Guardian: The future of digital media

By Steve Keenan

Just when you thought that it had all been said… another seminar to remind you of how fast the digital landscape is evolving.

The Guardian adopted a digital-first stance last year, and many look to the Guardian News & Media group to provide answers as to how to balance journalistic output and costs with digital revenues.

But at a @GdnMediaNetwork briefing this morning, CEO Andrew Miller said digital revenues will still only equate to 30% of revenues in 2012-13. What’s more, the figure will only have grown from 22% in two years.

While The Guardian and Observer newspapers lose money, GNM can still draw on cash reserves and 50% stakes in two other businesses to “fund the transition,” says Miller. “It’s not sustainable forever but we are working our way through it.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian is cutting another 100 editorial jobs in the latest round of cost-savings (although it is taking more and more digital and IT specialists). So, how long does to take to make a transition?

Step forward The Guardian’s head of media and technology, the indefatiguable @DanSabbagh: “We don’t have that advantage of time. We need to come up with business models reasonably quickly.”

The comments really brought home to me how social and digital media is in another ‘white-heat’ phase, with 2013 shaping up to be the mobile furnace - half a century after Prime Minister Harold Wilson made his ‘White Heat of Technology’ speech.

Mobile now accounts for 10% of all internet links; tablet sales are rocketing, YouTube TV channels are being launched and, says Sabbagh, the arrival of 4G later this year “will change everything. Everything will be coming at top speed to a device in your hand.”

GNM will also have launched responsive platforms by 2013, starting with mobile, then scaling in size to fit tablet and desktop.

New GNM figures also show that while desktop links still peak at between 1pm-3pm, mobile is at 7am and between 9-10pm. And iPad links also peak at around 10pm, either being used as a second screen while watching TV - or while in bed.

“It is the most exciting time. The world is full of possibilities - based on the number of developers and platforms you have - but there is a disconnect, a tremendous pessimism, with the value of media. Many are struggling to keep up.”

Fascinating stuff - and all travel-related companies and media will be painfully aware of the need to adapt. Even more so, as Sabbagh made perhaps the most telling point of all - that all producers of content are competing against each other for people’s time.

There are still only 24 hours in a day, and the choice of media (and how it is viewed) is expanding incredibly. We are all producing more and more content, but how much of it will ever be seen if a) it isn’t brilliant and b) distributed well?

The last word goes to Sabbagh. “We have to be competitive - and relevant. I come to you excited, and in despair. Which is my normal state of mind.”