Supply and Demand

I took a media management class at Kellogg last winter. It was an opportunity for journalism students to learn something about business and for business students to have an understanding of media. It was always very frustrating to hear my classmates argue that managing a newspaper or magazine is no different than managing a widget-producing factory. Media is different. The value of the product is tied up in the knowledge and relationships possessed by writers. Reporters have different styles, strengths and weaknesses. It is not possible to swap out one beat writer for another and expect to have an identical product. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that media is a public good.

However, there was one “business-minded” attitude that I did agree with. Entrepreneurs must be willing to change their vision in order to make it viable. There is a danger in becoming married to an idea, and ultimately inflexible to market demand. I have to frequently remind myself of this truth as I work on Project Goldfish. I am trying to find the balance between the essence of my vision – objectivity, truth, transparency – and the needs or wants of consumers.

For that reason, this week I started to prepare for my market analysis by sending out surveys to people with professional and personal ties to City Hall. I seriously underestimated how long it would take to send 150 emails but I know I need to cast a wide net if I want good feedback. And the 150 may just be a start … there are more businesses to contact, more reporters, more community activists.

I’m curious and anxious to see the results of the survey. I asked participants to complete the questionnaire by next Friday. At that point, Survey Monkey gets to do the heavy lifting and tell me what to do next. Right? Isn’t that how it works?

Part of this project is also to determine who the consumer is, and I don’t just mean demographic or psychographic statistics. Take a look at what Hulu says in their mission statement:

“Hulu's mission is to help people find and enjoy the world's premium video content when, where and how they want it. As we pursue this mission, we aspire to create a service that users, advertisers, and content owners unabashedly love.”

Hulu’s consumers are the users who watch television programs and movies on the site, the networks that provide the content, and the advertisers who market their products on Hulu.com. This is a very different attitude than those of newspaper managers, who would surely say their customer is the person who reads the paper; advertisers are “merely” the ones who pay to keep the company afloat. Project Goldfish’s customer will be the person who reads the site and utilizes the community aspects but I could foresee advertisers also being considered consumers, if the site is ad-supported.

Medill teaches us to be customer-centric. Listen to the audience. Engage with the audience. Give them what they want, to a point. The Chicago News Cooperative is an exciting project in Chicago that is experiencing the downside of being too customer-centric. CNC caught a break when it hooked up with The New York Times to provide local coverage that would appear in the Midwest edition of the paper. The problem is that, with The Times writing the checks, they also get to call the shots on what stories they want. It has changed the nature of what the news coop covers and how it allocates its resources.

Week Four is market analysis. I’ll be reviewing the results of the survey, in addition to looking at the media landscape in Los Angeles. Most importantly, I’ll be figuring out how Project Goldfish can be the disruptive innovation to take over the scene.