Media Need Innovation and Adaptation to Survive Upheaval
Revising an annual media publication to include developments during a period gripped by a virus that’s upended everyone’s life is hard enough, so adding fast-paced innovation to the blend makes it doubly challenging.
Producers of the Innovation in Media 2021 World Report come to the rescue by featuring the latest industry trends to ease the pain of evolution in an even more disrupted ecosystem.
“The coming year promises further uncertainty, as different economies — driven by wildly different rates of general vaccination — emerge from the crisis at different speeds,” said James Hewes, president and CEO of FIPP, an international media association, in the introduction. “Here again, further agility and innovation will be needed to take advantage of the new challenge of hybrid working methods (and hybrid products) that span the physical and virtual worlds.”
What does this innovation involve and how can media capitalize on it?
In a chapter entitled “Even You Can Be Creative” the authors noted that pandemic-inspired creativity is everywhere with storytelling being no exception.
They found creativity in audio, video, audience identification, audience engagement, storytelling platforms, story conceptualization, story presentation, low-tech solutions and data reporting.
Podcasts garner much attention and are part of a growing audio field although the format dates back to 2003. Their convenience has led to audio articles listeners can hear anywhere while juggling different errands.
There are two ways of creating audio articles: 1) Have them converted from text to voice using automated AI tools, or 2) Have the authors or professional “voice actors” read them.
According to the Innovation Media Consulting Group report, publishers can produce a greater number of audio stories than pricier formats given their lower cost.
With artificial intelligence breaking countless barriers, text-to-voice technology “can deliver voices in a local accent ‘speaking’ in different moods (urgent, authoritative, soothing, etc.), according to the mood of the story,” unlike earlier robotic-sounding versions.
Advertising remains an important factor in the equation with an international study finding that podcast branding messages attract more attention, garner higher engagement and memory encoding than surrounding content, that a sizeable number of listeners take action after hearing a podcast commercial, and that most of them “consume” podcasts while doing other things.
“Because of the unique way podcasts are consumed — usually whilst multitasking — brands are now able to reach people in what were previously thought to be unreachable moments,” the study said. “This is an enviable commercial opportunity as it is additive to the marketing.”
Visual storytelling on mobile devices keeps evolving to attract younger audiences whose priorities and attention spans differ from older news consumers, but ultimately all viewers are benefiting from the creative and stunningly innovative content.
The New York Times is a case in point.
“Rather than looking to the print desk for ideas or for ways we can do videos off of stories they’ve already created, we’re really trying to be more of a partner with them in developing things from the ground up that really play to the strengths of video,” Times executive director of video Nancy Gauss said.
Media have caught on to various monetizing schemes with the e-learning model turning into a profitable business in an era of lockdowns and coronavirus restrictions.
The Guardian, for example, offers master classes across several disciplines, including journalism creative writing, photography and design, film and digital media, music and cultural appreciation, social media and data visualization, and business skills.
Other business models include traditional subscriptions, non-profit funding, e-commerce, mostly virtual post-pandemic events, seminars and conferences, and, IT providers selling content management platforms.
With distributed newsrooms taking hold, and until media settle for long-term hybrid modus operandi, there’s more reliance on technology to facilitate remote reporting, editing and production functions.
So how will new offices look?
“With individual workstations effectively relocated to people’s kitchens and living rooms, offices are being reconfigured as places that primarily exist for teamwork and collaborative activity — albeit with strict social distancing measures in place and partitions separating different teams and departments,” according to digital workflow company Service Now.
Hence media’s use of more sophisticated tech tools for teams’ communication, video conferencing, cloud storage and file sharing, file collaboration, development and design, project management, time converters, time tracking, organization apps, work-life balance, security and employee rewards.
Naturally, for all that to work, media organizations need qualified and satisfied staffers who won’t jump ship at the first opportunity because of stress, overwork, low pay, harassment and under-appreciation.
The authors dedicate a good portion of the report to job satisfaction and retention of talent.