Is the legacy of words holding publishers back when it comes to reaching audience?

The year is 2018 and we still need to have an honest conversation about what journalism is in this day and age.

I come from a digital background, but have always worked for publishers who once had print as the cornerstone of their business, and in many cases still do.

Print is a pretty simple business. Some people do words, some do pictures, bring them all together on a daily basis and you have a product to go out to the masses.

This is obviously an over-simplistic view, but cut back to the bare bones and that’s what you have.

Yes, the way in which those words are crafted, the images captured, and ultimately packaged together is a highly skilled process, brought together by numerous incredible storytellers, but is it really fit for purpose today?

In a socially-driven digital space our audiences are consuming more and more content visually — whether that be video, images, graphics, animation — you name it. And, at the very least, we have to keep pace with them.

Digital should be the blank canvas we all crave, and indeed have been promised since publishers went down the ‘let’s have a website’ route.

Unlimited space, on web, app and social, to tell a story how we want to — or even better, how people want to consume it. Of course, we can still use words and pictures, but now we are free to include video, audio, animation, moving graphics, and interactives.

This was exactly the way digital was being sold to newsrooms, especially in the UK, a decade ago. So why, ten years later, are we still not massively advanced?

There is a simple answer. Words.

One of the problems we see, across the globe, is legacy. Often there is still a print product sitting alongside digital that is thirsty for content, it takes a lot of filling, and that means a lot of resource.

While print still exists in newsrooms, we still need to create a huge amount of written content on a daily basis. Newspapers may not feel a great deal in your hand, but they are hungry beasts — demanding tens of thousands of words every single day. There is no option of leaving pages or columns blank, it is a must-have that relies on a lot of time from those working on it.

The problem in 2018 is our users want more than that, we live in a visual world with ever decreasing attention spans.

We are all fighting for their attention, and crave even the smallest amount — and this may be just a matter of a few seconds. Difficult to read a story in that time isn’t it?

This means, and take a deep breath here, the writer is no longer the most important role in the newsroom.

The storyteller is.

It actually always has been, but now more than ever we have to look at how we diversify our content to suit an audience’s needs.

Now, that could be through a writer — but it could also be one of many other people.

We now have to be surrounding ourselves with graphic designers, animators, and developers. People who have the ability to really bring content to life in a way people want to consume.

The chances are they will always need a more traditional storyteller alongside them, someone who can pick out a line and dictate a narrative — but there now needs to be a much greater layer of creativity in how we tell that story, depending on the platform we are publishing on.

I’m not saying words, and what we would consider a traditional article, are dead. Done right, words can still captivate. They just need to be exceptional to have a true value when it comes to engaging, and growing, a loyal audience — and that’s before we even think about monetisation.

Which is why many publishers find themselves in something of a chicken and egg situation. They cannot afford to reinvent their business because this would mean taking a step back at a time they are fighting for every penny, but also are hitting the realisation their current model doesn’t work.

Only the boldest, and bravest, are going to thrive.

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