ajit verghese

Data collection will replace the paywall and save online journalism

In a recent interview covered in an article by Mashable (entitled: The Financial Times Has A secret weapon, Data) John Ridding, CEO of the Financial Times discusses how the paper finished 2012 with a record paid circulation of 602,000, up 28% from five years ago. 

The main reason: use of consumer data to help provide insight to drive subscribership and more importantly, inform advertisers. I blogged a few months ago about my belief that  an understanding of reader data will be a huge boon for publishers and a better way to get paid. Note the two choice quotes by Ridding below: 

“Five or six years ago we started a new media model, charging for access through a metered system. When we started doing that, it was primarily to build a revenue stream online, but probably what was more important over time was the data and customer insight that that gave us. That’s what transformed the business”

“We can prove in real-time quite effectively what advertising is working and put that data in front of advertisers,” says Ridding. “Marketers have to justify every cent of what [they’re] spending. Our job is to provide the tools and information to justify that decision for running a campaign with the FT rather than anyone else.”

Over 50% of the $568 million in revenue from 2012 comes from subscriptions with 39% derived from advertising. FT has great content and their paywall drives a majority of that revenue - but I still believe strongly that an aggressive data collection effort can provide newspapers with higher CPMs via advertisers and increase the advertising revenue several times over. There is a place for metered access - but paywalls still cause friction.

There is a business need that is not being addressed and I believe there is a product that needs to be built to address the needs of the publisher. 

As I said before:

There is a huge opportunity to evolve the paywall to accommodate different ways to monetize.  Good content needs to be paid for, but there are many options for how we can pay and those that cause the least amount of friction for the greatest number of users are ones we should explore. 

I am not sure if large media companies will be the ones to experiment with a different approach and eliminate the paywall entirely in exchange for metered access with deep data collection. Ultimately, I think it will be the lean upstart media brands that will lead the way.

I’m looking at you BostInno - take us to the promise land.

Women in Combat - A perspective: Bill Matory USMC

My fellow Saint Albans / Georgetown University alum Bill Matory posted his thoughts on Women in Combat to Facebook. I was struck by his insights. His comments remind me of so many organizational behavior articles from Babson about change management, organizational design and the importance of empathy and connecting with the context of individuals. Bill is a bright guy who is doing Saint Albans, Georgetown and the United States proud. Glad to have leaders like him in our military.

Everyone keeps asking so here you go…If you care, read the whole thing. If you don’t, feel free to leave a smartass comment and see who shows up.

My personal opinion on Women in Combat.

As a former Marine Infantry Company Commander, who was nearly relieved of my command for (among other things) tasking a USMC “Lioness” Team to stay overnight “outside the wire” at one of my combat outposts as they took part in combat patrols outside of Fallujah, I can tell you unequivocally that there have been and will be women in combat forever.

Speaking from my personal experience in Iraq in 2008, my take on the matter reversed after a tense discussion with one of the four sheiks that led tribes in my area of operations. We were in the middle of intense negotiations over money for a contract (money I was going to give him but his pride required that he show he was in charge) when all of a sudden he fell silent. We didn’t speak for 10 minutes until I asked, through my interpreter, “What’s going on?” The sheik started screaming at me in Arabic. This was his thing…yell at me for something out of my control (Why is the sky blue?) and then we would go eat and hangout like nothing had happened. Still, something told me that something else was wrong so I straight up asked him: “What is really wrong?” After an exchange between him and my interpreter the sheik started speaking in English. He said: “You people are missing half the conversation.”

At that moment, I had two thoughts: “Whatchu mean ‘YOU people?’” and “This guy can speak English?” After the initial shock, I asked him to explain. For clarity he reverted to Arabic and the interpreter. He began to point to the back of the house, one of the nicest in all of my area of operations, to where I knew the kitchen was and where the women were kept when I and my Marines visited. For the sheik, my unit’s presence in the area was causing him one big problem: His family was mad at him. In this part of Iraq, “Family” was a codeword for “My Wife.”

He explained that after nearly five years, since the 2003 invasion, many Iraqis were beginning to see some of the benefits of what US Forces had brought to the country after the fall of Saddam but in our small area and after many units had rotated through, the women had grown upset…because no one was talking to them.

