Background
Wade (2012) presented a case study, The Newspaper Industry,
which examined how the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) undertook a
scenario planning initiative to determine how competition from new technologies
and altered reading habits might create new opportunities in the newspaper
sector. A non-profit, non-governmental
organization founded
in 1948, WAN merged in 2009 with the IFRA to represent over 18,000
publications, 15,000 online sites and over 3,000 companies in more than 120
countries. The stated mission of WAN (2013)
is, “To be the indispensable partner of newspapers and the entire news
publishing industry worldwide, particularly our members, in the defense and
promotion of press freedom, quality journalism and editorial integrity and the
development of prosperous businesses and technology.” The declining reader base and reduced
advertising revenue, exacerbated by the economic downtown beginning in 2008, resulted
in many newspapers scaling back their operations or going out of business. To assist its organization in preparing for
future consumer demand, in 2007 WAN examined what the future of the newspaper business
might look like in 2020.
Scenario
Planning
Led
by Kairos Future international consulting and research, WAN (2008) mined eight
selected publishing leaders for their vision as to the most important trends
that would shape their industry by 2020 and how the leaders could adjust to
those trends. Based upon those results
WAN then gathered together 19 newspaper executives from 15 countries and mapped
out four possible scenarios each accompanied by a vignette describing the future
environment depicted in the quad chart shown in Figure 1 and summarized as
follows:
•
Scenario A: Disruptive media dominate / Targeted audiences
•
Scenario B: Traditional media dominate / Targeted audiences
•
Scenario C: Traditional media dominate / Mass audiences
•
Scenario D: Disruptive media dominate / Mass audiences
The
fundamental question arising from the scenario planning effort was, “How to
transform the existing business model in order to survive as a newspaper
company?” The goals were to clarify
future uncertainties, identify options, and manage risk so as to remain solvent.
As an analytical planning method each
scenario therefore sought to illuminate the Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) affecting the newspaper business brought
about by innovation.
Significant
Forces
The
forces involved are predominately an amalgamation of both social and
technological trends where the consumer audience has an unprecedented proliferation
of choice regarding news sources and delivery methods. In this case these forces are disruptive, directly
impacting the traditional, one-size-fits-all printed newspaper typically
published and distributed daily. Because
the product is news content, the primary issues are summarized as: delivery of content via the Internet to a
wide variety of user devices, stratification of content into individual
segments rather than compiled within a composite package, availability of
content from virtually any source worldwide, and tightly focused content based
upon identified user preferences. Resolving
these issues would enable newspapers to tailor their strategies to their unique
market challenges and opportunities.
However,
the slow decline of printed newspapers will continue as the propagation of
consumer mobile smart devices expands unabated.
Worldwide sales of tablet computers are forecast at nearly 191 million
units in 2013 and worldwide smartphone sales projections for the period
2010-2015 anticipated at 2.3 billion units (ITU, 2013). Shevchi (2013) notes that consumers have embraced smartphones as
evidenced by an average of 41 apps per smartphone, using those apps for 127
minutes per day, checking their phones 150 times a day or every 6.5 minutes,
watching television for 168 minutes per day, or browsing the Web for 70 minutes. Other technological advancements also loom on
the horizon such as the Semantic Web or some derivative thereof. The Semantic Web will identify each data item
within webpages and couple it with an inference capability, allowing consumers
to pull and integrate ever more precise material across different content,
information applications, and systems. Moreover,
in the broader context of intelligent systems machine-to-machine communication
will seek data relevant to the users which will then be made useful by
reasoning algorithms and sense-making tools, perhaps in the form of wearable
technology such as Google Glass. As I
presented in previous postings, wearable technology such as Google Glass will
further enhance the consumer’s embrace of receiving rich media content anywhere
and at any time.
Conclusions
The
WAN scenario planning technique mustering senior newspaper industry
representatives represented a sound premise to explore and conjecture about
both advantageous opportunities and unfavorable threats to the corporate
newspaper mission and business objectives.
The four scenarios were essentially abbreviated problem statements and
the accompanying vignettes held the unstated hypotheses for varying
consequences as a form of ‘what-if’ analysis.
Realistically imagining how highly dynamic social and technological
forces might combine to alter the newspaper publishing trade 12 years hence was
an extremely challenging but necessary endeavor. One only has to consider that after 244 years
the Encyclopedia Britannica stopped its printed version in 2010, largely due to
the availability of online information sources such as Wikipedia. The newspaper organizations are wise to
beginning adjusting their business model as early as possible to the new social
and technological factors before the income opportunities are overtaken.
References
Shevchi, L.
(2013, March 13). Mobile APPeal:
Exploring the mobile landscape. Retrieved August 4, 2013 from http://blog.newrelic.com/2013/03/13/mobile-appeal-why-the-future-is-mobile/
Wade,
W. (2012). Scenario Planning: A Field Guide to the Future. John Wiley
& Sons.
World
Association of Newspapers (WAN). (2008, April). Scenario planning for newspaper companies (STRATEGY REPORT Volume 7
N°5 APRIL 2008). Retrieved August 2, 2013 from http://www.wan-press.org/IMG/pdf/SFN_7_5-Final.pdf
WAN-IFRA. (2013)
About WAN-IFRA. Retrieved August 4, 2013
from http://www.wan-ifra.org/about-wan-ifra
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