Following a panel discussion at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong on social media and journalism, Marketing Interactive did a quick video interview. They summed up my comments as: “Social media is a bigger threat than opportunity.”

The key to this success has been reach and diversity of content, according to the site’s managing editor, Alan Soon. I caught up with Alan at the WPP Stream conference in Thailand.

For reach, Yahoo “introduces the human element” by engaging prominent bloggers in each market. These bloggers, in turn, pull in second-tier bloggers. The result is a growing and closely-knit community of influencers.

Rather than build niche markets, however, Yahoo aims to make content as diverse as possible. Instead of just news headlines of the day, for example, Yahoo Southeast Asia follows the lead of the Huffington Post in writing about a wide range of topics.

Yahoo’s importance as a portal has had no small effect on its success as a news site, but it is still surprising that traditional media have not been able to dislodge Yahoo as the leading news site.

Any theories why?

A recent report on e-readers by Bain and Company opens with the above graph of declining turnover seen by the music industry. (UPDATE: Came across an interesting critique of this chart on music revenues.) Will writing revenues go the way of the music industry?

Other charts of note include the adoption rates of e-readers across different market, e-reader prices and a nice summary of how writing must change and adapt to the environment.

Not surprisingly, Bain’s research study found that early adopters of digital reading devices and multipurpose tablets mostly are already heavy readers. They are more often men than women, describe themselves as more affluent than average and tend to be in their 20s and early 30s. They value the flexibility of reading in different settings and the new devices’ ease of use. Reading behaviors suggest that while digital formats are bound for a promising future and will initially be used as a complement to paper.
The second wave of the digital migration should broaden the e-readers’ market. Readers who told us they are considering purchasing digital devices in the near future are mostly women and are older than 35 years of age.

Which devices will be favored? According to Bain, the emerging scenario suggests a shifting balance between e-readers, such as Amazon’s Kindle, and multipurpose tablets, such as Apple’s iPad. Early on, e-readers could capture as much as a third of the market, based on a price advantage and a reading experience that closely matches that of paper. Multipurpose tablets, priced above most consumers’ $300 psychological threshold, are still too expensive for mass-market adoption. Yet over time, they could predominate by capitalizing on multimedia capabilities that appeal to a broader audience and as their prices inevitably decline. Indeed, access to other media and valuable functions may open the gates on e-book penetration rates.

How will reading change? The report had a nice summary.

Hybrid: The digital era opens up books and written content to cross-breeding with other media. For instance, nonlinear reading becomes a multimedia experience. The “vook,” for example, adds a set of high-definition visuals to the reading experience. ScrollMotion and Sesame Street created children’s e-books that enhanced the text with audio tracks (Elmo’s ABC Book). Random House has also developed applications that mix text, music and narration.

Nonlinear: In new press services, websites such as Memorandum compile professional articles and political blogs, selected by an algorithm from among hundreds of sites from all ends of the opinion spectrum. The juxtaposition of such diverse content and sources offers a new reading experience, but also raises questions about the selection criteria and quality of the information.

Interactive: The reader’s participation in book publishing may seem incongruous in such a supply-driven industry. After all, the creative thinking usually stems from the author. Yet some experiments suggest that new formats may succeed in attracting younger, creation-hungry generations to the world of literature. In The Amanda Project, the reader is actively involved in writing a collaborative script. Given a starting point, the Internet user is prompted to continue the tale, and the best contributions are then published in paper format. On his “How to Change the World” blog, venture capitalist and business author Guy Kawasaki asks readers to help shape the theme and story of his next book.

Social: Finally, digital publishing has created a feedback mechanism, whereby authors can communicate directly with their audience, and readers can communicate with one another. Authonomy.com, operated by HarperCollins, helps hopeful authors create their own webpage and upload their manuscript for all visitors to see. The readers can then vote and comment on a manuscript that, if successful, is then published in paper format. Amazon recently acquired Shelfari.com, which brings together a community of readers who share their favorite books through a virtual library—an initiative comparable to publisher Hachette Livre’s website MyBoox.

