Law 11 – For Journalists’ Jobs, It’s Back to the Future

All-access circulation revenue is spinning upward, leading to a 5 percent gain in overall circulation revenue in 2012. Print advertising is whirling downward — 9 percent last year — in a seeming death spiral. Digital advertising is growing tepidly at 5 percent. Put those circulation and ad trends together and you end fairly flat on your back. So NAA’s number is that dailies lost 2 percent of revenue overall; I’ve made the point that their big goal, as nothingburger as it may sound, is to get back to zero revenue growth (“The Newsonomics of Zero, and the New York Times”).

Which brings us back to that non-ad, non-circ number. If local news organizations are going to regain growth — and hire — they must find new revenue. They have plumbed marketing services, events, and print-insourcing. Now some are putting a new category on the board: content marketing.

No, not content marketing, you say! It’s already a hackneyed phrase, seemingly identical to “native advertising” and “sponsored content,” both now much-recognized and already much-maligned techniques that bigger brands are using to break through the digital clutter and get to potential customers. Yes, content marketing (and we’ll narrow some definitions below). As news companies rediscover the power of their own content, there is new revenue to be gained. How much, not whether to seek it, will be the major question.

Rationalizing the old printing business is one significant part of what’s going on in Columbus. Let’s look, though, at the deeper and wider newsonomics of the press-led innovation. The three-around change both supported the Dispatch’s new emerging, reader-focused business model and offered editor Ben Marrison the opportunity to reimagine the daily.

Aaron Kushner is the anti-Advance….Kushner and his 2100 Trust ownership group have taken a industry-contrarian approach since he took over the Orange County Register on July 25 — not even six months ago. It’s addition by addition. Addition of costs in the short run, aimed at the addition of both revenues and profits in the longer term. If there were a Pulitzer for getting the most done in six months, Aaron Kushner should win it.

Many publishers find themselves somewhere between the thinking of Advance (although they are hesitant to drop days for fear of sending the business into a fast death spiral) and 2100 Trust. The prevailing strategy across the country: Keep seven days of print, but also keep trimming, trimming, trimming.

Kushner’s Orange County play is watchable enough. It becomes even more intriguing if 2100 Trust should win in the upcoming Tribune Company auction. On that bid, Kushner restated his interest when we talked Tuesday, though with caveats. One big caveat is whether the Tribune sells off the Register’s neighboring L.A. Times separately, or as part a package of its eight papers.

Now as CEO and co-founder of Skift, doing some curation, he’s building out a new kind of business, in a vaster business sector. Travel, says Ali, is the largest employer in the world and is probably third in revenue behind finance and automotive. Lots of potential readers and advertisers.

The site is itself, well-built out at launch is testimony to how much experience, clarity of vision and smart use of technology can accomplish in 2012. As such, it’s worth extracting some lessons for everyone in the publishing trades from the Skift start-up. Here are 12.

Funding the journalism business isn’t like funding Sears and Kodak or other fading institutions. It’s not even about saving a perhaps-vital American industry, like the auto industry.It’s about keeping a lifeline of funding open so that our best reporters can do their jobs.