Time to compete

Nothing but admiration mixed with concern for the guy next to me on a 6am flight who managed to neck two IPAs on a 1.5-hour flight. Where does his day go from there?

I’m not sure how competitive he’s going to be today, but it’s the topic for today’s newsletter. (This is a members-only piece. Consider taking out a TRB membership. It’s $200 a year or $20 a month if you’re wary.) It sprung out of the conversation we had for the new episode of People vs Algorithms about the future of work and careers. That comes out on Friday. You can get PvA on YouTube | Apple | Spotify | other podcasting platforms.

Yesterday we held The Rebooting’s first online forum of the year on how publishers compete with alternative media that has many advantages when it comes to costs, looser standards, lack of nostalgia and institutional ties to outdated conventions. 

Bharat Krish, chief product officer of Newsweek, and Mark Zohar, CEO of Viafoura, joined me in the discussion. A couple points  that stood out. 

Thanks to Viafoura for sponsoring the conversation, and to Mark and Bharat for sharing their expertise. See a replay of it here.

I’ve been thinking more about Mark Zuckerberg’s comment to Joe Rogan that companies need more “masculine energy.” It was silly, of course, the stereotype of a nerd who finally found his bros. 

But I think what he was getting at is companies need to be more competitive. The vibe I get from the tech right is they regret how their companies got bloated and focused on tangential social issues, or as Zuckerberg said “culturally neutered.” Basically they had a form of luxury beliefs and fully embraced Kara Swisher’s description of San Francisco as a place where “young people go to retire.”

The pivot to competition is an important vibe shift and perhaps an inevitable denouement to the ZIRP era. Trump is right that the Deepseek “Sputnik moment” was a “wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.”  Publishers need to get more competitive if they’re going to win. 

I often find them mired in pity parties or pining for a pastoral life. The publishers that will get through to the other side will be the most competitive, not just with each other but with alternative media and beyond. The Information Space is vast. The analog era protected publishers from competition. 

Classifieds were a racket exposed by Craigslist. Newspapers were often de facto local monopolies. The top magazine in a category could be guaranteed a disproportionate amount of ad budgets. Broadcast TV built a massive industry with audience analytics derived from Nielsen Families filling out diaries. 

The acute challenges the industry faces now will not be solved by appeals for relief from governments, guilt tripping tech companies or appealing to the good graces of The Brands. Nobody should take the purpose talk on conference stages and brand halls of fame induction ceremonies literally. CMOs are fired all the time. It’s a competitive field. They’re not social workers. 

A TRB reader at a future of news event yesterday reported that much of the presentations pointed to how most of the news publishers didn’t even try to make the case that advertising on news content was a smart business decision. Instead, they talked mostly about alternatives to news content that would satisfy the brand safety narcs. 

Much of the discussion of AI devolves into hand wringing. Playing defense with bot blocking and wringing licensing deals is not enough. At best it will buy publishers time and provide space to get fitter to compete. 

Agentic AI will change user expectations. Sure, these agents will be clunky and dumb at first, but they point to complete audience control. The idea that people will come to you because they have to is a losing proposition. Publishers will need to compete to offer a compelling reason to come. Otherwise let the agent bring a summary of the information. 

News publishers will need to compete for ad dollars with better ad products and results that drive business results. Leaning on “supporting news” is a loser in a hypercompetitive market; you might as well be a fat guy in a red suit ringing a bell for donations.

What’s more competitive industry look like? 

Build better products. During our Online Forum yesterday, Bahat Krish described Newsweek as “product-led.” Publishers need that energy because for the most part their products are broken. TRB reader Alan Hunter, a former  head of digital at the Times of London, wrote about how publishers are mostly making the same products they have for the last 50 years with some TikToks mixed in. 

This won’t cut it. Reid Hastings liked to say Netflix was competing with sleep because he knew that in the Information Space is ruthlessly competitive. You have to win on the product level.

Get leaner. As the great Jason Kelce says, “Hungry dogs run faster.” I’ve been impressed by the changes WSJ EIC Emma Tucker has made. She is rationalizing their organizational structure in ways that echo what is going on at tech companies. Fewer editors, more reporters. There is no choice but to get more productive and do more with less. It’s no surprise there’s been an influx of Brits running newsrooms. As Ben Smith has noted, the British news maker is ruthlessly competitive. Something like the phone hacking scandal is the extreme of this, and something that would be hard to imagine happening in America. 

Lose the nostalgia. Publishing businesses can no longer be clubby affairs. I greatly enjoy Tina Brown’s newsletter. She is a great writer, and AI is going to make us appreciate that all the more because we will be forced to endure so much anodyne and soulless robot drivel. Her interview with Pandora Sykes recalled the nostalgia of magazines in their heyday. 

Accept inequality. I never understood offering buyouts. I always assumed those with the highest value in the market would take them and switch jobs, and those who were mediocre would stay put. Publishers will need to build franchises around key talent. That means something of a star system like other ruthlessly competitive industries. That is the shift in balance of power. Paul Krugman no longer needs to NYT, or at least the tradeoffs of being a “Substacker” rather than a NYT op-ed page sinecure are more compelling. 

I don’t see any other choice but to compete. The growing number of people going independent can attest that with autonomy comes ruthless competition. You are in competition for subscribers with every other form of discretionary spending. Advertisers have a multitude of options to accomplish their goals; grocery store chains are in the ad business. And the competition for attention has never been greater. 

One of the reasons alternative media is lapping institutional media is it is filled with feral information entrepreneurs who are hellbent on winning. They don’t have the unearned advantages of legacy, and in the Information Space, you can’t coast on the reputation of a brand built by others. Just because you got hired somewhere doesn’t make you more credible. You have to compete on what you produce. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how publishers can get more competitive – or if there are ways to be sheltered from competition that I’ve missed. Hit reply or email me at [email protected]. 

Thanks for being a TRB member.