Was I wrong?
23 mai 2007 by leo
In a recent post, I referred to the the interview (in French) of Jean-Marie Colombani in L’Express. As the editor of one of the 3 national daily newspapers in France, he advocated for the development of the online edition of Le Monde, on the Financial Times model.
Today, the journalists of Le Monde decided not to follow his path, putting an end to his 12 years long career as the editor of the daily.
Obviously, other reasons led to this choice. French written press is undergoing deep crisis. The last presidential election uncovered people mistrust in the media as a whole, and journalists on the front line.
But Colombani’s inspired opinion on the written press future was undoubtedly too controversial in such a conservative industry. Wait to see his successor views on this subject …
Tags: Colombani, Le Monde, Written press
05/26/2007 à 18:39
This sounds very much like the situation in Germany! The leading papers here are not in a hurry to promote their web-business. Instead they hope the very best for their printproducts…
One exception: Die Welt (www.welt.de) is really trying hard on the web.
05/27/2007 à 4:02
As I know, Die Welt is kind of a reference in German media landscape. But I am not surprised most of the european newspapers (except some exceptions like Die Welt or the Financial Times) are reluctant to acknowledge the change of written press business model. Especially in Gutemberg’s country, people may be quite conservative with this industry.
05/27/2007 à 13:07
Oh yes! That must the real reason why the “web 2.0″ is lagging so much in Germany. We Germans are (unconsciously) still deeply connected to Gutemberg…;-)
But: The main problem to me seems to be a lack of understanding and a lack of competence in web-media. (Elder) Managers and journalists who decide about the strategies of their papers often are not trained or skilled in using the web and so they underestimate it.
It’s the same in my consulting-business: You can’t believe how difficult it is to explain the advantages of blogs or wikis to managers, who never before saw or used them!
Newspapers face the web for some 15 years now and they could have seen the web 2.0 emerge since about 2004 (in Europe). Still there is no understanding of the undergoing (longterm) evolution in electronic media and the web.
Most managers still take the web for a different “channel”. So what will happen? Some papers will survive, most will slowly decline and sooner or later stop publishing.
What do you think?
06/03/2007 à 22:51
Hi Matthias,
Sorry for the dalay to answer your comment, Akismet blocked it as a spam!
I totally agree with you in Internet only seen as “another channel” by mainstream newspapers management. Moreover, it’s seen as a threat since digital data is easily duplicable, and very difficult to sell. As if selling newspapers was excused by the cost of the paper! I think such approach is undervaluing journalists jobs. Yet, it can be shared among this population.
All technical revolutions changed business models. That’s the main difficulty for established companies: understand resistance against progress is pointless and conterproductive. Regarding the Internet, most advanced and innovative publishing companies are getting late due to conservatism. They are now suffering from it.