My quick thoughts:

Journalists spend their time going against the crowd.

When there was an earthquake in Taiwan, I fought to find a seat on a flight into Taipei (actually, it was rather easy to do). As highways jammed with cars driving north from the Gulf of Mexico, I headed south to the Alabama waterfront where Hurricane Ivan would most likely hit. As the Asian financial crisis of 1997/98 deepened, I found myself going to the region’s most politically unstable countries. A number of times I have found myself in live warzones.

Some journalists behave this way because they are disaster and crisis junkies, but most are not. Journalists behave this way because they constantly seek moments of change.

The more fundamental the break in continuity, the happier the journalist (and the bigger the story).

This desire to witness change often drives journalists to take personal risks beyond those most people take at work.

The sad question, beyond the journalists’ behavior, is why it takes a crisis for change to happen?

It seems that people content themselves with living life as it stands, making compromises over time. In a moment of crisis, however, the price of these compromises can be crystalized by a single act, anecdote or photograph. We can all think of those iconic images of change.

By being there at the moment the statue fell, the day the soldiers took to the street or inside the war-torn city, journalists can get a sense from the crisis of where change will go. Sensing this change is not a spectator sport that can be done behind a computer or a thousand miles away.

To understand it, you need to be so close to change that you can feel the texture and taste it. To me, change is crunchy in your mouth and tastes a lot like the dust blown up from a road where long-cowed citizens find the courage to confront their adversaries.

That is not a crisis you are witnessing, it is a change. Hopefully change for the better.

(No, Time magazine is not dead. That is Time Style and Design)

No word from Mr. Sulzberger or the NY Times yet, but I have been heartened by postings of support from fellow bloggers and even mainstream journalists.

Postings included Boing Boing, Reuters, The Guardian, Dan Gillmor, MyPhillyNetwork, Phiforfools, Same Rowdy Crowd, a Belgian podcast Audioboo, a site called “The NYTpicker” (They only writes about the NY Times) as well as TIME magazine‘s Justin Fox. Numerous people Twittered the posting.

P2Pnet created the illustration the left.

Sadly, through these conversations I have learned of similar moves by other major publications. These are the same publications that have repeatedly claimed they fully embrace the web.

The rogues gallery – in addition to my august former employer, The New York Times – now includes:

Fortune

Justin Fox on Fortune switching URL:

I’ve been steamed for years because, when fortune.com became money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/, the Time Warner powers that be saw fit to delete from existence out all web-only content that had previously resided on fortune.com, including the ‘London Calling’ columns I wrote every week in 2000 and 2001.

David Kirkpatrick lost his online-only column:

I had been writing my online-only Fast Forward column since early 2002, and when the switch was made at the beginning of 2006, all the links were broken and there was no effort made to republish the columns at the new combined site. Today the column archive at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fastforward/  does not go back beyond 2006. This happened also to a couple of other Fortune online columnists as well.

It was presented as a cost-saving measure. Apparently the labor required to rebuild the pages on the new site was considered unjustified. But it’s often been pointed out to me that if you believe in any version of the Long Tail argument it is shortsighted, even from a cold-blooded financial perspective. Fortune and now the Times are losing the opportunity to present ads on a lot of very specific articles, which might not be often viewed but which almost certainly sometimes would be.

And of course, as you note, it’s rude and journalistically disrespectful.

Conde Nast

When Felix Salmon left Portfolio magazine his identity was stolen:

My name was summarily erased from more than 4,000 blog entries at Portfolio.com, when the site hired Ryan Avent to replace me. Now, everything I wrote has Ryan’s name on it instead of mine. You could call it erasing my career, I suppose. It can be fixed quite easily — if Portfolio.com stays up, which it’s far from obvious that it will — but I’m told there are no staff available to fix it.

TIME

After shutting down AsiaWeek – once Asia’s largest circulation regional news magazine – Alejandro Reyes found all his articles erase. How much would it cost TIME to maintain one server with all of AsiaWeek? Surely the ads would cover the cost.

