News
Winning technology strategies shared by Times, Mail and Haymarket
Can publishers cope with being software companies?
This was the question experts addressed at Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference on a panel about the role tech plays in finding new revenue streams.
Senior leaders from The Times, Haymarket and the Mail shared their insights on using tech to reduce subscriber churn, sell corporate subscriptions and introduce a partial paywall.
Payal Sood, director of technology at Haymarket Media Group which has built new products as it moves away from a reliance on advertising revenue towards subscriptions and corporate customers in particular, said she likes “going for a build option” where possible.
“For Haymarket, we have built our own CMS,” she said. “Of course, we are not a software company, but we partner with the software developers to build the way we would like things to work.
“The CMS is quite core to create our content and give the editorial the workflow they would like and it also gives us the scale because at Haymarket we keep relaunching our brands, we keep acquiring new brands, and we do launch new brands as well.
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“If we are on somebody else’s platform then it’s difficult, and sometimes it’s not even economically viable, because you are just launching a new brand which may not be generating that much revenue to start with, but you’re paying the same amount in the SaaS [software as a service] platform.”
Sood added: “We have got a single platform and our smaller brands also get the same enriched platform features which our bigger brands are getting. So for us, it makes more sense to keep building and keep upgrading that CMS.”
Sood said the key principle at Haymarket for answering the build or buy question is: “If it is core to your business: build, or at least have the complete control over your systems and your data. You don’t want somebody sunsetting the system you are working on and the customer data platform you have just migrated.”
‘Having great partners is the way you get success’
Mail product director Simon Regan-Edwards said: “My view: always buy, although we’ve built quite a lot of stuff… But I would say look for great partners.
“Having great partners who have invariably done this before you, and working closely with them, is the way you get success.”
In response to Sood’s point about software businesses sunsetting a product, Regan-Edwards responded that “you can also have internal employees who give three months’ notice and suddenly you’ve got an unsupported platform. So there is a downside.”
But he agreed that the crucial point is deciding “what is differentiated and core to your business, and then yes, you may have to go and build that yourself if you’re big enough and it can be supported, but that total cost of ownership is often higher than you think it is.”
Regan-Edwards also emphasised the importance of a “cross-functional, co-located working team within editorial”.
When rolling out the Mail+ partial paywall on Mail Online at the start of the year, making about ten to 15 stories a day available to paying subscribers only, Regan-Edwards said they brought together marketing, product and tech people to sit together with the journalists in the newsroom.
“I think having that connection between editorial, product and tech, working directly with your preferred partners – that is the glue, that is the secret sauce.”
Times focus is on churn reduction and mobile performance
Edward Roussel, head of digital at The Times and Sunday Times, agreed on the importance of cross-functional teams.
He said the success of The Times is “at the intersection of three things. It’s, first of all, brilliant journalism, so thinking very deeply about every story needs to be distinctive and differentiated and needs to perform well on a mobile device.
“Secondly, I think it’s about the newsroom working very closely with the product team and with the marketing team, because if that connective tissue isn’t working well, it’s like a three-legged stool. If one element doesn’t work, then you’re not going to be able to continue to build your audience and build your subscriber base.
“And I think the most important thing from a business point of view, is churn reduction. So what are the elements that ensure that you can retain those hard won subscribers?”
On that point he revealed there is a “very strong correlation between daily habit, getting people to come back every day, if not every day certainly every other day, and the propensity to churn. So if people come back more than 16 times in a month, what we see in our data is propensity to churn drops off dramatically.
“And so to that end, we work very hard on getting people to use our app, because if you use our app, propensity to churn drops by about 50%.
“We work very hard on getting you to subscribe to a newsletter because if you subscribe to a newsletter, the propensity to churn drops by about 11%.
“And we look at other ways, like puzzles is a big thing for us, and if you’re what’s known as a solver and do the crypto crossword, the propensity to churn drops by 22%.”
The Times has “completely modernised” its newsroom including a new website CMS, Roussel revealed, which includes elements like AI headline suggestions and easier mobile optimisation via dragging and dropping elements of a story.
He said this meant people can “now focus on the journalism, as opposed to manipulating complicated bits of software”.
But of the creation of this tech, Roussel said: “We’re very much of the view that we should not be a software company.
“Candidly, when we were trying to do our own software, we were really bad at it, and that was clarifying. So we select tools that we then integrate and augment.
“But that in itself is a skill by selecting the right providers, the right suppliers: augmenting their off the shelf products to make them more relevant to how we operate is in itself a skill and not to be dismissed and we need very talented technology and product teams to be able to do that.”
Publishers ‘need to decide if they want to be software companies’
Stewart Robinson, managing director of web and app software company Full Fat Things, said publishers “need to decide whether they want to be software companies.
