Report Card for Our 2010 Predictions, Part II

Here's Part II of our track record on our predictions for 2010. Part I is available here.

• We predicted that live integrated real-time interactive media will be common – that was a bit premature. But in an article appearing in its April issue, "Payday: Ustream's Pay-Per-View Online Entertainment: Will Ustream's pay-per-view experiment forge a business model for live Internet video?", Fast Company validated our prediction.

• In other predictions, we said radio will continue to survive – for now. So far that's true. But the challenge continues to be that kids may not be growing up listening to radio – they're listening to their iPods instead. We were right that the decline and fall of TV networks wouldn't happen in 2010 as viewership actually increased, according to Brian Stelter reporter in a Jan. 2nd article: TV Viewing Continues to Edge Up, noting "Americans watched more television than ever in 2010, according to the Nielsen Company."

• It's pretty clear that social media will survive the recovery – that it's not just something people do while waiting for work. We also said that online credibility will continue to be important, and some of the crises that hit in 2010 proved that point when the companies' online sites did not provide an accurate version of what was happening.

• We said the intersection of social media and traditional media will be increasingly busy -- a thought validated by Fast Company in a November cover story, "I Want My Twitter TV!."

All in all, we did pretty well in 2010. If only the Red Sox had done as well.

We will issue our predictions for 2011 next week. Check back, please, and let us know what you think.

Report Card for Our 2010 Predictions, Part I

Last year was a pretty good one in terms of the predictions we made for 2010 and what actually happened. Far from a shellacking, in fact.

Here's our recap.

• Although signs were pointing in the other direction, we predicted that print journalism would continue to be important. And that was validated, in part, by Bloomberg's announcement that it would start publishing editorials in across its media empire, including Bloomberg BusinessWeek. If print isn't important, Bloomberg would not have purchased BusinessWeek (in 2009) and would just publish its editorials on a blog.

• Print newspapers and magazines continued to struggle in 2010, just as we predicted. In July, SFNblog reported that 18 papers had shut down or stopped publishing a print version. That's a drop in the bucket compared with 2009's 109 but shows ongoing struggles. In the same article, SFNblog reported that "s of May 2010, there have been more than 1,797 job losses or buyouts in newspaper companies in the country."

• We predicted that 2010 would be the year of online subscriptions, and very quickly publishers like the New York Times, Hulu.com, Boston Globe and others began announcing that they would be establishing online subscription access to their content. Within days of posting our prediction, New York Times reporter Richard Perez-Pena wrote, "Some News Outlets Ready to Try Charging Online Readers." Other developments on the road to online subscriptions included Rupert Murdoch's plan to establish a paywall for Times of London; an article in TheDeal.com (""Creeping Towards Ubiquity: the Pay-for-Play Traditional Media is Striking Back, Winning Some Small Victories Over Digital Free-Content Rivals"). AdAge wrote about the challenges when some sites charge for content and others don't ("New Test for Paid Content as Competing News Sites Remain Free").

• Mobile access did increase, as predicted, thanks to the iPad.

• We predicted that in-flight Internet access would take off. While more flights have in-flight Wi-Fi, we may have overstated things just for the pun of it.

• We got a lot of the business and technology stories right, including

  1. Apple's iPad was one of the biggest stories. One story we did not predict was the huge growth of Google's Android platform – though we did predict a battle between Android vs. the iPhone.
  2. The 3-D TV market was a big story, with lots of post-CES coverage about the latest technology in Forbes, the Times and many other outlets (wondering if it would save the networks) and lots of coverage at the end of the year (wondering why 3-D didn't take off as much as expected.)
  3. We predicted the media would focus on corporate battles like Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft and EMC vs. HP vs. Oracle. We were right about Google vs. Apple (especially Android vs. iPhone). But did not anticipate Oracle vs. SAP or Cisco vs. H-P. Forbes validated this prediction with "The Battle of the Tech Titans," published in its April 12th issue.
  4. The economy certainly was covered, and there were lots of mentions of the "new normal," as we predicted. Also, health care reform and regulations were major themes.
  5. The state of the media, especially print media, online-only business models and online subscriptions still generated coverage – can no longer call that "ink" – but not as much as in previous years. Twitter's business model did get a lot of pixels.
  6. Cloud computing and virtualization got plenty of business and trade coverage in 2010 – and will continue to do so in 2011.
  7. Location-based services and behavioral targeting by advertisers did get attention last year – and will continue to do so in 2011.
  8. We said that online privacy would be an important issue as social media, behavioral targeting, location-based services and hackers combine to make it easy for others to access personal information. The Wall St. Journal agreed with us – and ran an extensive, ongoing series about privacy entitled "What they know."
  9. The freelancing of the US workforce got covered in the New York Times ("Recession Adds to Appeal of Short-Term Jobs" and "New Job Means Lower Wages for Many") and Newsweek ("The Vanishing 9-to-5 Job: How the recession is accelerating a cultural shift in the corporate world toward more flexible workdays").
     

