Ramón Salaverría is one of the most influential Spaniards in the Internet area (according to El Mundo yearly ranking). He will be the co-chairman of the 17th WAN-IFRA digital publishing conference Beyond 2009 (Barcelona, November 5 and 6).
Salaverría chairs the Journalistic Projects Department as well as the Multimedia Communication Laboratory (MMLab) at the University of Navarra (Pamplona, Spain), where he teaches new media. As an expert in the areas of media convergence* and online news writing, one of his obsessions is to teach his students relevancy to news consumers. "Since the central issue of the conference this year deals with the consumers, I will expect to have a broad and updated landscape of three basical things: what are the editorial strategies, the new technologies and the content formats that are being used by some of the most relevant news organizations in order to supply the best and most profitable information services to their public" says Ramón Salaverría.
Can we say that the editorial quality that is now offered on the different news distribution channels is what the people/audience expect?
Ramón Salaverría: There are details that allow us to guess that the media are not meeting fully the interests of the people. The success, sometimes huge, of certain blogs and niche websites which are dedicated to different kinds of specialised information, tells us that there are issues which are not properly covered by mainstream media. On the contrary, at least in Spain, it seems that many media stick to their own news agenda, which in many cases is far removed from the true interests of the people. The media should not report only about what they are interested in, but especially about the issues that worry people. And they should have to be committed to do it with full professionalism. This would make them relevant also on the Internet.
Many publishers around the world are getting ready to implement paid content and services in their web strategy; do you have also announcements in Spain in this area?
Online media publishers in Spain are following with great interest the evolution of their business in other international markets. Amid the current economic crisis, the Spanish online media brands are seeking alternatives to strengthen their economic situation. For example, in 2009 an association of online publishing companies was formed, called MediosOn (medioson.org/). Such an organisation might help taking coordinated steps towards models of payment in the near future. However, up until now no announcement in that sense has been made by any media company. Moreover, in Spain all publishers remember the case of Elpais.com, which adopted a full payment model between November 2002 and June 2005, just after the crisis of the Internet bubble. That measure removed Elpais.com from its former leadership in the online media market, in favour of its most direct competitors, particularly Elmundo.es. Due to that experience, probably the media editors now will think twice before taking the step to adopt a full payment model.
Monetising Web activities is a crucial issue since a couple of years. How is it progressing in Spain and are media companies more aggressive than they have been in the recent years in the way they do business on the web?
In Spain, the online divisions still have not become major business areas within the media companies. It is true that some online media outlets have already reached a position of profitability. However, their impact on the accounts of companies is still small. It should be considered that in 2008 the total spent on advertising in newspapers was EUR 1,507 million, while the investment in the Internet reached EUR 610 million, according to Infoadex. These amounts tell us that online advertising spend has started to become very relevant in Spain. However, we must recall that the media companies barely attract one-third of that amount. Most of the investment is being monopolised by a few Internet pure-players. And that is the bigger problem for the media companies.
The book you have written in 2009, "Integrated journalism: media convergence and newsroom organisation", will be published soon in English. The 'media convergence' problematic seems to be the same in the countries where you picked your examples, but does that mean that a sort of universal model is emerging for the way journalists work, their required competencies and the editorial process they follow?
There is not any universal model. Our analysis of international models of newsroom integrations has shown that the peculiarities of each national news market, and especially the characteristics of each media company, lead to adopting specific solutions. However, some common points can be found in all the cases. Everywhere, for instance, convergence processes are characterised by the trend towards enhancing the value given to the online content. In other words, these processes are not simply understood like therapies to “save the paper”, but like strategies to re-structure the whole media company.
Have the Spanish newspapers started to implement initiatives to reorganise the way their newsrooms work? Do you also see progresses in Latin America in this area?
Since the end of 2008, the impact of the economic crisis has unleashed an increasing number of convergence processes in some Spanish and Latin American media companies. In Spain, some companies such as Unidad Editorial (publisher of El Mundo, Marca and Expansión) have been taking measures towards integration in each of its titles for over a year. Other big newspapers, like El País (owned by Prisa group) and ABC (Vocento group) have announced in 2009 reorganisation plans and their results soon will be seen. In Latin America, it is also possible to find relevant cases of integration, for instance in Argentina (Clarín), Brazil (O Estado de S. Paulo, Gazeta de Vitória, Grupo RBS...) or Colombia (El Tiempo), suggesting a growing trend towards integrated models in this region. After the summer of 2009 some cases of convergence in smaller media companies will be seen as well. It is an unstoppable trend.
*"Integrated journalism: media convergence and newsroom organisation" published in 2009 will be available in English later this year.
