In 1983, as assistant editor of the number one newspaper in the Gulf at the time, I walked into the office of my editor-in-chief and asked, “Why don’t we as editorial managers include the advertising sales team in our plans so that they understand how we work?
“If they know our plans perhaps they will be able to improve their sales revenues,” I added.
As expected, I was shouted out of his office much to the twittering of the rest of the team.
“Are you bananas?” he shouted. “Content is king and never mind the salesmen… the twain will never meet.”
In 2013, on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of Gulf News, I realise that I was then before my time; and had my long-departed editor-in–chief lived he would have been reminded after all that content is king — but it has money’s permission to say so.
Why, you may ask? Well, it has to be remembered that businesses work with a financial reality that everything is to be paid for one way or another. Media houses are a business and to run them successfully editors, designers, printers, machinery, paper, ink, distributors and sales, marketing and branding teams all require money.
Part journalist, part marketer?
The money to pay them has to come from somewhere and that’s where readers, subscribers and advertisers come into the picture.
In the days gone by ultra-rich families would establish media houses for political power either for or against the government. They had deep pockets that paid for their vanity, or were sponsored by the government in power.
All that changed as businesses did with a realisation that quality journalism can be seriously sustained only when a media house can show a profit.
Having said the above, profitability is not about selling one’s soul for the advertising dollar.
It is more about stakeholders and along with readers/ subscribers, advertisers are a part of the stakeholding of any media company.
It would be easy to say advertising compromises editorial integrity. But it does not have to.
Editorial integrity, ethics and fair play is what brings readers to the media. When reader’s eyeballs are captured and can be counted upon, the people with the money in the form of advertising follow.
This in turn allows the media house to expand to bring in more readers and from there is built a partnership between a media house and its readers/subscribers and advertisers.
One cannot survive without the other and this is evident worldwide. Media houses that survived despite the digital madness in the early 2000s and the latest recession have cleverly kept one thing in mind… maintain the cash flow and survive the downtime.
They also knew that the business model for any media house should include quality and profitability.
One cannot be too arrogant about quality or too greedy about profits. It is a fine balance that has to be maintained. And the question of the advertiser dictating content defeats the whole purpose of the integrity of content. In the not-too-long term both readers and advertisers will see through the ruse and reject it.
Not an elusive balance
As Publishing Director of the commercial publishing arm of Al Nisr Publishing, I have in the past few years built on my idea from 1983 and worked happily with both editors and sales managers. I have established with them the fine balance between ethical journalism for our readers/subscribers, keeping our advertisers happy and staying happy ourselves with our profitability.
We at Al Nisr Publishing have defined quality by the attention to detail about facts, sources and reporting with disinterested clarity, which also means that quality reporting is not anti-advertising.
There have been advertisers who have been offended by true reporting and have withdrawn their advertising. They have, however, come back with the knowledge that we are transparent in how we deal with our readers and our advertisers.
This level of integrity is also above board with our advertisers, for whom we have transparent rate cards, transparent discounts and equal treatment whether an advertiser is big or small. The fact that we are a transparently audited organisation adds to that integrity.
We have also dealt with complaints from readers who believe that some country supplements get more attention and more pages with huge amounts of advertising than some others. I must say in all honesty to those readers that we are a media house that is very aware that we cannot sustain our business at a loss. We respect all the various communities that so richly make up the UAE because in these very communities are our readers, subscribers, advertisers and well wishers, all of whom have contributed to the success of our media house.
It is the 35th anniversary of Gulf News, our flagship, and while congratulations are in order that we have survived all odds to continue to be the premier publishing house in the Middle East and North Africa, we would like to thank all our stakeholders for helping us remain a strongly ethical media company and for ensuring that we are profitable enough to sustainably serve you better.