Media Mayhem: Erik Jensen – ‘There are positive signs into next year’
These are interesting times, and the challenges faced by Australian marketing and media are frequently diabolical. There is always opportunity in a crisis, but rarely a single solution that is easy to see. Many are worried, searching for answers, and seeking guidance from our best thinkers. At Mumbrella, we want to interview industry leaders to understand their insights and learn how they handle the challenges and structure for the future. We hope this can help inspire our industry to trade through the storms and deliver the best work on the global stage.
In this week’s Media Mayhem, we speak to Erik Jensen, the editor-in-chief and newly-appointed CEO of Schwartz Media.
How is the operating environment impacting your team, clients and partners?
There are positive signs into next year of an improvement in the advertising market. Likewise, we are anticipating an election year will contribute to strong subscriber growth.
There’s no avoiding the fact that the past 12 months have been difficult for our industry, but it is getting better.
What changes are you seeing in consumer behaviour and preferences? How are you meeting them?
Readers come to us for quality and depth. That hasn’t changed. The better the journalism, the bigger the audience.
The decline in social platforms has had the positive effect of making direct relationships with audiences even more important.
When you lift your eyes from the screen to the media and marketing horizon, how are you planning?
The future for a company like Schwartz Media is at the top end. We are again in a period of disruption across the industry, but the path through will be about a commitment to quality and to serving readings.
It will also be about deepening direct relationships with advertisers who understand the value of that audience and how difficult they are to reach.
What proposals for legislative change would you prioritise?
Setting aside the push for designation and levies – and I doubt the political will for either – there is a sincere need for defamation reform in this country. Nothing has a more chilling effect on journalism or does more to stand between the public and the truth.
Money protects reputations, most often where it shouldn’t. We are behind almost every other democracy on this and despite early indications the government might be interested in change, nothing has happened.
What opportunities do you see, and how are you positioning your organisation to exploit them?
There are big opportunities in retention. I think we will spend more and more time working to hold onto subscribers – to understand their habits and know when to remind them of the value of our journalism.
A lot of newsrooms are focused on acquisition, which makes it easy to overlook just how much growth can be supported by holding onto what you already have.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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