Morrison is a seasoned media executive. In addition to his spell at Emap, he was deputy CEO of what was then Reed Business Publishing (now Reed Business Information ), headed up Axel Springer and is to this day a non-executive directive of Centaur Media. He has seen and been leadership in numerous media entities.

Leadership is at the heart of his analysis of the demise of Emap from being the Apple of media companies — rising at one point to be one of few media companies in the FTSE 100 — to being broken up and sold.

He argues that the when Robin Miller and David Arculus left the business, the two main executives at the company, the character of leadership changed and the business lost its way, most notably by indulging in the ill-fated acquisition of the Peterson empire in the US.

It turns out that the Emap culture of creativity and local decision making was more a result of its leadership style than in the business itself. When the leaders left, it was as if the cultural arm that had made the business successful had been amputated.

Changing times, leadership required

Reading Morrison’s analysis should give us pause for thought about what leadership means in the 21st-century media company. The challenges faced today are far greater than those that Emap had to endure in the post Arculus/Miller era.

There are four kinds of leadership style and they all have their merits, but only one is truly fit for purpose in an industry challenged by shifts in technology and consumer behaviour, increased competition and economic uncertainty.

The charismatic

Not always blessed with the best judgement, and often more in love with themselves than the business they run, the charismatic media leader can command great loyalty (or fear) and be sure that their view of the future is dominant in decision making. They do not always fail, but the risks are huge. The true charismatic leader brooks no challenge and can often, through the force of their personality, win a strategic argument even when they are wrong. A charismatic leader can be malevolent (think or Robert Maxwell ) or benign (like Greg Dyke ). The problem for staff and investors is that distinguishing between the two is normally only possible with hindsight.

Some charismatics think they are visionaries — these are the most dangerous kind. At a time of crisis, do you really want your business run by someone who has visions?

The creative prophet

These leaders are not really leaders at all. They require strong management teams underneath them to implement and filter and nuance. The greatest of them all, Steve Jobs . They do not try to foresee the future, they are the creators of the future. If your business is led by one of these you will be in riches or rags. There is no middle way.

The Processors

It is not uncommon in recessionary times for media companies to find their helm grasped by the finance department, or as in the case of both Emap and Centaur, that the former CFO becomes the CEO. The nature of processors is that they manage all that can be measured – normally a good thing – and even in times of change a necessary condition for success. But when creativity and taking risk is required, this may not be enough. Processor leaders are naturaly risk averse and for many media companies the time for that has passed.

Entrepreneurial Gladiators

These leaders surround themselves with creative and strategic thinkers and operational managers with balls. They challenge everything, even their own assumptions about what is the right way forward. But they understand it is better to do something than to be do nothing in fear that it might be wrong or imperfect.

As the history of Emap tells us, success now is no guarantee of success in the future. Great businesses require great leadership to stay great.

Intellectually this is the same stonewall approach used by News International, for several years.  But now  the lone rogue reporter defence has been exposed for what it was – forlorn hope that if News International covered their eyes with their hands, when they eventually looked between their fingers the monstrous allegations will have vanished. Let’s hope that Trinity Mirror is not making the same mistake.

Meanwhile The Star, bastion of the fourth estate, is using the cynical tag line “The paper you can trust,” in it’s television advertising.  All the tabloids have increased print orders and launched marketing campaigns to capitalise on the closure of The News of the World.  The management effort being brought to bear on milking every last drop of commercial benefit from the Hackgate crisis appears to dwarf  management concern about their own organisations possible culpability for producing unethical journalism.

Newspaper management teams may judge that their readers will in the end just shrug their shoulders and carry on buying the news, tainted with Hackgate or not.  Remember the faux wailing and gnashing of teeth over the behaviour of some parts of the press after the death of Princess Diana? The press has learned that the public moral outrage over the hacking of a dead girls phone will also pass with time.

