| President’s
Letter
Financial crisis: Serve your readers
by Steve Roll, National
President, ASBPE
Senior State Tax Law Editor,
BNA Tax & Accounting
 The
forest is burning. Virtually every industry
and the publications that cover them are
threatened by the current financial meltdown,
which has been marked by wild stock market gyrations and
a lack of
credit.
The situation presents
B2B publications with two challenges: to
maintain subscribers, and
to stand out
among the competition by
working hard to prove that they are a valuable source of
information. The now defunct financial
services firms such as Bear Stearns,
Lehman Brothers, and Washington Mutual all subscribed to
numerous
business publications. No more.
The damage isn’t
limited to companies that go out of business.
The
saying among publishers when it comes to
the subscriptions
of two companies that merge is that “one
plus one does not equal two.” Overlapping subscriptions
are typically one of the first expenses that the acquiring
company
cuts.
In a tough economic climate,
companies struggling to stay afloat will
likely seek to cut expenses for business
publications
as well as other items such as association memberships.
What is the effect on
your market?
B2B editors can help justify
their publications’ expense
by being the first to show subscribers how the financial
meltdown is likely to affect them. (See
story, page 1, November/December 2008 Editor’s
Notes — 620K PDF.)
Doing this isn’t
easy for most B2B publications because they
often
serve niche markets, which may seem far removed
from the financial meltdown. In covering my beat, I’ve been
somewhat surprised at how few of the top analysts
in my industry have considered what the likely effects
of the financial
meltdown will be. Everyone agrees that tough times
are ahead, but most people are preoccupied with the same
issues
they’ve dealt with for years.
But this is no excuse for
a publication to limit its coverage to the
same old things. Some publications
appear to exist
in a vacuum. If no other news sources were available,
I’d have no idea after reading them that the
United States was experiencing the greatest financial
crisis
since the
Depression.
Call to action
At some point,
these publications’ subscribers are
going to eye their renewal form and
think, “Where were you when I needed
you? When I was working under the impression
that
business
would
go on as usual,
why didn’t you tell me otherwise?”
B2B publications, more
than any other news source, are positioned
to
explain how the
financial
crisis will affect people in
a specific industry. To do this, B2B editors
need to work hard to connect the dots between
what is
happening on Wall
Street and the impact that it is likely
to have on their readers.
The fire may be
burning on Wall Street and in Washington,
D.C., But the conflagration is
big enough
so that B2B editors may report where
the fire
is likely to
spread. Like a tree
that survives a forest fire, the publications
that do this will rise
from the ashes invigorated and poised
for new growth.
Go
to President’s
Letter Archives
Return
to the Main Archives Page
|