Time did the very same thing two years ago when it took the Asiaweek archives offline. Today, if anybody wanted to read about the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 in the hope of learning lessons from that period that might be applied to today’s global economic turmoil, he would not be able to access any of Asiaweek’s excellent coverage online. Nobody can now access online any of Asiaweek’s outstanding coverage of Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Whatever you might think about the quality of Asiaweek, it’s a crime against knowledge, scholarship, and the public’s need to know and be informed. This is all very tragic – misguided decisions by New York-centric media bureaucrats whose careers are probably soon to be deleted just as ruthlessly.

Knight-Ridder

Dan Gillmor wrote about when Knight-Ridder homogenized local newspaper websites in 2002:

What K-R did to its papers, to those papers’ readers, to its local journalists, to the Web environment they all once graced, and finally to itself, was a coast-to-coast fuck-you. Gone or buried are all the local papers’ local originalities. They were dispersed, everywhere, in a snowstorm of 404s. Gone are persistent archives. Gone are the paper’s names, sections, and local characters. In their place is the same faceless homogeneity — and no doubt the same cost-cutting, advertising-selling and content-managing rationalizations that Clear Channel gave us when they removed all sense of local origination from commercial radio. (h/t sbw)

Dow Jones (sort of)

Salil Tripathi on how her older stories disappeared behind a firewall when the Far Eastern Economic Review went monthly:

I worked at Far Eastern Economic Review in the late 1990s. The magazine stopped being a weekly around 2004, and was reborn as a monthly a year or so later. I’ve continued to write for it all these years.

FEER’s website has some parts that are free to use, and some restricted only to subscribers. When you search for something specific, you are likely to get only articles that have been published since it became a monthly. To access its rich archive of over 60 years of reporting on Asia, you have to go to factiva, Dow Jones’s proprietary service. Unlike NYT, FEER hasn’t erased stories from an earlier incarnation, but accessing those isn’t easy either.

I’ve written for the International Herald Tribune as well, but as I was not a staffer, and wrote only op-eds, and probably wrote only about a dozen pieces in the last few years, I’m not terribly optimistic that I will get to see my IHT pieces anytime soon!

Know of any other examples?

Two concluding thoughts:

1- How sad that major media companies act with such cavalier attitude towards their major asset: Content.

2- If they are so uninterested in this content, anyone want to team up to buy the content and put it online ourselves? (Seems particularly good idea in the case of the AsiaWeek archives). Anyone know whom I should contact at Time about this?

Road photo courtesy blmurch

Based in Hong Kong, she has management responsibility for the commercial operations of The Wall Street Journal Asia and the regional web site asia.WSJ.com, the monthly Far Eastern Economic Review, the Chinese-language web site Chinese WSJ.com, and spearheads business development initiatives targeting consumers across Asia, both directly and through partnerships.

Ms. Brendle joined the Journal in February 2006, following a 17-year career with the Hachette Filipacchi publishing group in Asia, the U.S. and Europe.

From 1995 to 2001, Ms. Brendle served as president and chief executive officer of Hachette Filipacchi Asia Pacific, and from 1993 to 1995 served as vice president, Asia Pacific, and managing director, Hong Kong and China.

Ms. Brendle also served in a number of other roles for Hachette Filipacchi: from 1991 to 1993 for Hachette Filipacchi Japan and Time Hachette Japan; from 1988 to 1991 for ELLE Publishing and Hachette Publications Inc. in New York; and from 1984 to 1988 for Hachette Filipacchi Presse S.A. in France.

From 2001 until joining the Journal in 2006, Ms. Brendle had been a media industry consultant and publishing entrepreneur. In 2004, with her partners she launched Daily7 and Daily10, two daily English-language newspapers for children. Since 2000, she also has served as a foreign trade adviser to the French Trade Commission.

Ms. Brendle received an M.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business Administration of Columbia University in New York, and a diploma from ESSEC (Ecole Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales) in France.

The global economic crisis has added new and unprecendented pressures to the media industry.

Already reeling from the pace of change brought by the Internet, media companies around the world now face further economic pressures.

What will happen and what can media companies do?

