Here's another example of driving innovation at warp speed, and the challenges faced by Old Line newspaper publishers.
In August 2011, then-CEO Craig Dubow announced plans to redesign all the company's U.S. news sites and mobile apps to boost Gannett's revenue and readership amid ongoing declines in advertising.
The following month, two Stanford University students, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, released software they had developed from Spiegel's father's livingroom, laying the foundation of a messaging company they named Snapchat.
Two years later, Gannett has launched the new sites and apps at only USA Today and a handful of other newspapers and TV stations. It hopes to reach the company's 35 biggest markets by the end of the year.
And Snapchat? Users now send 350 million daily messages or "snaps," up from 200 million in June. Based in Los Angeles, it has fewer than 30 employees, according to USAT. And today, The Wall Street Journal reported the tiny startup recently turned down a $3 billion cash acquisition offer from Facebook. It hopes for a better deal from a growing line of suitors.
In August 2011, then-CEO Craig Dubow announced plans to redesign all the company's U.S. news sites and mobile apps to boost Gannett's revenue and readership amid ongoing declines in advertising.
 |
| Snapchat's logo. |
Two years later, Gannett has launched the new sites and apps at only USA Today and a handful of other newspapers and TV stations. It hopes to reach the company's 35 biggest markets by the end of the year.
And Snapchat? Users now send 350 million daily messages or "snaps," up from 200 million in June. Based in Los Angeles, it has fewer than 30 employees, according to USAT. And today, The Wall Street Journal reported the tiny startup recently turned down a $3 billion cash acquisition offer from Facebook. It hopes for a better deal from a growing line of suitors.
What you're ignoring is that Gannett and firms like snapchat are completely different. Snapchat is not a content company. Gannett is. Twitter should be more concerned about snapchat than Gannett. Gannett owns the content which people want, and are prepared to pay for. Snapchat is a means for teenagers to send smutty messages to one another without fear of their parents finding them out!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Gannett owns the content that old people want, consumers who are dying in droves everyday.
DeleteHow many digital newspaper subscriptions has Gannett sold to its target audience of young readers in the nearly two years since it launched paywalls?
Laugh all you want, but teenagers and other young consumers are where it's at with advertisers.
Gannett is a content company. Are we supposed to be impressed by that statement. First,fewer and fewer people want its shriveled, shallow,pretentious fill and your reference to smutty pictures underscores why you and the rest of the Gannett non-think tank never really connective th young people.all you do is treat them like morons and set yourselves up as the content kings when you are only the castle jokers.
DeleteBe smug and live satisfied--and turn out the light when your last content customer waves sayonara
"Teenagers and other young consumers" may be "where it's at" (whatever that groovy expression means)—but they've never seen an ad, and never will.
DeleteI think this is a very perceptive post by Jim. You could add that the companies founded since 2005 include Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube. U.S. newspaper revenue peaked in 2005 and is down by almost 60% since then.
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting contrast, Gannett vs. Snapchat, sure, but I'm not sure there's anything profound about it.
ReplyDeleteI mean, let's say Gannett had invented Snapchat. Great. Now what? "This news story will self-destruct in 10 seconds"?
Or, maybe, Gannett should have been expected to build Snapchat and sell it for a gazillion dollars, to subsidize its news operations? Really? Newspaper companies should be expected to invent technology they can't use?
There's no denying that newspaper companies, which always have been better operators than innovators, have been glacially slow to innovate, to their everlasting detriment. But what's the point in observing that they failed to invent a killer app?
There is content. There are platforms. In a digital world, they are different things.
I'm not suggesting Gannett should have invented its own Snapchat (or Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Sadly, this is a company that has been unable to sustain even some of its own in-house startups. Anyone remember Moms Like Me?
DeleteWhat I am comparing is the speed with which these two companies executed their separate projects from the same starting points.
How's Deal Chicken doing?
Delete(7:49 here) okay, thanks for helping me get your point. No argument from me that newspapers take far too long to implement change. Still, I don't take too much instruction from a comparison of two otherwise unoccupied guys in a basement writing a single batch of code, to the largest newspaper publisher in America trying to drive even a single new program through the entire organization.
DeleteYour Senior Leadership Team knows what its doing. We will win. Were best in class.
ReplyDeleteYou"ll see!!!!!!
Are you serious? "Were best in class"? Is there a copy editor in the house?
DeleteWhen you connect the dots, Jim makes a good point. Gannett is a huge corporation that can afford to hire talented tech people, yet it continues to fumble and falter while tiny start ups create sleek tech that people love.
ReplyDeleteIf you work at a paper that has switched to the awful Newsgate system and now are forced to use the mostly incompatible (or shoehorned) Presto for web publishing -- you know this quite well.
How much $$ has Gannett wasted in the past few years on failed web designs, buggy apps for papers and the unstable sharing platform Newsgate that no one in newsrooms really knows how to use?
Amen about Newsgate. Sometimes it's hard to believe this came from the same company as our previous system. Sure there were some bugs at first, but once those were fixed we had few problems. NG3 has been nothing but a nightmare. The thing just doesn't work and our paper received next-to-no training. It's been the blind leading the blind.
DeleteI've had Newsgate blip out a few stories. Sometimes you get a "recovered " version, but not always. I've used ssystems for many years and this is one of the worst, and bucking for worst.
DeleteIn the real economy, value is measured in terms of revenue and profits, of which this groovy service has produced precisely nada, nil, zilch, goose eggs, zero.
ReplyDeleteAll public companies are also valued on the basis of future earnings, too. That's called a forward P/E.
DeleteWhen you've never made a dime in income, and there is no rational basis to believe you ever will, then forward earnings are negative all the way down.
DeleteThey made a big mistake turning down the $3 billion.
ReplyDeleteGannett, a content company, 6:26? Ha! How laughable. By content, you mean photo galleries and reader-submitted press releases and high school sports score, right? For all its pledges to be a leading content provider, Gannett would die to hatch a Snapchat or a Twitter or a Yelp.
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget paid obituaries.
ReplyDelete