Although a lot of innovation comes from Silicon Valley, it does not mean that newsrooms have to copy all the strategies that made Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft - GAFAM for short - so successful.

But Edward Roussel, chief innovation officer, Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal, thinks that digital publishers have a lot to learn from the Big Tech.

Speaking at the New World Encounters event, he pointed out that some of the biggest West Coast-based technology companies are moving into the news business: Google with its News Showcase (launched in the UK in 2021), Facebook News (2019), Apple News+ (2019) and Microsoft with its different products like MSN.

Just take Apple News+, Apple’s subscription news aggregator that allows readers to access premium content. Two years after its launch, it is available in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Facebook News tab, a feature that displays news content in a dedicated area rather than in a user’s feed, launched in 2019 in the US and expanded to the UK this year.

Whether we like it or not, Roussel continued, Silicon Valley behemoths are moving to the news publishing business and we need to think about what this means for our industry long term. Sure enough, they are tech companies and their core business is not news gathering or distribution. But considering how fast these companies can innovate - think of Apple’s disruption of the music industry or Amazon’s Kindle - this could change in the next five to 10 years.

So how can we keep up with the Big Tech and get inspired by their innovation culture?

 

Five critical trends for news

According to Roussel, there are five main areas where publishers need to concentrate their innovation efforts if they want to remain competitive. And a better understanding of the user must be at the centre of any new approach.

Brevity

Although we check our smartphones some 160 times a day, the average session is around three minutes.

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