Social Media, News, etc…

3 ways to look at what social media is doing to/for news

Ben Wirz, Knight Foundation@bthewirz

Background

How News was traditionally done

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Traditional news made possible by traditional revenue model

Write/edit News

Market, Print &

Distribute

Audience Engagement

25% Subscriptions 75% Advertisement

15% Content Creation

75% Marketing & Distribution

Revenue

Costs

• High cost of distribution, natural geographic monopolies, limited audience choice & aggregated bundles of content•Mostly one-direction

Old news model created lots of:-strong, professional, editor-driven news-wealth (and style!)

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But then along comes…

…the internet-Cost of distribution goes to 0-Advertising divorces content

-65% of online ads go to Google(50%) & FB(15%) (Source: emarketer)

-Content is unbundled

-"A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa." - Mark Zuckerberg-All news sites combined get ~1% of web traffic

No cost of distribution = people read what they want,(and a lot of what they want is squirrels)

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News Biz gets tougher, struggle for audience & revenue

0-30% Subscriptions 70-100% Advertisement

60-70% Content Creation

10-20% Marketing & Distribution

Revenue

Costs

Content Creation

Marketing & Distribution

Audience Engagement

Audience contributes content

Content shared & aggregated Social Sharing

*eg Salon, HuffPo, Alaska Dispatch, BaristaNet

Ongoing Disruption

Global newspaper industry is down 40% ($51B) in revenue since 2006

Sources: Mary Meeker, 2013 Internet Trends, Ken Doctor Newsonomics of 2014

30% cuts to newsroom staff over last 10 yrs = a lot less Local and Regional news:-Government-Education-Healthcare-Arts & Culture

Source: Steven Waldman, FCC, Information Needs of Communities

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The problem facing American journalism is not fundamentally an audience problem or a credibility problem. It is a revenue problem.

-Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism

$180M/yr invested in journalism by foundations 2007-2010

$1.6B/yr editorial cuts by legacy newspapers.

Source:”The Information Needs of Communities”, FCC, June 2011

What social media means for news, Take 1: -Better channel to distribute news

-1.2B Monthly Active Users-728M log in daily-Growing 18%/yr (Sept 2013)Source: Facebook Q3 2013 Quarterly Report

-215M Monthly Active Users-100M log in daily-Growing 44%/yr (Oct 2013)Source: Twitter S-1 IPO Filing

A lot of people use social media

That was then… … this is now

No cost of sharing news socially

Using social media to distribute newsCan attract new audience at little cost

(Remember: new audience = new revenue)

Sources: Parse.ly Authority Report, Sept 2013Chartbeat, Understanding Social Sources, Oct 2013

Turns out: some people like getting news this way…

Source: Pew Research: The Role of News on Facebook, October 2013

…especially young people…

Pew Research Journalism Project: Twitter news consumers young mobile & educated, Nov 2013

…but people read topics they like* (not brands) and don’t come back…

*Choice of what to read has shifted from editors to readers.

Sources: Chartbeat, Understanding Social Sources, Oct 2013, Pew Research: The Role of News on Facebook, October 2013

And most people still don’t even get their news online.

-So social media does present a new channel for distributing traditional news (20% of online news traffic)

-But distribution is driven more by what people like than what editors choose

-And distribution of traditional news is only part of what social media does

What social media means for news, Take 2: -A new source of news

Easy Story--

-Vegetable cart repossessed by policewoman-Self immolation (Dec. 17, 2012))-Family protests (Dec. 18), posts videos on Facebook-”We are all Bouazizi” goes viral-Ben Ali leaves Tunisia (January 13, 2012 )-Arab Spring

Actual Story:

Credit: Ethan Zuckerman

• No traditional editors initiated this story

• No traditional means could stop this story (eg Gafsa)

• But “going viral” required much more than just Facebook.

Social media = new currency (literally)

Caroline Criado Perez: 1Bank of England: 0

What social media means for news, Take 3: -A new model of news

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Social media (and the internet) are making startups rethink news model

Mission/Brand

Create Distribute Consume

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You (the people) can now consume, create & distribute

Create

Distribute

Consume

Majority of traffic from FB~100% local news

-Fastest growing digital news site ever-Built to share

FB traffic = Google trafficUser base = Authors

-Majority of traffic from Pinterest-Articles optimized to be pinned

New news orgs built on social media

People like to share real news

Source: PolicyMic/KnightFoundation The 15 most shared stories on Monday , June 2013

Key questions for KF:

?What kind of news will news orgs built around social media

make?Is some news being left behind?

What is social media news better at?What do people need to know?