Evidence of meeting #27 for Canadian Heritage in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was newspapers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
Then I'd be answering your question by saying, “It's going really really well.”
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
The Internet is a funny beast. Readership surveys seem to suggest that the ideal length for stories is either 200 or 2,000 words. There is no traditional 650- to 800-word newspaper article, and in fact, newspapers don't write the traditional news articles anymore either.
The attention span of the average person for the average news item that's not thrilling, doesn't have a huge appeal, or is not some kind of very insightful piece, whether investigative or that sort of thing, is about 200 to 300 words, and then they move on.
You're right in saying journalism at that level is becoming quite superficial, but that is as much at the reader level.... You give the people what they want, to some degree, and then hit them the next day with a little bit more and little bit more. The story can go on longer, but you don't get the same sort of fullness of coverage. I agree with you.
Conservative
Kevin Waugh Conservative Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK
Do you see this as a growing industry? Let's start there. The Internet is funny, right? You come and you go. I've seen a lot of operations go faster actually than they started up. Do you see the trend continuing or what?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
I see the trend continuing throughout the entire economy. We are in the phase of creative destruction. As we're seeing with so many things, Uber and others, the destructive phase is painful and the wealth creation has not yet followed. That only comes when people see opportunity and jump into a vacuum. Any efforts to hold back the Internet, which is—
Conservative
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
No, that's fine. I'll leave it as my economics lesson. We're in the destructive phase of creative destruction.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Baxter, do you want to continue your brief conclusion?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
I think there is plenty that will happen when the dust settles, but it's going to be the next generation that takes it forward. It's not going to happen this year or next year, but we do need a clean field to get there. Sorry, that's it.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Perfect. That's what we're here for.
I see iPolitics a bit as a trade journal. It includes farmers magazines and politicians magazines. It's your field.
Do you know the areas of interest or occupational backgrounds of your subscribers? If so, does that explain why, even though your field is very specialized, you still have a business model that works?
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
You can speak English. Did you understand the question?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
I understand everything, but I'll answer in English.
When I first began looking at Politico in Washington, I met with some of the founders there. They said their goal was to be the ESPN of politics. By that they meant print, television, digital. They saw the niche as politics, and they're agnostic about the platform.
I came here with that idea. In a brief year, or even six months, between that conversation and arriving here wondering if this could work in Canada , everything in the industry started pointing to being even more granular. The verticals have to be even narrower. I now use the analogy of being Baseball America. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but Baseball America has statistics on single A baseball players playing in Topeka, Kansas, and that sort of thing. For the real baseball fan, that's where they'll go. They don't bother with USA Today. They don't bother with the local sports page.
If you look in the business world, there are three winners, essentially. There's The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg. If you look in the entertainment world, at the business level it's Variety, and at the titillating level it's TMZ. So you need to be a specialist in what you do.
The typical reader now has a trapline of five or 10 things they check every morning. I'm very happy to hear that we're part of your trapline, because being able to move up that trapline brings you up in relevance.
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
It reminds me that the issue is especially urgent for generalists. Would you say that your model can apply to generalist media?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
No. I might be hated for saying this out loud. When we first launched, we had discussions with a number of well-known media companies, and this was when I came back from Nieman, which is in Boston. But the lesson I had learned was, whether you're the Star, or The Globe and Mail, or any of the Postmedia papers, you can't be all things to all people. You could take “Star” and be “Star Sports”, and that would be a national brand. You could have “Star Toronto”, and have that be focused intently on Toronto politics, Toronto who's who, and that sort of thing.
People want specificity, and they want to be able to pick and choose. We're so far behind in that. Coming back to the CBC it's one of the great.... Their biggest weakness is that they are hamstrung to one website, trying to give news in Kelowna, Toronto, and Halifax. It's a cumbersome, horrible news website that you're trying to update.
NDP
Pierre Nantel NDP Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC
Now you are addressing another layer. They are into information, but there is geographical dispersion.
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
Exactly, yes. No matter what, there is no specificity to what they are doing, no granularity.
Conservative
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Thank you very much for your presentation.
Believe it or not, my first question was going to be, how concerned are you about the problems that traditional media are facing? We've heard a lot of presentations here from traditional media, and you have made that very clear.
Talk a bit about your sustainability. I know you said that big and slow is going to be antiquated, or is antiquated, but my experience has not been exactly that. Big and slow is difficult, and nimble and red hot is riskier. Talk about your sustainability—not you specifically, but your industry.
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
I come from a bit of a culture where failure is not defeat. Lots of things will be tried, and lots of things will fail, and that's okay. I think you need a bankruptcy act that is gentle on entrepreneurs who have tried to do something in this space. The American culture of entrepreneurship and failure is one we should draw on, because in order to find out whether something works, you have to make some mistakes. If I could start iPolitics all over again, I'm sure I could probably do it on less money and not make the same mistakes I made along the way, but they have been fantastic learning opportunities. Where possible, I have been mentoring and trying to help other people get started as well.
As I said at the beginning, I think that, as hard as we try, and as much as it might make our hearts weep, they are not going to survive. There is no indication anywhere in the world that big is beautiful in the media business. You need to get local. You need to create scarcity in your particular area, whether it's a geographical scarcity—your local rural paper—a demographic scarcity, or an expertise. There needs to be something that defines you as special so that people have to go to you.
When they have to go to you, they will actually pay for it. This is another problem, when you just throw stuff out there. The CBC gets money from the cable fund and from the government, so it goes, “Ha, we don't need subscriptions.” Well, how do we know whether it's even useful information? They just throw it out there. Then they swing around, and the big tail of the T. Rex wipes out everything that's standing behind it.
Liberal
Dan Vandal Liberal Saint Boniface—Saint Vital, MB
Yes.
Where does your revenue come from at iPolitics?
Founding Editor, iPolitics Inc
At this juncture, we are about 60:40 subscription. The subscription is about half from individuals and half from the Government of Canada, the Government of British Columbia, the Government of Alberta, large law firms, and that sort of thing.