I look forward to moderating an event in Hong Kong on this topic that includes quite a few media heavy-hitters.

Organized by the Society of Publishers in Asia, the event starts with a keynote by Marcel Fenez, head of the global entertainment and media practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Marcel will: “Share his insights and global findings on the impact of the downturn on media: Will digital migration accelerate? How do you manage in this environment? What are the short and long-term strategies for future success?”

I will then moderate a discussion on the future of media with these panelists (Click on their names for more details):

• Thierry Halbroth, senior Creative Director at McCann Worldgroup
• Christine Brendle, MD‐Asia, Dow Jones Consumer Media Group
• Edmund Lee, Partner, Advisory Services, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
• Michelle Kristula‐Green, President of Leo Burnett Asia Pacific

What would you like to hear from them? Any good ideas for questions very welcome.

Hope to see you there!

“The Future of Media Outlook in the New Global Economy”

Foreign Correspondents’ Club, 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong
12:00pm – 2:30pm, 1st April 2009 (Wednesday)

SOPA Members: HK$375
Members of Supporting Partners: HK$425
Non‐Members: HK$475

Book via: mail@sopasia.com or (852) 2572 2100

Applications deadline is 15 April 2009.

The fellowship allows one woman journalist to spend the academic year of September 2009 to May 2010 in a tailored program in the U.S., with access to Boston-area universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as popular newspapers “The Boston Globe” and “The New York Times”.

The fellowship is named for the 1998 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award winner and “The Boston Globe” correspondent who was killed in Iraq in May 2003.

Jarvis is also consulting editor of news startup Daylife and was the Creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly. Before getting passionate about the new media, he was a critic for TV Guide and People.

In order to truly know Jeff, one needs look no further than his comprehensive list of disclosures.

A journalist for over 25 years, she has covered technology for the Wall Street Journal Europe, Time Magazine and the International Herald Tribune. She was also the international editor of Red Herring , managing a team of journalists in Europe, Israel, China and India.

Increasing choice makes people happy up to a point, then turns negative.

This recalls a conversation I had with Steve Jobs about simplicity vs freedom and the iPod.

After a long career in newspapers, Gordon has lately been spending a great deal of time in Silicon Valley.

The good news for start-ups is that traditional media companies are waking up to the need for new media and they are willing to look outside for what they need.

One example: Socialmedian.com – a start-up Gordon is advising – is trying to help people follow and find interesting news. This is good for consumers because it helps them find interesting stories and good for media companies because it shows them a new way for people to find good journalism.

For technology companies looking to attract media companies, they should experiment with ways to add value to existing content that add marginal extra cost.

For traditional media companies, investing in Silicon Valley start-ups can be a good way to stay on top of trends while also potentially finding a big winner.

How does Gordon follow news in this zone? Silicon Alley (in which Gordon is an investor) as well as Paidcontent.org, and All things D.

Interesting statistic: Your age is a good indicator as to how of your peers in the US read newspapers. 70 percent of 70 year olds in the US read newspapers; 30 percent of 30 year olds, etc.

Is there a role for English language publishing in Asia? Yes, but in a very different way from a generation ago when there was less freedom of expression throughout the region. Now there will be a more narrow specialist role around common zones of interest.

LOCALIZATION
“MTV launched into localized content ‘back before it was cool’”.
“At the time, this was controversial because of opening local offices, transponders and all the expense. Now the local strategy has hooked us into many centers of cool around the world.”

“Our aim it to take elements from all channels and connect them to the rest of the world. There are many common elements about how our audience dresses, dates, eats and their music tastes. That said, there are a lot fewer global music stars now.”

CRISIS
“This is a global recession. I was not here in 1929, but 1980/81, 91 and 2001 we recovered strongly. In our business there are some recession-proof aspects. With cable TV subscriptions can go up because people want to stay home.”

Crisis plans for MTV:
1- Focus on the long term
2- Plan for it to be longer than it is.
3- Communicate with employees constantly
4- Energize your employees (redo the bonus structure)
5- There are competitive opportunities in tough times.

