Tag Archives: digital-only

Digital First, Not Foremost

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John Paton

John Paton: Misguided, or misunderstood?

In all the recent debate on the merits of the digital-first strategy for publishers (neatly encapsulated today by Mathew Ingram), there is one strand of discussion that never quite comes to the foreground. Though the phrase digital first is often contrasted with digital only, for many—mostly the critics, but perhaps some of the advocates as well—the implicit message is the same: “Digital rocks! Print sucks!”

To my mind, that’s not what digital first means. The point of the phrase is not about which medium is better. It’s about which medium people use. And that medium is sometimes print, sometimes web, sometimes social, sometimes mobile, sometimes video, sometimes audio. Digital-first is about distributing content through all those media in the most efficient way possible. Digital is first, but not necessarily foremost.

The idea, as I see it, is not to privilege digital media over other forms, but to use a digital workflow to move seamlessly and efficiently from one format to another. That, of course is easier said than done. Alan Mutter puts it plainly:

“Publishers today are struggling to pivot to a new business model that they call ‘digital first’—whatever that means—while managing through the seemingly relentless decline of their existing one. Mastering either of those tasks individually would be daunting. The challenge of doing both at the same time is nothing less than epic.”

As Mutter points out, one reason that newspapers have failed so miserably at the digital transition is that they “unimaginatively tried to export their formerly successful print business model to the digital realm. ” That is, they employed a print-first strategy. And the print model is simply too rigid and too ponderous to be the starting point in modern publishing.

This, I take it, is what Digital First Media CEO John Paton, much criticized of late, is getting at when he said that his “digital first strategy is centered on the cost-effective creation of content and sales and not the legacy modes of production.”

The ultimate goal of digital first should not be to substitute one medium for another, but to achieve medium independence. Technology is shifting ground daily, and the way people interact is changing with it. As publishers, if we want to interact with them, we have to be able to deliver our content when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it. Such dexterity is only possible by going digital first.

Are You Highly Digital? Try This Test

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Ipad Face by Camila Andrea In a Harvard Business Review blog post discussed last week by Mark Schaefer, authors Jeffrey Rayport and Tuck Rickards asserted that most big companies are too far behind the digital curve. By their standards, only nine of the Fortune 500 corporations are highly digital.

That’s no surprise. But what interests me is the four-part test they use to assess companies. Could it be adapted to individuals as a way of testing their own digital chops, I wonder?

The authors’ four criteria for highly digital companies are pretty straightforward:

  1. The company generates a high percentage of revenues digitally.
  2. Its leadership has deep digital experience.
  3. It does business enabled by digital channels.
  4. It is seen as transformational within its industry.

I’m not sure Rayport and Rickards sufficiently explain these criteria, but it doesn’t matter. My concern here is with adapting these four tests to individuals—and particularly to editors and journalists.

So let’s say, then, that you can consider yourself highly digital if you meet the following versions of their four characteristics:

  1. Most of the work you do appears in digital form either first or exclusively. Most of what you earn you only earn because your copy appeared online.
  2. You generate your work on your own, with little need for assistance, using a variety of digital tools. You manage your CMS yourself, you are equally comfortable tweeting and posting on Facebook, you even adjust code occasionally.
  3. Your work is uniquely digital in nature. In other words, you are not simply producing second-stage shovelware, but genuinely digital content, shaped to take full advantage of its digital medium.
  4. The people you work with look to you as a model of digital competence. Others come to you not just for help using WordPress or sizing an image, but also for advice on their new-media careers.

You may be wondering, “Is all this necessary? Why do I need to determine how digital I am?”

The answer, for me, is similar to what Schaefer says about companies: “social media success is not going to be a function of marketing vision or budget. It’s going to rely on radical organizational transformation.”

Likewise, for traditional journalists, the only way to ensure a healthy career in the new-media era is to undergo a radical professional transformation. My proposed test doubtless needs work—please pitch in with suggestions or improvements in the comments below or elsewhere—but its intent is sound.

Are you highly digital? If you’re not certain of the answer, maybe it’s time to find out.

Photo by Camila Andrea via Flickr

A Word Every Publisher Should Know

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Skeuomorph. It’s one of those words you have to look up several times before you can remember it. For those unfamiliar with the term, Wikipedia defines it nicely: “a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original.” Some of the examples the entry cites are helpful: fake stitching on a plastic product once made of leather, spokes in an automobile hubcap, or, one of my own bugbears, tiny, useless handles on small maple syrup jugs.

The skeuomorphic design of iCalWhy should publishers care about skeuomorphs? Because as they shift themselves and their products into the digital age, one of the most important questions they must ask is whether to evoke the functionality of the old forms of their output or leap wholly into the new ones. There isn’t a single right answer. But if they don’t ask the question, they will probably get it wrong.

Though it deals with computer user interface design rather than publication design, one of the most helpful discussions of skeuomorphism I’ve read is from John Siracusa’s landmark review of OS X Lion. In it, he describes the odd nostalgia of Apple’s design of its iCal and Address Book applications. They evoke the look of their old analog counterparts so faithfully that they include stitching, torn paper, and a leather look. Though it might give users a sense of familiarity, the look actually impairs functionality, as Siracusa says of the Mac calendar:

 Usually, each page contains a month, but there’s no reason for a virtual calendar to be limited in the same way. When dealing with events that span months, it’s much more convenient to view time as a continuous stream of weeks or days.

Even worse, says Siracusa, is Apple’s Address Book, which “goes so far in the direction of imitating a physical analog that it starts to impair the identification of standard controls.”

For traditional, analog publishers, the most immediate application of skeuomorphism is to the process of going digital. As I noted last week, one challenge for companies like Ziff Davis Enterprise in going digital-only is whether they should retain the old functional metaphors of print—the page turns, the layouts, the display ads—or drop them in favor of inherently digital functionality.

But even for natively digital publishers, functionality will evolve, perhaps more rapidly than ever. As new ways of delivering and presenting content arise, will they look backwards and mask the new with the familiar veneer of the old? Or will they look resolutely forward and ask readers to adjust to the new in order to gain its full benefits?

The point here is not that skeuomorphism is inherently bad. It can be a useful and even compelling way to help people understand new functionalities. But in going digital, you need to consider the difference between when looking backwards is really helpful and when it’s just a sentimental gesture. So on your next digital product design, don’t just think different—think skeuomorph.