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Inside Forbes: The Fast Times and Hard Truths About Building a New Model for Journalism

This article is more than 9 years old.

Right after the sale of FORBES was announced, I got a gracious and astute email from an industry colleague I have followed closely for 10 years. He expressed admiration for our accomplishments -- the reinvention of a grand old media brand by way of new models for journalism and advertising. Yet, he saw our story as a "cautionary tale" for newsrooms in search of a "simple solution" to their problems. "I never thought you thought it was simple," he said. "I think others interpret it that way... or rather, wish they could."

He's right. Nothing was or is simple about the media industry's predicament, or our get-it-done-now effort to transform Forbes.com into a publishing platform for journalists, experts and marketers. Every day, I ponder the professional, career and business complexities of it all, especially when I hear that such-and-such plans to start a contributor model or leap into native advertising (Note: I vote for dropping the descriptor "native," since advertising clearly labeled is marketing and content properly sourced is content).

Over four years (six counting True/Slant, my startup), I've "unapologetically" told journalists the time has come to think differently. With the same openness, I've pointed out (in my posts and on panels) challenges and shortcomings that are either specific to us or the news industry. In that spirit, here are 10 things we're still grappling with as we continue to chart our own course:

1) The Newsroom: We've replaced a century of time-worn journalistic thinking and processes with the intuitive digital skills of a new professional. They live and breathe the "life," but skipped the old-world apprenticeship phrase (Where Have You Gone, Bob Feit?). That puts periodic strains on traditional notions of journalistic excellence. Younger journalists also have different workplace expectations, making it imperative that typically slow-to-promote news organizations offer a clearly visible career path.

2) Contributor Model:  Providing publishing freedoms to 1,500 writers (up from 250 four years ago) results in style inconsistencies that would make a New Yorker editor's head explode. Contributor-initiated tech issues can be problematic, too. The improper inclusion of a Wikepedia photo in one post carried along special characters that confused our servers, slowing the site to a crawl for agonizing hours. The herd mentality, particularly for hot-button stories (think Apple and certain tragic events), tends to break down topic discipline.

3) Design: The image-based Web, as opposed to blog-like chronology and utility, is gaining speed. Photos rule on Facebook, generating 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84%  more clicks than text posts. Pinterest is much the same. That makes contributor access to rich photo feeds far more critical. That's good and bad since their expertise is not photo editing. The overall Web is getting better-looking, too. Scaling pretty necessitates a new relationship between technology and editors. As I discussed in this post, the new ForbesLife.com is one path.

4) The Digital Page: I saw a t-shirt the other day -- "It's Difficult to be Simple." We've shot ourselves in the foot (or maybe I did) a few times. The Follow Bar at the bottom of the page comes to mind (it's still around on some pages). Too many elements is no good. Too much movement on the screen in the name of cool is no good. Too much choice made possible by algorithms is no good. The page is about navigation, the post and ads. End story. Our new article page, which will start rolling out later this year, keeps discipline in mind.

5) Incentives: Pay and human behavior go hand-in-hand. Our contributor payment model rewards quality output. It also rewards building loyal audiences. Something interesting happens when the two combine (with great SEO) to produce long-tail content that generates annuity monthly income: quality output begins to slow. We continue to adjust the model knowing that it's good to have 10,000 posts "in play," or generating clicks, at any given moment.

6) Advertising: Talk about complexity. It's a Rubik's Cube, or one of those multi-level Star Trek chess boards. The audience is going mobile (smartphone users are 4x tablets), but unless you're Facebook the desktop is the money machine no matter how many digital know-it-alls declare it dead. Here's what can make my head hurt: what's a domestic desktop visitor worth compared with a smartphone or tablet user, and how does that compare with international desktop, smartphone and tablet users? That depends on PVs/UV per device per source (did the visitor come from Yahoo or Facebook?) and CPMs, which depend on whether the ads are sold by humans or on computer exchanges. And that's before calculating above-the-fold and below-the-fold inventory, clickthrough performance on 300 pixel ads vs 600 pixels, or ad campaign fulfillment. We're looking at our upcoming responsive article page as a potential worldwide solution to such intricacies.

7) The Data: Total UVs and PVs are quaint. Yes, I certainly like that comScore put our domestic, multi-platform audience (that's desktop, mobile and tablet) at 30 million in August.  The access points for UVs and PVs are getting far more important. What does it mean to have 13 million mobile exclusive users? What's the depth of their scrolling? The time spent? Off-domain numbers matter, too. Should a news organization post to its Facebook page once, twice or three times an hour? And what about Twitter chats? What's a good tweet-to-retweet ratio? Data on contributors needs to be granular, too -- and in real time -- to analyze productivity.

8) The Tools: The tools will set you free. Since the Web is getting more visual, so must the user interface for publishing tools. We're pondering just such a face lift for a new generation of writers that will increasingly demand it.

9) Social: Competing interests for a slice of our social streams (marketers covet our 3.6 million Twitter followers, up from 70,000 four years ago) creates a new kind of inventory pressure (not to mention transparency issues). Focus is a challenge, too. Does the new ForbesLife.com obsess about Twitter or the more visual Pinterest? Each requires different mind sets and programming skills. The good news: if done with proper labeling, social streams can be programmed to generate incremental ad revenue.

10) Video: Scaling video contributors is hard. It's a bit of a Catch 22. We look for writers with expertise in their topic area. That typically means they're a bit older, more comfortable with text and less so with pointing the lens on themselves. The selfie generation is comfortable with staring into the camera, but often lacks the professional work experience. We've got plans for The 30 Under 30 Summit coming up in Philadelphia that could help.

I could go on and on. Media observers, a breed apart, prefer to drone on that we're "diluting the brand." Much of their concern stems from fear of the future  -- and the uncertainty of their role in it. In fact, we're extending the FORBES brand vision. Readers navigate to relevant content, returning only if they like what they get. comScore says our audience is three to four times higher than four years ago (September is likely to set new records). MRI puts FORBES magazine readership at 6 million, up from 5 million a year or so ago, and by far the most in our category. More than 50 marketers publish content on Forbes.com through our BrandVoice program. The first to do so (SAP) is still going strong. We've crossed the great divide -- nearly 65% of total advertising revenue is digital. This year, digital revenues are again pacing 20% or more higher. And in a licensing deal, a FORBES financial tower is in development in the Philippines.

This brings us to our new ownership, an international investor group that believes in our media model, the technology that drives it and the branding potential for FORBES across the world, particularly in Asia. Next week, I'm in Hong Kong -- to learn, share and discuss the rewards, complexities and dreams of a modern media company. As I say in staff meetings... onward to our global future.