Mark Lyn­der­say

"You have a vi­brant me­dia land­scape here in Trinidad," Vi­vian Schiller said."Won­der­ful."Vi­vian Schiller is that rarest of sight­ings, a pro­fes­sion­al from the old way of me­dia who's been along for the tur­bu­lent ride that's char­ac­terised the last ten years of jour­nal­ism trans­for­ma­tion.

"But I al­so see some of the hall­marks of trou­ble ahead," she added, "this is not just Trinidad. It's hap­pen­ing all over the world."

Schiller con­spic­u­ous­ly down­played her ob­ser­va­tions of the lo­cal re­sponse by tra­di­tion­al me­dia hous­es to the rise of dig­i­tal me­dia, choos­ing in­stead to of­fer ex­am­ples and guid­ance in­spired by what she's seen and heard in T&T. Mo­bile phone use has had the great­est im­pact on news in her ex­pe­ri­ence.

The news­pa­per web­site is the news­pa­per on a screen, but mo­bile me­dia has made an­oth­er fun­da­men­tal shift in con­sump­tion pat­terns, play­ing a huge role in the po­si­tion­ing of so­cial me­dia as a source of news.The so­cial me­dia news­feed is hav­ing a com­mand­ing im­pact on the way that news is con­sumed.

The read­er no longer sees the sto­ry in the con­text that it was placed in on the web­site. The news source may have gained read­ers, but no longer con­trols the di­rect ex­pe­ri­ence that the read­er has with their on­line pres­ence.

This can work well when a dom­i­nat­ing lo­cal so­cial me­dia pres­ence like Face­book cir­cu­lates news posts, in­creas­ing reach, but five months ago the com­pa­ny an­nounced more changes to its feed al­go­rithm which are like­ly to af­fect both mar­keters and me­dia hous­es seek­ing in­creased reach for their re­port­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Face­book...

"Face­book was built on the idea of con­nect­ing peo­ple with their friends and fam­i­ly. That is still the dri­ving prin­ci­ple of News Feed to­day. Our top pri­or­i­ty is keep­ing you con­nect­ed to the peo­ple, places and things you want to be con­nect­ed to–start­ing with the peo­ple you are friends with on Face­book."

"That's why if it's from your friends, it's in your feed, pe­ri­od–you just have to scroll down. To help make sure you don't miss the friends and fam­i­ly posts you are like­ly to care about, we put those posts to­ward the top of your News Feed. We learn from you and adapt over time."

This is Face­book's gen­tle way of re­mind­ing peo­ple rid­ing on the coat­tails of its reach that they aren't there to sup­port the half-assed, un­paid cir­cu­la­tion of ar­bitary links; they are in busi­ness to en­sure that its mem­ber­ship finds what they are look­ing for with as lit­tle clut­ter as pos­si­ble.

This al­so has the un­for­tu­nate ef­fect for in­for­ma­tion seek­ers of cre­at­ing a hard­er to break fil­ter bub­ble, in­creas­ing the chances that peo­ple find links and com­ments in their feed that they agree with, be­cause they are be­ing shared by friends, while de­creas­ing the po­ten­tial for per­spec­tives and opin­ions that chal­lenge their world view.

Vi­vian Schiller was far too po­lite to do any­thing more than hint at the missed op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal me­dia, par­tic­u­lar­ly at an event for me­dia man­agers host­ed by the Unit Trust.

Af­ter point­ing out many of the same things in this space over the last few years, I am pos­sessed of no such in­cli­na­tion for good grace.

That didn't mean I wasn't sur­prised when one ex­ec­u­tive sought an­swers as to why Face­book doesn't re­spond to ques­tions about mon­etis­ing con­tent shared in that space (the so­cial me­dia gi­ant doesn't care very much about any me­dia house) and an­oth­er de­clared that un­like their news­pa­per it was im­pos­si­ble for ad­ver­tis­ers on Face­book to get de­tails about their ad spend (dig­i­tal me­dia of­fers un­par­al­leled in­sights in­to ex­act­ly how ef­fec­tive pro­mo­tions and ad­ver­tise­ments are).

These are trou­bled times for tra­di­tion­al me­dia, and Vi­vian Schiller was talk­ing to a room al­ready chilled by large staff sep­a­ra­tions at the Trinidad Ex­press and the re­al­i­ty that oth­er ad­just­ments would oc­cur across lo­cal me­dia.

Un­der the rubric "wak­ing up to dig­i­tal re­al­i­ty," Schiller of­fered the fol­low­ing to do list as a start­ing point for man­ag­ing a tran­si­tion or em­brace of dig­i­tal me­dia op­por­tu­ni­ties.

�2 Live where your au­di­ence lives.

Don't just dump ma­te­r­i­al in­to so­cial me­dia chan­nels, par­tic­i­pate in them so that you un­der­stand their nu­ances and im­merse your­self in their pos­si­bil­i­ties."The plat­forms and de­vices that are prob­a­bly go­ing to dis­rupt your busi­ness will look like a toy," she warned."Be ready to dis­rupt your own busi­ness so that some­one else doesn't do it for you."

�2 In­te­grate your news­room.

Get the dig­i­tal peo­ple to­geth­er with the print and broad­cast peo­ple. Let them in­hab­it the same space, let in­ter­ests and ap­proach­es col­lide and co­a­lesce and al­low a uni­fied ap­proach to emerge.

�2 Put au­di­ence en­gage­ment at the cen­ter.

This is prob­a­bly the hard­est thing for long serv­ing me­dia pro­fes­sion­als to un­der­stand. For decades, the Pub­lic Af­fairs Ed­i­tor has dealt with the let­ters to the ed­i­tor and fil­tered them for pub­li­ca­tion.

Now there needs to be a se­nior au­di­ence en­gage­ment pro­fes­sion­al op­er­at­ing at a high lev­el in the busi­ness, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the plan­ning of the news menu and its dis­tri­b­u­tion, en­gag­ing with the ebb and flow of a cus­tomer re­sponse over which the me­dia out­let has no func­tion­al con­trol.

�2 Think about your brand ex­pe­ri­ence off plat­form.

Who are you as a busi­ness? What makes you stand out? What do you stand for?What tone or vi­su­als are as­so­ci­at­ed with your brand? Who are the peo­ple cre­at­ing? Make the per­son­al­i­ty of the busi­ness and the per­son­al­i­ties that shape it pop out.

�2 Ex­per­i­ment with dif­fer­ent kinds of sto­ry­telling.

Give peo­ple the li­cense to ex­per­i­ment and to fail. Learn from the fail­ures with­out as­sign­ing blame. Think about the sto­ry and what's the best way to de­liv­er it.

�2Di­ver­si­fy rev­enue streams.

Where is the mon­ey to fund all these changes in a quick­sand en­vi­ron­ment go­ing to come from? There's no sin­gle an­swer and no mag­ic bul­let. Con­sid­er brand­ed con­tent news­rooms, cre­at­ing ma­te­r­i­al for brands that's clear­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the jour­nal­ism prod­uct.

�2Do what you do best and link to the rest.

Don't try to do every­thing. Iden­ti­fy the thing you do and link to oth­er con­tent that's au­thor­i­ta­tive on the sub­ject, even if it comes from your com­pe­ti­tion.

�2Stay true to your mis­sion.

Schiller's fi­nal state­ment to the me­dia group was chill­ing, if you think things are dif­fi­cult now.

"The pace of change will nev­er be this slow again," her fi­nal slide read.