Meanwhile the economics of newspaper publishing are brought home in sharp relief this as Trinity Mirror updates it’s results.  The expected uplift in sales of the Sunday Mirror will do little to disguise the full extent of the challenge facing Sly Bailey, the Trinity Mirror CEO.  The share price has dropped by two thirds in the last year.  The serial cost cutting that has been the consequence of dwindling revenues has to an extent shored up the profits but it has not disguised the fundamental weakness of the business. Like every other newspaper group in the uk there is no discernible strategy for getting from here to somewhere where shareholder value is increasing.

When readers are losing faith in the integrity of what newspapers do, and shareholders are losing faith in the future of newspapers, when the economy is teetering on the edge of a double dip recession, when technology change is challenging the very essence of how newspapers do business, the conditions for a perfect storm are arising.

The response to this storm will require a new round of fresh thinking.  I can’t wait to see what a digital guy makes of it all.  What on earth will Ashley Highfield do with Johnston Press?

After looking up the titles latest ABC certificate I realised that the bulk of the distribution, some 75% of the total was ascribed to digital editions.  In the modern world the reach of magazine titles is the sum of the print circulation plus digital editions plus web traffic, plus readers of electronic newsletters plus web traffic plus downloaders of apps.

As a result the potential reach of magazine brands is increasing- which sounds like good news.  The problem is that we and therefore our advertisers have no way of knowing what any of this might mean.

Is a web reader worth more or less than the controlled circulation recipient of a print magazine? Is a recipient of a digital page turner edition the same as a print reader, and how do either of them compare with the user of an app? Is a newsletter reader just the duplicate of a web reader?

When we sell advertisements in a print magazine we make an implicit assumption that every reader consumes every page equally. When we sell web advertising we might talk about unique users but advertisers are measuring what they by on a page impression count or even a click through.  Should advertisers be buying the circulation of digital editions on the basis of the number of copies sent or the open rate? If ads in an app deliver a better branding result than web display ads how can that be measured? If an app ad allows “in app browsing” will media buyers insist on pricing app ads on a CTR basis?

The audit bodies, the ABC and the BPA have some work to do to remain relevant in a multiple platform world.  The future development of media advertising in a multiple platform world depends upon there being an industry accepted currency for how audience is measured.  At the moment, as my questions illustrate there is no such consensus.

Would it be beyond the ken of the audit bodies to construct an algorithm which aggregated audience from different platforms and resolved a single measure of reach for a media brand?  It would be controversial, as are all audience measurement systems, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.

The audit bodies may well argue that such a project is for the media owners to derive and drive. With so many vested interests that is unlikely to happen.  Either the ABC or the BPA have an opportunity to take a lead here.  Although their paymasters are the media owners, their relevance in the multi platform world depends upon the currency they offer being valued by the media buyers.   They should rise to the challenge before it is too late lest they wither as so many of the print magazines they used to audit have done before them.

It is estimated that some 48 million iPads could be sold this year, but other tablets on Google’s open source Android platform will outsell the apple solution within two years (our report on mobile publishing has much, much more on this).

Meanwhile we have already reached the point where one per cent of the world’s web traffic is driven by iPads. That is a staggering rate of growth.

Read the rest of the is post here

The Media Briefing is an official media partner of the upcoming WAN-IFRA International Newsroom Summit taking place ins Zurich in June.  The WAN-IFRA team have put together a great programme which will give some new insight into the future for newspapers – arguably the media sector with the toughest of digital challenges. I am chairing a panel at the end of the conference where, amongst others, we will be talking with Will Lewis from News International – now that will be interesting.

John Paton, the CEO of Journal Register Co. in the U.S., and one of  the keynote speakers and doesn’t mince words when discussing his company’s “digital first” transformational strategy.

“Stop listening to print people and put the digital people in charge – of everything,”  he says.

Full details about the event can be found at http://www.wan-ifra.org/node/31877

Since Paton’s appointment as CEO in early 2010, The Journal Register Co., which publishes 27 dailies and hundreds of non-dailies, has frequently been hailed as an example of how to innovate dramatically – particularly impressive given the company’s past financial difficulties, which led to a brief bankruptcy and re-emergence in 2009.

“The most important and most opportunistic time is now for newspapers to make that transition from what we were to what we are going to be,” says Paton.