We'll provide additional items tomorrow.

Bloomberg to Publish Editorials -- Welcome to the Blogosphere, Mr. Mayor

Last month, the New York Times reported that Bloomberg, the news service, would start publishing an editorial page.

The article, "Bloomberg to Publish Editorials," also noted that Michael Bloomberg, New York City's Mayor and the founder of the news service, would have some input on the unsigned editorials.

Bloomberg is "accepting and embracing the privilege of a media mogul," a City University of NY professor told the Times, adding, "This is what we all do. We try to persuade the rest of the world we are right. Of course we don't have the vehicles to do so. The rich have the vehicles to do so."

Interesting point -- except that the rest of us do have some vehicle for offering up our opinions. It's called a blog. I guess one difference is that we don't all have access to printing our ideas in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. But the fact is we live not in the Information Age, but in the Opinion Age -- everyone has one and nearly everyone (including me, of course) is letting everyone else know!

Four Tips for Improved Brainstorming

In the "In Pursuit of the Perfect Brainstorm," New York Times business reporter David Segal profiles Jump Associates, a hybrid strategy firm that helps organizations be more creative and innovative.

In the profile, Segal identifies some tips for the rest of us to consider, including:

• Don't play "idea tennis," where "brainstorming can devolve into a kind of competitive idea tennis": You think of a new use for pencil. Then me. Then you. Then me. Somehow, the unstated goal is winning" instead of developing new concepts or approaches.
• To make brainstorms collaborative, consider a variation on an improv technique for story telling: one person offers the first sentence of a story, with everyone around the room adding a sentence. The "Yes, and?" nature makes it very collaborative.
• Take a terrible idea -- the article cites taking an idea that would make air travel unbearable -- and turn it into something that you actually like.
• Develop a three-box framework, developed by Dartmouth professor Vijay Govindarajan:

  • Box 1 is labeled: "everything a company now does to manage and improve performance"
  • Box 2 is labeled: “selectively forgetting the past,” which Govindaraja'is way of urging clients to avoid fighting competitors and following trends that are no longer relevant.
  • Box 3 is labeled: "strategic thinking about the future." That's because most companies focus on Box 1 only, Govindaraja says.
    

Worth trying out at your next brainstorm. Check out the entire article here.

Is the Register Citizen Setting the New Standard for Hybrid Print-Online Newspapers?

Interesting article from the New York Times, "Walk In, Grab a Muffin and Watch a Newspaper Reinvent Itself" about the Torrington, CT Register Citizen.

In a town suffering from the recession, the Register Citizen has taken several steps to remake itself, including:

• Developing a new slogan: "Digital First.. Print Last."
• Moving into a new building "designed to mirror the open, collaborative culture of the Web."
• Inviting town residents to participate in the paper's editorial meeting, offering coffee and muffins at the Newsroom Cafe and bringing in a new level of transparency to the paper.
  
• Embraced a new business plan "based on making The Register Citizen’s Web site a magnet for all things local and thus an attractive place for advertisers, sponsors and others who can replace declining newspaper subscribers and advertisers."

This type of community engagement seems to be working both with readers, especially online, and with advertising, which now comprises 17 percent of total ad revenue.

It's still at the experimental stage. But the Register Citizen could be a model for other papers. Since the paper is owned by the Journal Register, which owns 300 other papers, we just might see the modeler extend to other local papers.

What Can We Learn From the Possible Merger of Salon

The news that Salon.com is looking for a possible partner, "Who Wants to Buy Salon.com? Anyone?" raises some interesting points about online media's business, namely:

• It's not only print media that can generate million-dollar annual losses. Salon has lost $15 million over the last five years, including an estimated $5 million in 2010.
• Driven by the need to generate the revenues necessary to sustain a journalistic operation, Salon is shifting its coverage from politics and news to softer, shorter lifestyle coverage. The problem: we already have a lot of sources for lifestyle news while we have fewer sources for traditional news coverage.
  
• Standalone media properties can't hope to compete against media conglomerates -- even today. That's the lesson, too, to be drawn from the recent Newsweek-Daily Beast merger.

On the other hand, the FT recently scored a success with its iPad app subscription, "Financial Times iPad app scores success: Paper increasing its digital-only subscription base at a rate of about 500 a week, with strong growth in US," according its competitor, The Guardian. But while that's good news, it's still not self-sustaining.

One thing for sure, 2011 will continue to see pressure on traditional and online media.

