People trust in newspapers. People will pay…

In our latest weekly column, Lawson Muncaster, CITY AM managing director, explains why “people will pay – and understand they have to pay – if the content is good enough”…

During the election campaign, we saw very clearly the power that traditional media has. TV and newspapers energised the election demonstrating that the old media still delivers – often better than online.

So the comments I read, stating that newspapers are dying, are simply beyond my comprehension. People trust in newspapers. I might not read the Independent but 670,000 people love it. And I might not read the Sun but the Sun‘s 7.8 million readers certainly know who they are. And that’s very powerful.

The key to the success for all newspaper owners is two-fold – making the content easily available and getting the content right (whether it is free or not is irrelevant). The two are intrinsically linked. Look at the Independent – the content is fine, the paper has an active readership, has value politically and economically and has value to advertisers. But it has sat in purgatory for the past ten years because of an old business model.

So when we recently saw 300,000 copies of the Independent handed out for free over 10 days in the run-up to the election – that was about the paper acknowledging it needed to change its business model. And I don’t believe it’s the last attempt we’ll see by the Independent to make changes.

At CITY AM, we continually look at how to make our paper as available to the reader as we can. We recently added distribution points in 14 new stations outside of London so CITY AM readers now have four or five opportunities between when they leave home and when they arrive at the office to pick the paper up. This is the responsibility we have to our readers.

And let’s make one thing clear – the user’s experience is no different whether they pick it up free or they buy the paper at their local newsagents. Depending on the content, it will either be a good or bad experience. And to make it good is about the brand – something that is integral to the readers life and something they enjoy.

And this is going to be a crucial for newspapers looking to charge for their content online. Just putting content from a paper online and trying to create a community is naive. That is another failing – trying to apply an old business model to a new invention. There are far bigger and better empires in the world of community-driven online products than newspapers.

But people will pay – and understand they have to pay – if the content is good enough. The challenge is to be more creative. If you’re a newspaper that has a loyal audience who is willing to pay for your content, then give them that bit extra.

Evaluate their interests and link to these interests like a comparison site. Let them know the best airline, the best restaurant and give the user the opportunity to not only trust the online brand but also the social demographic they share with other users. Those who make money on the web are aggregators and newspapers should use online as a sales channel for other brands that want to reach that audience. That is the real way to make money and I’m sure The Sun and The Times will be doing this.

Of course, monetising online has been a challenge for the entire media industry. Facebook and Twitter – with such loyal communities – haven’t been able to get it right yet and we all remember the YouTube sensation Super Subo from Scotland – over 1.2 billion downloads but even ITV didn’t make a single penny from that.

Yes there is no question that the newspaper business will get smaller – but not extinct. The ipad and the kindle – these are all very clever marketing tools but I don’t see society adopting these heavily.

The next ten years will be about how newspapers talk to their audiences, and online is a vital part of that. The consumers have lost confidence in business and politics – and newspapers can play a huge part in restoring this confidence. But we have to look after our audience and spend time learning from them, thinking about how we talk to them and what they want.

The winners will be those who not only continue to invest in quality journalism – but are a little more humble to the reader.