“There is a media ladder of where the pain hits first. It starts with print then radio, local television, broadcast television and then cable, Internet and digital.”

AIDS and CLIMATE CHANGE
“Television is often blamed for a lot of things, but by getting involved in issues TV can be a really good thing.”

Two goals of MTV’s AIDS efforts:
1- Arm audience with knowledge of how to protect themselves.
2- Discrimination: It is about humanity and equality.

Steve’s panel featured four high school students talking about their media consumption habits and afterwards the audience was polled to find out whether they thought Asia’s pay TV industry was doing enough to attract those young viewers.

The students described how they often actively fight against the industry to watch TV and access media, but 92 percent of those present said they thought the Pay TV industry was doing enough to attract young people. (Note: Discussion below whether the vote in fact went the opposite way. Seeking clarification, but still not yet received it.)

By definition they are Asia’s leading TV executives so this conclusion was incredible given the devastating indictment of media companies delivered by the the high school students (Details below and on video with Steve)

Who are Millenials?
- Largest generation in America 83mn vs 74mn Babyboomers. They are also the largest consumer group in countries like China and India.
- Optimistic
- Globally focussed
- Digital natives who grew up online
- Like to consume media anywhere, on any device at any time.
- They accept ad-supported media as a reasonable cost for quality content.
- Seek many more services from mobile phones. (“Why can’t I order my Starbucks coffee before I get to the shop?”)
- Ready to invest in home entertainment devices.
- In BRIC countries they are among the largest group of consumers and they want more choice.

Funny footnote at the end of the PwC film featured non-millenials. A series of “older” consumers were interviewed and spoke about how they like to read newspapers and watch scheduled TV . Conclusion by PwC: “Older consumers will maintain habits that support traditional media.”

Verbatims from Steve’s four students from Hong Kong International School:

While the PWC survey found 32% of Millenials prefer to watch TV on Internet, all four members of the panel said they preferred watching on the net over a television screen.

TELEVISION
- “I never like to watch TV on the TV because you can’t multitask and chat with friends at the same time.”
- “I follow US TV, like Desperate Housewives, which we can’t get in Hong Kong, so I watch it online.”
- “I watch a lot of TV shows on Tudou and Megavideo, but generally I get there via another site, like Surfthechannel

MOBILE?
- “If I hear about a new TV episode while in cafeteria from a friend, I will go home and watch it on TV instead of look at it on my mobile.”

PIRACY?
- “I like Hulu and would use it, but they don’t let me watch it here in Hong Kong.”

PAY FOR CONTENT?
- “I only buy music from iTunes, not TV programs.”
- “I use iTunes as a secondary source, if people cannot find it online in peer-to-peer for some reason.”
- “I mainly watch TV downloaded from torrents with limewire.”
- “If they sold the series for less than HK$500, I would buy it. You pay for cable on a monthly basis and it is not that expensive, but if you buy individual episodes, it gets very expensive. This is unreasonable.”

NEWS?
- “I browse the titles, but don’t look at the stories.”
- “I follow CNN.com and the big aggreggators. There is too much bias in blogs to trust them. I mainly just stick to the major outlets.”

SOCIAL NETWORKING
- “I only use Hotmail to see if I have messages sent from Facebook.”
- Each have 500 to 700 friends on Facebook.
- “The good thing about reading something sent over Facebook is that your friend recommended it.”

Moderated by May Lee of Lotus Media House, the panelists fought the perception that Asia and the world are sinking.

Chris Halpin, Director Providence Equity

How does it look out there?
When we look across the landscape now, there is tremendous value. We went from a situation where capital was plentiful to one where it is more valuable. That is good for us.

Where are things looking good in Asian media?
Advertising companies in China. Common wisdom used to be that these companies were all going to the moon, so they became way too expensive. Air Media and Focus Media are now trading below any sense of their fundamental value. Given the macro picture in China, things are looking particularly good. In just 18 months China has gone from a momentum play to a value play. In Southeast Asia, we are very big believers in growth of middle class driving up the value of media. We were more worried about inflation.

