Media and Publishing
Today, a new American generation is reaching adulthood having lived their entire lives with computers as their primary information medium.
With the pervasiveness of broadband and mobile infrastructures, the final shift to ubiquitous online media will be complete within five years. The result will not be an abandonment of print, as some have feared, but rather a full appreciation of content distribution centered on the individual consumer’s experience. Each consumer will, of course, control his content completely, whether through his print choices or his online usage. The consumer will also control when he receives the content. The shared news experience—the moment when the nation stops to read about or watch a particular event—will become increasingly rare and short-lived.
That is the revolution.
The absence of a dominant or shared news experience is currently destroying the value in old-world media, media that based their success on re-telling only certain stories on any given day. Today, a media outlet’s inability to respond to the demand for more individualized news and to provide content for a highly targeted marketplace is its death knell.
While in any revolution there are casualties of war, there also are opportunities. The opportunity is to combine the best of the old world with the best of the new world. Smaller, more-agile media can better adapt to the changing demands of readers and viewers. Rather than adapting a strategy that is based on trade-offs, as larger media have been forced to do, we will adopt what Professor Adam M. Brandenburger of N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business calls a strategy of “trade-ons.” This strategy begins with the realization that we can create investment value by aligning the individualized needs of readers or viewers with the journalistic muscle of traditional media. In a dynamic and evolving media landscape, there are opportunities to develop new markets for content, as well as multiple roles for these media organizations to play in the new world.
By never forgetting to make the news personal, media can prosper in today’s world. (Media should be defined here not simply as newspapers and digital news outlets, but as those properties that provide support to traditional media and those that provide technological advances that will allow information and entertainment to be delivered across all platforms.) By placing the consumer at the core of our investment philosophy, we can provide a deep well of information, data, video, entertainment, fonts, and technology for select consumers in niche markets. The compelling business proposition is, in fact, the compelling story. By keeping this story at the heart of our investment philosophy, we can drive growth and distinguish the investment. By further recognizing the opportunities to create connections among these properties as we build our portfolio, we can further accelerate growth.
Investment Vision:
•to identify and buy media properties whose strength rests in a relationship with a core audience that is based on trust and a journalistic code of ethics;
•to create an array of additional products and databases designed to meet the emerging needs of the core audience, an audience with a direct relationship with the media property based on need;
•to maintain a close tie to the core audience in order to allow the media property to evolve with the community it serves by driving change through creative, journalistically sound publications, websites, databases, newsletters, partnerships, business outsourcing and more.
•and to actively invest in properties that can provide technological advances that allow information and entertainment to be delivered across multiple platforms, as well as in properties that allow for management of advertising for traditional and non-traditional media outlets.
Specifically, Dubilier & Co. will target media that meet four broad criteria:
1.They should be journalistically sound properties with underutilized assets that demonstrate—or have the power to demonstrate—the ability to publish distinct online publications, services and products in addition to print or heritage publications.
2.They should have management teams that recognize journalistic values and ethics and demonstrate an ability to manage talent and creativity to create distinctive content.
3.They should be niche publications with clear ties to specific communities that have allowed the property to be somewhat buffeted by the powerful forces that have eroded traditional media.
4.They should be technologically innovative properties that hold the promise to team with media firms to deliver information, data or entertainment to target audiences.
Properties that generally meet these broad criteria can be commercialized across different platforms and even countries. It is important to note that Dubilier & Co. is not seeking print-only properties, as we believe that digital video will emerge as a dominant medium online. It is important to note that technological advances will play a role in how media is delivered to its core audience and we will be active investors in innovation with clear ties to an existing marketplace