Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Why The Guardian is right to go ‘digital first’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/22/guardian-digital-first-job-cuts-alan-rusbridger
Alan Rusbridger has long been one of the best strategic thinkers in the media business and this latest move shows that once again.
Put simply, he’s making the strategic jump from managing the “bust” hybrid business model everyone’s being trying to make work since paper websites started to the one of the future — the digital one.
Strategically it looks to be perfectly timed — before he has to (when things are going downhill very rapidly) and should, combined with the cost cuts also announced, hopefully lead to a sustainable business model within a few years based on increased (and increasingly profitable) digital interaction with readers all over the world, many of whom will be the younger ones advertisers crave.
Most of all, it’s investing early in the long-term future of the brand rather than the milking of the current business model for everything it can deliver before trying to address the future digital era properly that seems to be going on in some of the other big groups.