The Summit’s scope takes into account everything from paid-content models to the potential impact of new platforms (such as tablets) to newsroom integration.

Conference highlights include:

- One year on since the new newsroom, by Ralph Grosse-Bley, Editor-in-Chief of Ringier in Switzerland, who will explain how the company has integrated its completely newly designed newsroom with its four Blick products: Blick, Sonntags Blick, Blick am Abend and the Blick.ch website. 

- The quest to go fully digital by 2015 without completely abandoning print, by Erling Tind Larson, who is Digital Manager of Berlingske Media in Denmark. Larson is heading up the company’s B.T. website which is the fastest growing online news site in Denmark, and in the midst of pushing much of its resources to digital. 

- The technical developer has never been more important, by Espen Egil Hanson, Editor-in-Chief of VG Digital News & Media in Norway, which has been at the forefront of everything digital and thrives on embracing the latest technologies to exploit its vast multimedia content.

- The future of news and digital content: mobile, social, apps, ad-supported – and paid? By Gerd Leonhard, Media Futurist and CEO, The Futures Agency in Switzerland, who will give the Day Two keynote. The Wall Street Journal calls Leonhard “one of the leading Media Futurists in the World.”

- Paid-content strategies, by Neil Thackray, Co-Founder of Briefing Media Limited, who will be examining what he dubs “The Great Content Debate”, as well as Will Lewis – a man uniquely well placed to consider the issue as Group General Manager of News International.

Other speakers include: Robert Picard, Director of Research, Reuters Institute, University of Oxford, UK, Wolfgang Büchner, Editor-in-Chief, Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (dpa), Germany, Justin Williams, Assistant Editor, Telegraph Media Group, UK, Alan McLean, Assistant Editor, Interactive News, New York Times, USA, Katherine Silver, Head of Marketing Development, Archant, UK, Dr. Aralynn McMane, Executive Director for Young Readership Development, WAN-IFRA, France, Sarah Schantin Williams, Senior Associate Consultant, WAN-IFRA, Germany, and more. 

For the evolving conference programme, registration and other information, please consult http://www.wan-ifra.org/node/31877

Its mission: to find out the health of the conference business. In a vote at the beginning of the day, only seven percent of delegates thought the standard conference format was “Engaging informative and highly valuable”. But despite that, only 16 percent of delegates admitted that their own organisation needed fundamental change.

What does this mean? It shows the idea the events industry is largely unaffected by the digital revolution is a myth.

Informa , Incisive adapting their events models

– In a video interview, Peter Rigby, CEO of Informa, said that his business been had been robust, not least because his company has been only marginally affected by declining advertising revenues. Rigby argued the digital revolution had aided the conference business: so much work is now done in front of a screen, he claimed, that meeting people was more important than ever. However he acknowledged that events of the future had to be “different and exciting”.

– Tim Weller of Incisive Media said that small event organisers that don’t inspire and motivate delegates to engage with a brand more than once a year will stay small organisers.

Conference biz too complacent?

It’s possible that the greatest threat to the conference industry is complacency born of the relative robustness of the model during the last recession and the continuing media revolution. While readers and advertisers have been steadily shifting away from print, leading to wholesale strategic shifts in most print media companies, the conference delegate and sponsorship market has trundled on.

Does that mean event organisers can ignore the media revolution around them? For some delegates that is precisely their plan. It could even be most of them. During a Q&A session, one attendee argued that his target market were not users of social media. He scornfully dismissed the Twitterfall being displayed on the stage and said that it might be relevant to his business in ten years’ time, but not today.

As I listened I was reminded of print publishers 15 years ago. Our print brands will see us through, many argued. Is the conference industry making the same mistake?

Livestreaming cannibalisation worry

Many delegates said they were worried livestreaming their events via online video would compromise delegate sales – just as print publishers worry web publishing cannibalises offline reading. Only a few understood that streaming is a great way to expand your audience – the trick is to make sure that the live attendee experience is not the same as the streamed experience. What is the point of attending a live event if the experience is no more interesting than watching it on a computer screen?

