Media Matters

Reading an Economist article called The joys and drawbacks of being able to work from anywhere triggered a memory of something I studied on my MBA and linked with something Peter Kirwan wrote on a print-only Media Money piece in the July 4 issue of Press Gazette.

Why do we need offices in the centres of cities and towns? And why do we need to make co-workers spend time and money travelling to that same place just to be together while working?

Much of the answer is simply convention. Until the technology for desktop publishing and digital transmission of pages existed it was to be close to the expensive means of production and distribution (printing presses and railways stations).

But, when you think about it, we don’t need to do that any longer thanks to ICTs plus the availability of contract printing and distribution.

What’s keeping us bringing people together to work in publishing? More organisational tradition than anything else. It’s the way we’re used to managing them. But given that we can happily remotely manage staff in offices miles away by phone and email and share information with them via data networks, why not dispense with centralised offices all together?

Why not create virtual publications in the organisational structure sense much as firms like Benetton do – where only the crucial bits of the organisation are actually directly owned and the rest contracted out.

Imagine working for a publication where you meet the owner/editor at your job interview and then only rarely afterwards as you can work where you want as long as you meet your deadlines. All staff can network and co-ordinate via email and phone and either load work via FTP to a central server or send it to the Chief Sub/Co-ordinator for subbing, checking and uploading.

They should meet for physical meetings occasionally, mainly to bond and feel part of team. But otherwise there’s no need to be physically co-present. Again, this already happens with “district offices” so why not them all?

You could buy contract printing (which will get cheaper as circulations fall and owners are left with airplane-like assets which need to be well-utilised to be profitable) and contract out distribution (as magazines do now). You could also contract out traditional back office functions like HR and accounts.

Where’s the benefit? No office = no office cost. It would also allow people too far to commute comfortably daily to work together plus save them money, the planet CO² from less travelling and allow more flexible working.

There would, of course, be problems to overcome. Sharing snail mail could be scanned or forwarded in the normal way, everyone would have to be self-motivated and who pays for essential software and phone costs would have to be agree up-front as part of individual contracts. The social isolation would be mitigated by the mobile nomad-type remote presence via ICT – emailing and texting each other (as I see colleagues doing with friends and relatives, and each other, every day). And reporters would still need to travel to meet contacts. But there don’t seem to me to be any insuperable obstacles.

So could the future of publishing be virtual publications and organisations (clusters of virtual groups)?

Very probably. It could be, if we want it to be.

It could not only help further reduce the barriers to entry to publishing, which have been lowered hugely by desktop publishing already, for new publishers but also lower the cost base for existing publishers and enable them to keep some brands going profitably in print for longer.

Labels: costs, mobile nomads, newspapers, profit, virtual organisations

# posted by Unknown @ 10:07 pm