NewsBeat

20 NewsBeat July 2017 The perils of platforms hen I hear the word "platform" I find myself thinking of those insanely elevated shoes, upon which people of smaller stature can sometimes be found teetering, trying to simultaneously keep their balance and participate in the conversation that would otherwise take place above their heads. Although I can understand why wearers of platform shoes would want to big themselves up, it doesn't really leave them any better off. The shoes inevitably end up looking silly, and it doesn't really make the wearer any taller. Sooner or later — following a sprained ankle, bruised ego, or change in fashion — the platforms end up being boxed up and discarded. W It's better, isn't it, when we are able to feel comfortable as we are, rather than trying to be something we're not? This is a good analogy for publishers who have spent the better part of the last few decades trying on various platforms in order to feel like bigger players in the digital landscape. Like platform shoes which make it difficult to walk, digital platforms similarly haven't gotten publishers very far. When I worked for the New York newspaper, Newsday, in the early 1990s we were one of a number of publishers to sign agreements with one of the proprietary online services, Prodigy, to launch a digital edition of the newspaper. Some other publishers, such as the San Jose Mercury News, signed with AOL to do the same, and a few — such as the Washington Post — signed up with the slick Interchange service from AT&T. But publishers of that era had a good excuse — there was no World Wide Web to enable them to reach consumers directly, and so the only way to experiment with digital was to ride on top of someone else's platform. Even then, it didn't work out quite so well — technical limitations, miniscule revenue share, no ownership of the end user relationship, strategic shifts by the platform partner — all conspired to make the opportunity less than compelling, other than as a learning experience. Sometimes the platform even just went away. Not much has changed today. Look at Facebook Live and its program to pay publishers for content. The New York Times has reportedly been paid more than $3 million to regularly produce videos for Live — but the output has been inconsistent in quality, leading the Times' own public editor to criticise her newspaper for failing to maintain the brand standard. Additionally, the Times doesn't own the end user relationship and it depends entirely on Facebook both for audience data and for ad sales against the content. No wonder, then, that a Times spokesperson assured Columbia Journalism Review that "success is often less about numbers, and more about encouraging journalists to embrace a new platform." Sure — if the platform's By EVAN RUDOWSKI

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