Some event businesses are stretching their competencies in new and exciting ways. United Business Media Loading… companies united-business-media claimed to be running more than 100 virtual events a year, not including its webinar programme. Whether you think virtual shows are compelling or not, you could not accuse UBM of ignoring the opportunity to experiment.

TED events engage online and offline

Greg Hitchins of Terrapin pointed to the success of TED which not only runs great events but has developed compelling ways for non-attendees to engage with the brand online.

As Hitchin put it out: “Most of the TED talks are pretty damn slick. Some people take six months to prepare but many presentations at our conferences look like they haven’t been prepared at all.”

What is the main challenge here? It’s same one being faced across the media: how to put the delegate, or customer, at the centre of all you do. In practical terms:

– What can we do to engage with visitors on the 364 days of the year they are not attending our event?
– How can we improve the experience of attending a conference event. As one delegate pointed out, the days of back to back Powerpoint presentations are over?

There were no more than half a dozen twitterers at this event. Many delegates complained that they could not submit questions to the panel using the mobile app provided as they did not own a smartphone. There was palpable resistance to the benefits of social media ( LinkedIn , Facebook and the like). One delegate asked: “Are we really saying that if I have 200 events that I now have to run 200 social media groups?” Er – yes!

The event industry is only at the beginning of this journey

In essence, Google presents results based on popularity.  The more backlinks you have, the and the more backlinks your backlinks have, then the higher your page rank will be.  The algorithm is much more complex than that of course – and only Google knows exactly how it works.  Google has total control over how search results are presented and is also the largest purveyor of search advertising on the planet.  One way to guarantee getting your links on the first page of Google, is to pay Google loads of Adwords money.

So if it is not unethical for Google to sell access to top search results, why is it unethical for Forbes to allow its customers to back into their page rank for money and improve their own score on Google.  Well, although Google likes to dress all this up as being part of its fair practice guide, many observers have thought that this is nothing more than protectionism from a dominant player in the market.

Google is the primary access point on the web for search – by miles.  So if you expect lots of web traffic from search then you have to play the Google game.  But this is a funny game.  Lets think of Google as being the “do no evil” referee for fair search on the web.  OK. I can live with that.  But the problem is that it is only Google who knows all the rules – and when they suspect that too many of us are beginning to undestand the rules (through SEO, link selling etc) the referee in this game, can change the rules.  Oh and the ref won’t tell you exactly how those rules have changed.  Even if they did,  it wouldn’t make much sense because we never really understood what they were in the first place.

So Google is the self appointed referee in the Search game.  But it also has the biggest team in the league -selling more online advertising than the rest of the planet put together.  It makes sure that whatever happens their team wins.  They can’t blamed for that of course.  They have a business to run and will compete competively and aggressively to protect their position.

Now look at the announcement about the Google paid content model.  This is Google presenting itself as the publishers friend.   Eric Schmidt says that he will let publishers have access to customer data (Apple won’t) and will charge just 10% (compared to Apples 30%).  In the paid content on apps market – Apple is the referee and is excercising its market muscle.   Google is trying to steal its ball and in the  meantime will be much more flexible in paid content than it is in search where it all but owns the search ad market.

So a basic lesson in micro economics. The little guy will always work harder to give great price and service than the big guy.  Until they become the big guy.  It was ever thus.

Even so we should not stand by as casual spectators of all this. We are players in this game and it might be time to argue with the ref a bit.  These are some of the questions we should be asking.

• Is the audience you get from search your audience, or is it Google’s?
• Should Google be able to stop you trading your popularity by selling links on threat of cutting you off from that natural search traffic?
• If Google is the dominant search player and it is going to set the rules and police them, shouldn’t it be completely transparent about how its algorithm works?
• If Google can sell ads next to your search result which by Googles own argument must reflect the quality of what you do, why can’t you sell ads that capitalise on your search popularity? (ie selling links)

These issues are complex. What do media owners think about this?  What do the Ad networks think?  What do the clients think? Come to that, what do I think?