Forbes vs. Fortune: Most Powerful Women Edition

Even as the dynamics of print publishing have changed dramatically since I last about Forbes vs Fortune in 2007 ("The difference between Forbes & Fortune"), the two magazines seem to continue to compete primarily with each other, ignoring any online competitors.

One thing for certain: the only people outside of Fortune who read Fortune as closely as PR people do are the editors and reporters at Forbes. The same is true of Forbes, too. (I vividly remember talking with a Forbes reporter who was as well informed as I was about how BusinessWeek and Fortune had covered a client of mine. And that reporter's knowledge was based partly on interest in my client and mostly due to how Fortune was covering the sector.)

Both Forbes and Fortune have redesigned their print publications; Forbes has undergone a more comprehensive makeover while Fortune has added some accessories.

So it's interesting -- and no coincidence, really -- to see that Fortune ran its "50 Most Powerful Women in Business (FORTUNE's annual ranking of America's leading businesswomen) in its Oct. 18th issue while Forbes ran its The World's 100 Most Powerful Women in its Oct. 25th issue.

The differences in the lists and their methodologies tell us a lot about the two magazines.

It goes beyond the fact that Forbes offers twice the number of powerful women than Fortune. And that both lists contain many of the same women, including Oprah (No. 3 in Forbes and No. 6 in Fortune), Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi (No. 6 in Forbes, No. 6 in Fortune). Wellpoint CEO Angela Braly (No. 12 in Forbes, No. 4 in Fortune), Yahoo CEO Carol Bratz (No. 42 in Forbes, No. 6 in Fortune), and BofA Merrill Lynch's Sallie Krawcheck (No. 44 in Forbes, No. 24 in Fortune).

• Forbes and Fortune agreed on one women: both ranked Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld as No. 2. The other women who appeared on both lists were ranked at vastly different levels: Avon CEO Andrea Jung was No. 47 in Forbes but No. 5 in Fortune; Fidelity's Abigail Johnson was No. 59 according to Forbes, but No. 21 in Fortune; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was ranked No. 66 by Forbes but reached No. 16 in Fortune.
  
• The Forbes list includes some women from outside the US like Gail Kelly, CEO of Wespac in Australia. The Fortune 50 list is comprised entirely of Americans. That said, Fortune also includes its global list, the International 50.
• The Forbes list also includes politicians while Fortune lists "Washington's power players," and both lists include Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, SEC's Mary Schapiro, and Justices Elena Kagan and Sonja Sotomayor. Interestingly, Fortune did not include Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (but Forbes did) and Forbes included Michelle Obama at No. 1 while Fortune did not her at all.
• Forbes includes celebrities while Fortune is more serious, and does not. Thus Forbes ranked Lady Gaga at No. 7; Beyonce at No. 9 (but includes her last name (Knowles) for its readers who may not be familiar with her work; Ellen DeGeneres (No. 10); Angelina Jolie (No. 21, and, surprisingly, did not include a photo); Madonna (No. 29 and no photo), Chelsea Handler (No. 33 -- I like her show but I still don't know how she made this list); Sarah Jessica Parker (No. 45); Suze Orman (No. 61), Rachel Ray (No. 78), and Martha Stewart (No. 99).
  
• Forbes, which loves celebrities, also listed models: Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (No. 35 and also the First Lady of France, and instead of a photo of her, there was a photo of the Eiffel Tower); Heidi Klum (No. 39); and Gisele Brundchen (No. 72). Forbes also ranked designers Tory Birch (No. 88), Vera Wang (No. 91) and Donna Karan (No. 96) as well as news anchors and editors Katie Couric, (No. 22), Tina Brown (No. 34), Meredith Vieira (No. 40), Diane Sawyer (No. 46), Rachel Maddow (No. 50), and Christine Amanpour (No. 73).
  
• Forbes also ranked female athletes including Serena Williams (No. 55) Venus Williams (No. 60 and Danica Patrick (No. 93).
• Forbes also listed a number of politicians including those named above as well as Sarah Palin (No. 16), Meg Whitman (No. 47), Carly Fiorina (No. 51), and Maria Shriver (No. 53). I suspect that, if written after the midterm elections, Meg and Carly would not make the list.
• Forbes also includes royalty, including Queen Elizabeth (but not the richer, commoner JK Rowling).

The main criteria for Forbes was dollar amount, including company revenue, and "buzz" factor, defined as the number of Factiva hits, Google hits, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and radio and TV appearances over the past 12 months.

The main criteria for Fortune "is four-fold: the size and importance of the woman's business in the global economy, the health and direction of the business, the arc of the woman's career, and social and cultural influence." According to a blog article by longtime Fortune reporter, Patricia Sellers, the pattern for selection for Fortune appeared to be that "the consumer packaged-goods industry is welcoming to top-level women."