NewsBeat

July 2017 NewsBeat 21 paying you $3 million, why the hell not. But the payola will last only as long as Facebook determines it's worthwhile; after that, there's not much reason for publishers to keep playing along. Really what the Times is doing on Facebook Live is just a high-tech version of custom publishing. Not everyone is finding it worthwhile to stick with a Facebook dependency — the Guardian in April dropped out of the Facebook Instant Articles program, citing a lack of revenue. Facebook admitted that it needed to improve its revenue options for publishers. Practically and strategically, publishers should be doing more than embracing new platforms — they ought to be operating under a business model that works. That's probably why publishers are also beginning to migrate away from Medium, another platform that promised a new style of publishing and plenty of ad revenue to go along with it. Last year Medium was aggressively promoting its publisher program with a reported offer of a nearly $3 CPM which it would pay to publishers, funded via its own sponsorship sales efforts. By the beginning of this year, founder Ev Williams was calling ad-driven media on the internet a "broken system" and Medium was cutting its ad sales team. Sorry, publishers — but perhaps you'd like to try our new subscription model instead? When Medium launched its publisher program, some were touting it as the new WordPress — but it wasn't. WordPress is still the new WordPress. That's because WordPress (or Drupal, Joomla or some of the other publishing solutions) enables publishers to be the platform. Publishers own their site. They own the user relationship. They can manage, change and adapt the underlying open-source technology. They can run ads where they want and charge what they want. They get to implement their own subscription options. Control and self-determination are really the bottom line. Publishers need to stop chasing after platforms and their audiences — those will never belong to the publisher, and will ultimately only be a distraction. Like wearing platform shoes, publishers need to stop trying to big themselves up. The average publisher may be smaller than the big guys, but they're unique. Publishers must embrace what makes them differentiated, and build healthy, direct relationships with an audience that really cares. That's how publishers will stand proudly on their own two feet. Evan Rudowski is a managing partner at Atlantic Leap. — Reprinted from theMediaBriefing

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