Who benefits?
This is a moment in time when it is hard to have a view on value, with markets going up and down by 14 percent in a day. Investment will have to come from funds like Providence Equity or sovereign funds.

Reality check
When you go out in Asia, people are still spending and investing. There are real opportunities when you get out of the panic in money centers like Hong Kong and go to meet real operators. The level of consumer loan leverage in Asia is nothing compared to Europe and the US. There is not a need for consumers in Asia to de-leverage.

Marcel Fenez, global managing partner, Entertainment and Media practice

What is happening out there?
For a long time there was an oversupply of cash, driving up the price of assets. Asset prices our now dropping, which creates new opportunities.

Where are the deals to be done?
There were a lot of hasty deals done in the last few years. Some of those deals might be worth looking at right now. They were based on business plans that don’t work right now and may unravel. Hedge funds are likely looking to close out their positions, so there are bargains out there.

Reality Check
Whatever headline writers like to put on their stories, there is still growth in this region. Headline writers please take note: 10 percent growth is still growth. In most of world, consumers spend 6 percent of their disposable income on media. In Asia, that figure is still only 3 percent, so there is plenty of room to grow.

Jeanette Chan, partner Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison

What is happening?
We still see deals being done and it is a good time for a correction. Deals were getting done so quickly that it is good to have a breather.

Where to look for deals?
Check out who had pre-IPO convertible bonds. The listings likely won’t happen and the capital calls at hedge funds might force people to sell. This is happening in Taiwan where regulations are less stringent. This downturn will also spur governments to relax regulations to increase opportunities. Korea just announced they will allow media cross-ownership. Taiwan is looking to see what ways they can encourage the media sector.

Who else benefits from the present situation?
This is also a good time for media companies themselves to go out and find companies that could provide useful technology.

Good news for TV in Asia:
- Advertising revenue remains stable (for now).

Historically:
- Subscription revenue tends to grow in line with economies, but even in a slowdown pay TV subscriptions – like mobile phones – are one of the last items people stop paying. Traditionally, the cable TV business is not too badly hit in a downturn.

Strongest pay TV companies:
- The best positioned companies are those relying more on subscription revenue and less on the whims of advertiser-based revenue.

Digital transition will bolster the industry:
- Asia is moving into the top tier of digital broadcasting on a global basis. From virtually no digital TV three years ago, Asia now has 60 million digital TV households of the 300 million hooked up to pay TV.

Advantages of digital:
- Greater transparency for reporting consumer actions
- Virtually impossible to pirate
- New ways to sell content. In addition to pay-per-view, digital offers infinite ways of bundling channels and services (broadband and mobile services).

In conclusion, while braced for the economic downturn, Twiston Davies said Asia’s pay TV industry is well positioned and digitization will help.

Looking to the future, Twiston Davies expects Asia’s heavy digitization will also give the region a greater role in shaping the development of digital television on a global basis.

Video of Nick below the fold and here.

Streamed across the Internet, he was not restricted by government regulations or required to build a large broadcast infrastructure.

Why would anyone bother listening to a local Internet radio station when they can use iTunes or Last.fm?
“Anybody can play Madonna or David Bowie,” Swanson said. “It is the bits between the songs that makes you stand out.” Those bits between the songs include promotions for Dragonboat racing and other local events.

Hongkongfm.net’s current and upcoming channels include:
- Top 40
- 1980s
- Classic Rock
- Asia hits
- Alternative

To attract listeners, Nick uses a combination of:
- Events
- T-shirts
- Advertising in city magazines
- Sponsorship
- Advertisements on Hong Kong’s minibuses (He must have purchased adverts on most buses that pass in front of my apartment in Mid-Levels.)

Nick’s music passion is the driving force behind the station and he loves the 5 to 6 hours it takes him to program a full week for one channel.

The future for Hongkongfm.net will be in taking the Internet into devices, such as wifi-receiving clock radios.

Future cities under consideration for Hongkongfm.net include Bangkok and Taipei.

Revenue come from advertising and Nick said he hopes to make Hongkongfm his full time job soon.