prefer to listen to such messages because they confirm their worst suspicions.
Another downside is that this rising tide of interest in media subscriptions cannot possibly lift all boats. Just from a purely financial perspective, there are not going to be enough people who are willing to pay for subscriptions to multiple outlets.
While the Internet may have made the supply of information virtually limitless, the supply of money with which to pay for it remains painfully finite. And that means every subscription to the New York Times or Washington Post makes it less likely other outlets will get a subscriber.
In the end, some media outlets simply aren’t going to be able to get enough subscription revenue to survive, at least not without shrinking their cost base radically—something that arguably needs to happen anyway, since that cost structure was designed for a very different time, when geographic monopolies were essentially a license to print money.
It’s not just a question of subscriptions to high-profile entities like the New York Times and Washington Post making it harder for the smaller outlets to get subscribers, however. Some newspapers may find it difficult to get enough traction with their paywalls because they have lost touch with their local markets after decades of chain ownership.
In essence, if you want to convince large numbers of people to donate or subscribe, you either have to have a large and powerful brand like the New York Times, or you have to be small and targeted enough that a significant part of your market believes you are worth supporting.
So if your paper spent the last decade or so running a lot of wire stories, or filler from columnists who couldn’t locate your town on a map, or you supplemented your online presence with Outbrain and Taboola and a bunch of clickbait content because you couldn’t come up with a real strategy, don’t expect readers to beat down your door volunteering to pay you.
The “Trump bump” may have provided a short-term boost, but the reality is that no matter who you are, you have to be providing some net tangible benefit for your readers if you expect them to part with a monthly fee in return for your content. And that means you have to give them something unique—either a perspective on a topic or a geographic location, or both. Or a global brand name.
You may protest that your journalism is valuable and necessary, and therefore readers should support you. But if you can’t prove that it is valuable and necessary, then by definition it isn’t.
This is going to require a significant reorientation for some publishers, who have gotten used to being the only game in town. It is going to take some soul-searching about what role they need to play, or can play, and how to maximise the benefit to the largest number of people. And it’s going to mean actually listening to readers, which is something many media outlets have never been that good at.
Those who can’t offer something unique will find themselves taking on water in both directions: Their ad revenue will continue to decline at an ever-increasing pace thanks to Google and Facebook, and their subscription revenue won’t be enough to make up the gap. And eventually the waves will break over the gunwales and there will be little or nothing they can do about it.