News Strong to News Weak

A venerable giant in our news lexicon, Newsweek shifts from print to online only.

Newsweek, an 80-year-old standard-bearer for news magazines, announced on October 18 that they would cease print operations at the start of 2013, and switch to an all-digital format.

It’s hard not to see this development as gloomy, especially for we news consumers who’ve seen daily local papers shrink or disappear, and who’ve seen dramatic changes forced on venerable outfits like the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Christian Science Monitor, and the The New York Times Magazine.

Newsweek’s editor-in-chief, Tina Brown, makes clear in her announcement that the organization is reacting to the same demographic shifts and economic forces that downsized the Times-Picayune and compelled the Monitor to publish only online. She cites the 39 percent of Americans who say they get their news from the Web, as well as the explosive growth in tablet users, who are perhaps the ripest targets for subscription-based digital distribution. She leaves unspoken the shrinking circulation of print editions — and the commensurate shrinkage of ad revenue — but there’s no doubt these were the spurs that made Newsweek’s shift inevitable.

We’ll miss Newsweek, at least the Newsweek we’ve come to know. Brown promises no change in editorial vitality and journalistic integrity, and we have no reason to doubt her word. But still, the nostalgia…

But we’re advertisers and business people, and nostalgia pays no bills. In that respect, what does an all-online Newsweek mean to us? 

It means that marketers had better come to understand, to master, the evolutionary changes in the news industry. Consumers will still be reading Newsweek, as well as all the other digital outlets, and they’ll still be receptive to our advertising messages.

But they’ll be a somewhat different set of consumers. On average they’ll be younger, more tech-savvy, more affluent. And as tier-based subscribers, they’ll be empowered to pick and choose which marketing messages they’ll see. These are the realities that create insurmountable challenges for some 21st-century advertisers and awesome opportunities for others.

So yes, we’ll miss the Newsweek we’ve known all our lives. But we’re ready to work with the new Newsweek, and ready to thrive in this new media landscape. We hope you are too.

The C4:

1. The December 31, 2012 issue of Newsweek will be their last in print. As of New Year 2013, Newsweek will join the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times Magazine in shifting to an all-digital format.
    
2. Grant yourself a moment of nostalgia. Think about the noble history of print news in this country. Reflect on the sad fact that the print news industry is disappearing before our eyes.
    
3. But let that moment pass, and get busy adapting. For advertisers, this new media landscape presents awesome opportunities. It’s an entirely different world, requiring different approaches and newly developed skillsets.
    
4. We’re dedicating ourselves to embracing this new world, and we hope you are too. Tina Brown would agree: it’s a matter of survival.

Are You Complaining About The Complainers?

Be careful when responding to online reviews.

How do you deal with an unhappy customer? Unfortunately there’s no one right answer for that. Factors like your business model, their specific complaint, even the current economic climate all go into determining how you can best put the gruntle back into the disgruntled.

But there are plenty of wrong ways to do it, and plenty of object lessons in how not to behave.

Not surprisingly, these lessons are all Internet-related. There’s danger inherent in the Internet, in that illusory degree of separation and in the way your impulsive typing-and-clicking can spread ‘round the world, and never be taken back.

Customers complain online. We have to accept that fact. Services like Yelp and Epinions make it as easy as can be for consumers to log their good and bad buying experiences. Alas, it’s been proven again and again they’re far more likely to talk about the bad than the good. And as bad as that might seem, it’s often the merchants’ reactions that really do the damage. Consider the evidence:

A one-star Yelp review for a Chicago-based wine-paring class resulted in dueling blog insults, and finally a half-million dollar defamation suit against an internationally renowned oenologist. In an email he accused his customer of acting like a child, but the resulting publicity hurt only him.

In Canada, a restaurateur responded to negative reviews by creating a fake sex site profile for the reviewer. She’s just been convicted of two counts of defamatory libel and will be sentenced later this year.

And perhaps the worst: the owner of an online eyeglass retailer has just been sentenced to four years in prison for stalking, harassing and intimidating critics. He would routinely email and even telephone reviewers, threatening them with his knowledge of their personal information such as home addresses. Amazingly, he was apparently courting bad feedback, under the theory that any online mention at all result in higher search-engine rankings.

How shortsighted. In business, your only real currency is your reputation. Your reputation utterly depends on how you deal with the most challenging situations. Can you win back every unhappy customer? Probably not, but you can certainly extend the effort to try to make things right. In the most extreme cases you can just ignore them. But engaging in a very public war of words (or worse)? That’s something you can’t win, and can never undo.

The C4:

1. Try though you might, you can’t make every customer happy. Unhappy customers complain, and in our digital age there’s a very good chance they’ll complain online. Do yourself a favor and accept that fact.
2. Resist the urge to engage. Yes, it burns inside to see your business publicly disparaged, especially if you don’t agree with the reviewer’s version of facts. But do you want to play “he said/she said” with the whole world watching?
3. Instead, consider your alternatives. Can you turn a negative into a positive? Can you swallow your pride, say Mea Culpa, and make some kind of public effort at reconciliation? It might not feel good, but it’ll look good.
4. Failing that, just walk away. Readers of online reviews are willing to take outlying gripes with a grain of salt. Prove your critic wrong by giving stellar service to everyone else who walks through your door. If you engage and say the wrong thing you’ll be tarnished forever. Treat your reputation as currency, and never risk it on a sucker’s bet.