“It’s a bit scary to become a software company and to grow all that skill. And there are many phrases like ‘we are all developers now’ as we look to just embrace every technology that led you to do more and more and more. But is it something core to the business? Is it something that they really want to do? And I would say that as someone who sells software, but I genuinely think there’s something there. “
Robinson added: “I think the great challenge for the publishing industry is having really good glue between your systems, not just making them connect, but making your data flow across all of your systems in a meaningful way.”
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BBC/Passion Pictures/Pierre Auroux/@Pierresnaps“I was always drawn to Elizabeth Taylor,” says Kim Kardashian.
The media personality was the last person to have a published interview with Taylor before she died in 2011. The interview – for Harper’s Bazaar magazine – featured a photoshoot inspired by the star’s famous role in the 1963 movie Cleopatra.
“We were actually supposed to meet up for tea at her house, and then she fell ill,” Kardashian says.
Instead, the pair arranged to speak over the phone. What struck her, she remembers, was Taylor’s approach to life.
“We were talking about fighting for people,” Kardashian says. “She understood her power and her beauty.”
Taylor’s life – from her Oscar wins to her seven husbands – is explored in new BBC documentary series Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesKardashian – who has more than 360 million followers on Instagram after first rising to fame on reality TV series Keeping Up With the Kardashians – serves as an executive producer on the series and explains how the movie star inspired her.
“There’s so many young people I want to remind or even teach them about who she is,” she says.
Kardashian wants to “ensure” Taylor’s legacy continues.
‘She just did not care’
Taylor, born in 1932, was in the public eye for most of her life. She moved from England to Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, when she was seven – and had her first hit film with National Velvet at the age of 12.
She went on to be the first actress to sign a million dollar contract for a single film, for Cleopatra, and her romantic relationship with co-star Richard Burton sparked a paparazzi frenzy.
“She was very honest about her love life and she would obviously fall in and out of love,” Kardashian says, adding “she loved love”.
Taylor’s eight marriages – she married Welsh actor Burton twice – were heavily publicised.
And in the 1980s, the star would go on to use her spotlight to campaign for Aids patients.
“What really moved me [is] how she would fight for people that were voiceless, and how she was so passionate about it,” Kardashian says.
In 1985, Taylor helped found the American Foundation for Aids Research (amfAR), a month before her close friend Rock Hudson died from an Aids-related illness.
She was instrumental in getting US president Ronald Reagan to speak at a dinner for the organisation after years of mostly avoiding the topic – and she sold the exclusive photos from her eighth wedding to start the Elizabeth Taylor Aids Foundation in 1991.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesKardashian says Taylor’s involvement in Aids activism, at a time when few celebrities spoke up, is “completely inspiring”.
“The main thing is that she just did not care,” Kardashian says, “the scrutiny was worth the help that she was able to accomplish.”
She adds that Taylor is someone she would “look to” when approaching her prison reform advocacy. In 2018, she met with Donald Trump to discuss the topic and lobbied the White House for the release of Alice Johnson, a great-grandmother jailed for two decades. And in April, she met Kamala Harris to discuss pardons issued by President Joe Biden.
“I know that when I do prison reform work and people think it’s too, maybe, crazy of a topic to really get involved in, you just think of her.”
‘I will cherish that forever’
Kardashian had other connections to the Hollywood star, too.
“I would always hear a lot about Elizabeth Taylor,” Kardashian says, explaining she once dated a nephew of Michael Jackson and recalls seeing “beautiful paintings” of Taylor in the singer’s home (Jackson and Taylor were close friends).
Kardashian also remembers Taylor gifting her a bottle of her signature White Diamonds perfume. “I will cherish that forever,” she says, adding her famous jewellery collection inspired her too.
BBC/Passion Docs Ltd./Pierre Auroux/@PIERRESNAPSSome of the items in her collection were named after her relationships, like the Mike Todd tiara and the Taylor-Burton diamond.
“I just thought that was so fun and inspiring,” Kardashian says. “There was a time when I stopped wearing jewellery for a while and then I think of her, she was so unapologetically herself, and I just love that.”
She says she is excited for people to see the documentary series.
“My sisters want to watch it, my mom and my grandma. So that makes me really proud. When every generation wants to see it.
“I just really want people to understand that she was everything: she could be the glamorous actress, she could be having a hard time and going through health issues and then she can also be the strongest activist.”
You can watch Elizabeth Taylor: Rebel Superstar on BBC iPlayer.
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News
Mystery of human remains found on board doomed HMS Terror solved as DNA proves crew member was CANNIBALISED
MYSTERY surrounding human remains from the disastrous Franklin expedition in 1845 has been solved, with researchers revealing an unlucky lad was cannibalised.
Scientists also identified the sailor, who was eaten after the botched voyage that was dubbed the “lost expedition”.
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The failed journey of arctic exploration was led by Sir John Franklin, who brought 129 crewmen along with him.
Researchers have used DNA analysis to find that some of the remains on King William Island in Canada belong to a lad named Sir James Fitzjames, who had the title of British first officer.
The study’s co-author Dr Douglas Stenton, who hails from Waterloo University, said rank and status counted for nothing once survival instincts kicked in.
