How has the media changed in the past 10 years? We ask the experts

March 2017 will be the 10th edition of the Digital Innovators' Summit, marking years of insight, discussion, and excitement around the future of digital media. Registration is now open, and our special discounted rate applies if you book before December 1st.

A lot has changed in a decade - from the decline of MySpace and Bebo, the huge shift to mobile, the resurrection of podcasts, and an explosion of blogs morphing into a whole new industry we now know as digital publishing. 

In light of how enormously the landscape has altered, and in celebration of 10 years of the Digital Innovators' Summit, we decided to get in touch with past speakers and industry specialists to hear their thoughts on past shifts and future challenges.

We asked each of them two questions: what's been the most significant change in the media in the past 10 years, and what's the biggest challenge facing publishers in the decade to come? Read their answers below.

John Wilpers, senior director/US of INNOVATION Media Consulting

What do you think has been the most significant change in the media in the last 10 years? 

Everyone is going to take the easy way out and say: "Digital". But the digital revolution is only a part, albeit a huge part, of a profound change in the very business model of the media business.

Media companies have had to 1) Realize that their content and revenue models must radically change to become more diverse, flexible, and creative, and then 2) They must act on that realization quickly and creatively.

Content models must now be multi-platform, multimedia, 24-7, and include "content" like real-time events, reader data, and more, while the revenue model must expand well beyond advertising and subscriptions to events, data products, marketing services, consumer companies in their niche (witness Hearst's investment in SAAS healthcare company MedHOK), creative partnerships, and much more. If media companies do not change their content and revenue models, they will not be around in 10 years.

What do you think is the biggest challenge for publishers in the next 10 years?

The biggest challenge for publishers in the next 10 years will be to totally transform their companies into content creation and service providing companies that are totally focused on satisfying reader needs at the time, in the medium, and on the platform that the consumer prefers, supported by a revenue model that is far less susceptible to disruption than the advertising/circulation model of today.

While that is easy to say, most publishers are presiding over legacy businesses that are not easy to change quickly and often populated by people with little or no interest in changing what they do every day. So, in a way, the biggest challenge publishers really face is changing the culture within their own company to be creative, innovative, nimble, and not afraid to change. That is very difficult. But, the alternative is death. No kidding.

Tim Ewington, Co-founder & strategy director, ShortList Media

What do you think has been the most significant change in the media in the last 10 years?

The gap in the quality of journalism, photography and short narrative stories created by big media companies and talented individuals has narrowed enormously and in more and more sectors the talented individual beats the incumbent publisher hands down. 

What do you think is the biggest challenge for publishers in the next 10 years?

The ever increasing dominance of Facebook and Google as they dominate consumer knowledge and interaction and take the vast majority of digital advertising dollars as a result.

Professor Lucy Küng, Google Digital News Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute, Oxford University, Professor of Media Innovation at Oslo University, and member of the board at SRG, the Swiss public service broadcaster, and of the digital advisory board at the NZZ Media Group

What do you think has been the most significant change in the media in the last 10 years?

The most significant change for the media industry has actually been the massive transformation in the tech industry, bringing with it the relentless ascendancy of technology in all industrial sectors. What is really critical for the media is the emergence of the new ‚media-tech’ sector. Many of the mammoth digital disrupters - Facebook, Amazon, Google, belong to this, as do ‚smaller‘ digital media plays like BuzzFeed, Vox and Pandora. These are tech companies as much as media ones, and technological and editorial competencies are entwined in their DNA. 

What do you think is the biggest challenge for publishers in the next 10 years?

This will sound like heresy, but it’s time to stop focusing on content and concentrate on the organisation instead. The biggest challenge for publishers in the next 10 years will be crafting a strategic response to this daunting situation and pulling that strategy off. Publishers are overshadowed by hyper-scale digital platforms. They are losing control of distribution and access to audiences. They lack capital to achieve scale.

A set of alien and formidably well run and well capitalised players are setting the competitive pace. Yet there is growth, terrific growth, to be found in digital markets, and huge amount of external funding available to publishers who can master trends in online advertising and capture millennial audiences.  And publishers have some of the most intelligent and motivated workforces to be found. 

Over the past ten years publishers have focused on transforming their products, on developing digital content: now it is time to apply that intelligence and commitment to transforming their organisations.

If they want to cross the digital chasm and thrive on the other side then they need to engage in deep strategy work (especially on points of unique strategic leverage and how to find scale), create agile organisations that can shift in step with digital media markets, ensure their cultures are pro-digital, and build competencies in technology, data and UX equivalent to their mastery of editorial functions. if they want to play to the end of the digital media battle they need to really get their organisational act together.

Jamie Gavin, managing director, inPress Online

What do you think has been the most significant change in the media in the last 10 years?

Social. When I wrote the Magazine Media Handbook for the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) in 2007 the big emphasis was on the wave of digital that was sweeping across the publishing industry. Magazines were migrating online. But shortly after that the ’second wave’ of social hit, and that was important because it meant that publishers could no longer simply migrate online they needed to change the very fabric of their content too, making is shorter, making it shareable, making it relevant for multiple formats. As social has evolved over the years the successful publishers have embraced and kept up with that change. The less successful ones not so much. 

What do you think is the biggest challenge for publishers in the next 10 years?

I think probably consistency. When you’re publishing a weekly or a monthly magazine title you have scope to go out their and paint the ceiling of the cystine chapel, really nail it for your audience. Online and on social you don’t really have that luxury. You need to be contemporary, you need to be current you need to be real. You need to create editorial, video and social content that is engaging and interesting on a consistent basis, but within the commercial parameters of making it profitable.

Very difficult game to play on a consistent basis, but achievable, if you approach your brand, your content, your audience, and the commercialisation of your content with a long-term, sustainable strategy. Of course in the longrun its the publishers who can attract audiences online consistently that will find the most success.

-------------------------------------------------------

The 10th DISummit is going to be a good one! Registration is now open with our early launch offer saving delegates €600 on final rates. This special pre-agenda offer is available until 1 December 2016.