A New Era of Teamwork

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures—and 2009 has certainly seen its share of status quo-busting strategy development.

By Bill Mickey
Monday, November 9, 2009

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Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures—and 2009 has certainly seen its share of status quo-busting strategy development. Of particular interest is publishers partnering on a grand scale to tackle a perceived devaluation of online content and other contemporary mass media problems.

I blogged about this phenomenon on AudienceDevelopment.com in October, and it continues to fascinate me. Large publishers, from Time Inc. to Hearst to Conde Nast, are putting aside their fierce competitiveness to form consortiums to drive Web-sourced revenues.

Precipitous revenue declines in print have apparently opened up a generous tolerance for sharing.

Take Maghound for example. Time Inc.’s Web-based custom subscription packager is about to exit its proof of concept stage and begin a more robust marketing campaign for all participating publisher titles, not just the Time Inc. ones. In its first year of operation, the service has shipped almost a half-million titles.

And the aforementioned publishers are teaming up to form a much speculated joint venture to produce and distribute digital content via eReaders and mobile devices—all of this apparently hinging on Apple’s tablet-sized reader rumored for release in early 2010. The idea here is to create a common content format, but more importantly, influence and control distribution and pricing. Conde Nast has already tested the waters in a sense with the release of a proprietary digital replica of the December issue of GQ for the iPhone.

In the List Report starting on page 22, contributing editor Karlene Lukovitz reports that big publishers are even sharing database files: “Not only are magazines sticking to the tried-and-true when they do rent; they’re also using list exchanges rather than rentals whenever possible. That includes not just individual title file exchanges, but database exchanges between competing companies (including some of the biggest publishers in the business)...”

Lastly, Mother Jones is leading the formation of an investigative journalism co-op to report on climate change—several publishers will share reporting resources. In an interview with AdAge’s Simon Dumenco, MoJo co-editor Clara Jeffery spoke about the initiative in a way that can apply across the entire industry: “…everybody is really eager to use this as a way to test-drive collaborations, which everybody sees as a vital part of the emerging media landscape. On that front, we’ll likely learn as much from what doesn’t work as what does.”