“Coping with change, yes we can!” might have sounded like an inspirational Oprah special for women of a certain age. Fortunately for Communicate this dubiously titled seminar was in fact tackling a more industry-orientated challenge – specifically the rise of digital media, and the potential death of print.
Perhaps it lacked the Oprah emotional punch, but let’s face it: there is more than enough fear, comedy and drama around at the moment to keep one half-day seminar ticking over. Key speakers at the event included such serious media types as Richard Withey, a media consultant from the UK, Dr. Ali Al Assam, the founder of editorial systems developer KnowledgeView; editor-at-large Francis Matthew from Gulf News; and Magdi Hanna, press IT supervisor at Abu Dhabi Media Company.
Their lectures addressed the rapidly changing media landscape, and focused in particular on digital technology – the catalyst for most of this change. The digital threat towards print has been looming for years, but it will only be over the coming decade that the extent of this concern becomes fully understood.
Speaking on the effects of these global changes, Withey offered his vision and held out at least a little hope for the print industry. “I don’t think the newspaper is dead,” he said. “Twenty years ago, it was 99 percent print, and one percent digital. Now it’s 20 percent digital, and 80 percent print. In the future, it will be 80 percent digital, and 20 percent print.”
Meanwhile Al Assam offered advice for publishers on how to deal with what he called the “Double Whammy” (falling ad revenues and the rise of digital). “Extend your reach with multi-publishing in convergent newsrooms, improve editorial production, and take a lead on content aggregation,” he says. Predictably he then went on to plug KnowledgeView’s designs of convergent newsrooms, whereby online, photo, radio, print and news editors and journalists are brought together to work across a range of media channels.
Francis Matthew said the government should become more accessible as UAE audiences become savvier and more demanding. He also outlined the strategies he believes are required for the UAE media to face up to the growth challenge, and how to survive tough times.
And tough times they could certainly be. A film from the Museum of Media History presented by Al Assam certainly brought home to delegates how rocky the road is ahead; if the contents are anything to go by, publishing as we know it will be history by 2014.
The video was an extreme vision, which started in 1989 with the advent of the World Wide Web, and ended in 2014 with the New York Times reduced to a newsletter for the elite and the elderly. Tailored editorials delivered through PCs become the norm, and custom news packages to which everyone can contribute become available for every user. Powerful – and still very plausible – stuff.
As Withey pointed out, “The Guardian invested in a new printing press around two years ago. They will probably be the last to do so.” If he’s right, members of the print industry could well find themselves with time on their hands for a few real episodes of Oprah.