A British Royal Navy expedition, the sailors took to the seas to find a sea route between the Pacific and the Atlantic – via the Arctic.
They hoped lucrative shipping routes could be established if a safe route over Canada’s north was discovered.
But two ships – one aptly named HMS Terror and the other HMS Erebus – got trapped in the ice close to King William Island.
Franklin ordered his crew to abandon the ships and instead try to traverse the island by foot.
They were no match for the freezing temperatures, as well as scurvy they’d developed.
Not a single one survived, and the discovery of the crew’s bones years later sent shivers down scientists’ spines.
A team from University of Waterloo and Lakehead University in 2013 excavated the site, containing a chilling 415 bones believed to belong to at least 13 crew.
One of those bones was a jawbone, since found to belong to Fitzjames.
But what had scientists speculating over cannibalism was the state they found it in – it featured a series of small cut marks.
Researchers believed this indicated the bones was butchered for meat, and that Captain Fitzjames had been eaten by a cannibal.
The horror hypothesis was later proven when scientists discovered many of the same bones to have similar cut marks.
At least four of the bodies at the site had been eaten, scientists say.
Robert Park, another co-author from University of Waterloo, said: “It demonstrates the level of desperation that the Franklin sailors must have felt to do something they would have considered abhorrent.
“Ever since the expedition disappeared into the Arctic 179 years ago there has been widespread interest in its ultimate fate, generating many speculative books and articles and, most recently, a popular television miniseries which turned it into a horror story with cannibalism as one of its themes.
“Meticulous archaeological research like this shows that the true story is just as interesting and that there is still more to learn.”
Scientists are now calling for any descendants of sailors from the doomed expedition to see if they DNA can matched to any of the others left rotting on the island.
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FT Crossword: Number 17,853
A POPULAR TV presenter has revealed the key hotel habits she swears by to avoid getting sick on her travels.
Catriona Rowntree, 53, is a seasoned traveller having presented Australia’s Getaway for 27 years but has now revealed her top hotel hacks she swears by.
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One of her key tips is how to avoid getting sick when staying overseas – and that’s to turn off the air-con “immediately” in order to avoid catching a cold.
She also told Escape that you should never drink the water.
Catriona also recommended the best time to travel was in the shoulder season – the period between high season and off-season.
For anyone wanting a more authentic experience while abroad the TV personality recommended using a local travel concierge.
If you don’t want to get hit in the wallet, always avoid the mini bar as they’re always overpriced.
Catriona also recommended taking a little sample of your favourite coffee or tea with you.
She also said to always be nice to whoever is checking you in as “a genuine smile and kindness is always rewarded”.
A quirky tip she also revealed was to take an egg cup from home if you like a boiled egg because “no one ever seems to supply them”.
Another useful tip was to photograph where you parked the car at the airport as “I guarantee you’ll return pooped and forget where you left it”.
Catriona also had advice for those going on a cruise.
She recommended booking a salon treatment the moment you get on board so you can get all the “location goss” from the beautician.
The Getaway star also said to never take candles or hair straighteners/tongs on a cruise ship.
Catriona also revealed the three essential items she always took with her on her holidays.
Firstly, she always packed a pair of earplugs as she said she was always wakened by bumps in in the night.
Another thing she always had with her was a wool scarf, which she said could serve a number of purposes, from keeping her warm on flights, to covering her hair and shoulders if she went to visit a religious site and also to use as a cover for her pillow if she was staying at a “dodgy hotel”.
The third item was a shower cap as she said not every hotel had them.
Not only does it keep your hair dry but she used them to cover her shoes if they go dirty.
Not only that but they were also ideal for wrapping her “wet cozzie in” having gone for that last holiday swim.
Catriona also shared her top tips for flying long haul.
She said that she always dresses in layers and never wore a belt in order to stay comfortable.
The experienced travellers also said she used packet wipes to remove any makeup, so she could do it sat in her sea.
She also advised to try to watch a film made in the country she was going to.
A quirky thing she revealed was that she never touched alcohol whilst watching a sad movie on a plane.
Catriona said: “The low air pressure and high altitude make me cry like a baby.
“Consider yourself lucky you weren’t sitting next to me when I watched Bridges over Madison County, when drinking a red vino. SO embarrassing.”
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Claimed Orders to Target Trains
According to the FSB, the suspects were recruited by Ukrainian intelligence and were promised payments ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 rubles ($100 to $150).
The specific targets of the fires were not disclosed, but state media aired footage of the suspects being detained.
The video showed FSB agents apprehending the individuals, some of whom had visible injuries. One of the detained suspects claimed they were contacted via the Telegram messaging app to carry out arson attacks.
Though the arrested individuals are accused of setting fire to cell phone towers, one suspect reported that they had been given instructions to create explosives for larger attacks, including targeting trains.
The arrests occurred in various regions of Russia, including Irkutsk, Nizhny Novgorod, and Samara, all far from the Ukrainian border.
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