He asked, “Why don’t you people bring any women when you come visit?” “My wives know you have women in the Marine Corps but you don’t let them come talk to our families.” 

After a bit more about how he wished his wives would get off his case he calmed down and told me that I would probably get a better sense of what was going on in my area if I brought some female Marines with me.—In my mind I thought I had used Lioness Teams for months but quickly remembered that these teams were specifically to be used for searching women at checkpoints and in some cases for providing medical care.

After a long conversation, I returned to base and came back the next day with a couple of Lioness Team Members. As we entered the home, we dropped our gear left it under guard and entered the main salon of the sheik’s house. Before we could sit, the door to the kitchen opened and a women who I had never seen before appeared, grabbed the two female Marines and went back inside. I sent the interpreter with them and he was subsequently sent back and it was just me, the sheik and my interpreter sitting in silence like some schoolchildren waiting outside the principal’s office after a fight. After emplacing a vehicle and other Marines in overwatch over the kitchen part of the house, I returned to sign some papers for a fish hatchery contract, made small-talk with the sheik and after a while we ate a big dinner. When it was time to go, I collected all of my Marines, we put our gear on and headed out to our vehicles.

Outside, I asked one of the Lionesses, “What did you guys do back there for three hours without an interpreter?” to which she responded, “The women showed us how to cook dinner.” Okay…

Not being one to toot my own horn, I thought, up until that point in the deployment, that I had it all figured out. Give the sheiks a choice between “dollars” or “bullets” and my unit would be successful and return to Hawaii safely. But, in that very moment as the Marine returned to her vehicle and I climbed into mine I realized the sheik was right.

What the Marines discovered in the kitchen was that years of US-sourced relief materials had affected the way Iraqis were preparing their own meals. Differences in USAID flour and grains and the extensive long-term use of bottled water had changed their eating habits. Kind of like when we go places we don’t drink the water because it will give us diarrhea, in this part of town, the lack of a water purification plant had made the Iraqis dependent on our water and thus changed the way their stomachs reacted to Iraqi water. I had never thought of this before and began to wonder what else I did not know.

For the minor success that this was, my Executive Officer, a Naval Academy Grad with whom I had had many an “intense conversation”, made more requests for Lioness Teams to be deployed within our area of operations. The understanding from higher was that they were being used for the purpose of providing medical assistance to or conducting security searches on women. In reality, I gave no explicit orders or tasks other than “being present” and interacting with the women and children of my small part of Iraq. After a few disagreements with multiple commands on what the Lioness Teams were doing in my area, it became clear to all of us that we had indeed been missing out by not connecting with the “whole” Iraqi population and that a different role for female Marines in Iraq in 2008 and beyond might be needed. Why should we worry? After all, Marines, both men and women, receive the exact same training upon their initial entry into the Marine Corps. Same physical challenges, same marksmanship and martial arts training. They receive the same gear. They are given the same cultural training. Why should we worry about the safety of the women in combat more than we worry about the safety of men in combat?

The handful of women with whom I served at that point in history made more of a difference in a few days than my whole company of 300 Marines could have ever made throughout the length of our seven-month deployment.

So…What is my take on Women in Combat? (Keep in mind, I am not a genius.)

1. This is nothing new…There have been women in combat since a human first picked up a rock to kill another human. Today, all American Men and Women are in a Combat Zone as soon as they step off the plane.

2. Why wouldn’t we want women in combat? Americans can’t represent all of America’s Values if they don’t all show up at the “Tip of the Spear”. How can we fight for the equal rights of women in Afghanistan if won’t let a woman hold the very rifle that gaining such equality may require?

3. Would I want my daughters to go into combat? HELL NO. But, if that is what they want to do I will support them and would hope that they could serve in an environment where they were not limited by anything else other than their own abilities.

4. In some circles, the real question is: “How will America, react when we send women to start killing people?” Combat service support (fixing things, fueling vehicles, transporting materials) is one thing but what if the Navy SEAL that killed Osama Bin Laden had been a woman? Would we really care? I can tell you terrorists don’t care whether they hurt men or women. Why should we care if a Man or Woman protects us from terrorists?

Just Sayin’,
Bill Matory