There is a future left in these pages yet, just ask the advertisers

News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller’s address to the Melbourne Press Club on July 25 made some important points about newspapers.

A couple of points made by News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller at his ­Melbourne Press Club address on July 25 stand out as particularly important for the future of journalism and for newspapers’ efforts to stem revenue declines driven by digital disruption.

Social media was critical of ­Miller for his plea for publishers and media companies to stop ­taking pot shots at each other. Miller made a point I wrote about at length in my book Making Headlines: the importance of consumer revenue in the face of collapsing classifieds advertising revenues and increasing pressure from Facebook and Google for digital advertising volumes (they now ­account for 99 per cent of new ­online ad dollars in the US according to Pivotal Research senior ­analyst Brian Wieser).

Miller, the best national ­marketing director I worked with in 24 years as a daily newspaper editor — both at this newspaper and when I was editor-in-chief of Queensland Newspapers — said The Australian was now making more revenue from consumers than from advertisers.

There have been other positives recently. Print circulation at The Australian has held up better than at Fairfax Media, but print cover prices have doubled, so cover price revenue is strong. On top of that, the last set of quarterly Audit Bureau of Circulation figures for The Australian reported 84,000 digital subscribers for the October to December period. New digital subscriber figures will be ­released this month covering the first six months of the calendar year as we move to a six-month ­reporting period.

Display advertising has remained strong as prestige retailers support the last full-sized broadsheet in the market. The Australian and The Australian Financial ­Review have been able to be aggressive with consumer revenue because they offer high levels of unique content that people are prepared to pay for, often because it is essential in their work lives.

This is more difficult for the Fairfax and News city-based ­tabloids, which over the past two decades have tended to move into national news and away from their former positions dominating news in their cities. Once, for example, The Daily Telegraph published ­different editions in the southern, western and northern suburbs, as well as in Wollongong and Newcastle. Now the tabloids from both companies share a much larger proportion of national stories across their networks.

Similar coverage is available for free on mass news sites such as News Corp’s news.com.au or nine.com.au, the ABC, Guardian Australia and Daily Mail Australia.

Here Miller, the former chief executive of APN News & Media, whose regional Queensland newspapers he took over last year at the helm of News Corp, makes an observation about unique content that many of his predecessors have not been prepared to acknowledge.

He says “we have also given our unique journalism away for free — to both consumers and our new competitors”. He is referring to News Corp’s free websites in the noughties, and more recently strategies enabling Google and Facebook to cherrypick expensive news stories.

He says it is a cruel irony that “here we are, organisations who invest in journalism and support the creation of unique, local content for Australian audiences, in the fight of our lives against international players — who, despite their scale, lack our local commitment ...”

Later he talks about “our unwavering commitment to create unique, high-value, local journalism”. Last week he told me how dominant some of the former APN titles were editorially and in an advertising sense in their markets.

These are crucial points. No amount of algorithms will make people pay for something if they can get it free elsewhere. The comparative advantage of the city-based newspapers, whether in the capitals or in the regions, must always be in local news. And that will give them a strong advantage with local advertisers. That was once the case with all News’s tabloids.

Last year I wrote about the thinking in the mid-noughties: “publishers who did not understand the internet, started giving away their best content because they were afraid of appearing like dinosaurs if they did not’’. In effect, they penalised their loyal, paying customers who stumped up for the price of a paper every day and ­rewarded the disloyal by giving away their best journalism online for free. They put their own heads in a noose and it took Rupert ­Murdoch in 2009 to call time on that foolishness and start charging for online journalism.

Although Miller did not venture there, I believe the traditional agency ad model is not beyond reshaping. I would question whether the preponderance in ad agencies of digitally savvy twenty-somethings who get all their news on Facebook and Twitter is really in the interests of traditional media operators.

Whatever the successes of Facebook and Google, a simple fact remains about newspaper, television and radio audiences. These audiences are highly engaged groups of consumers with immense levels of interest and commitment of time every day to Australian news products.

Tapping into that time and commitment is likely in the long run to prove a good strategy for advertisers, many of whom are in digital media because they feel they have to be there, even if the results are patchy. Sure the internet works brilliantly for the things newspapers used to deliver in classifieds. But there are big doubts about its ability to build brands in the way print does or to drive ­consumers to specific products at specific times in the way broadcast television does.

If you doubt the advertising power of mainstream media ask why so many modern digital websites spend so much money on ­traditional ads. Think Compare the Market, Trivago, Finder, ­Hotels, Webjet and a host of food delivery services.

Miller also spoke about data. Mining the 35,000 email feedback comments of digital subscribers when this paper launched its ­paywall proved a very successful strategy. But there can be a downside. Newspaper editors need to be careful they do not allow constantly reported traffic figures to swamp their news judgment. And people active on the comments sections of newspapers often are not representative of the views of the wider readership.

Sometimes a story driving a lot of traffic may also be doing long-term damage to a masthead’s brand values and credibility. To that extent “seat of the pants” judgment, as Miller calls it, remains an important factor in the calls editors and producers make.

If even One Nation can ­acknowledge laws such as the “two-out-of-three rule’’ look antiquated in an era in which all the world’s newspapers and magazines are ­instantly available ­online, then surely the parliament can pass some changes to protect journalism into the future.

Just as AM radio resisted early pronouncements of its demise by moving into what is now the high-rating talk radio business, broadcast and print will change. But their audiences will always be valuable and advertisers will eventually see that. Journalism will depend on it and so will the health of our democracy.