N3 conference, Asian American Journalists Association. 28, May, 2016.

1. Money Behind Content:
Fighting for the Right
Balance.
Jeonghwan Lee / Managing Editor of Mediatoday.
N3 conference, Asian American Journalists Association.
28, May, 2016.

2. The core profit model
for a journalist
company is the
advertisement and
subscription.

5. Korean news
publishers suffer from
rapidly dropping
advertisement and
subscription revenues.
(Like any other countries around the world,)

6. Still, paradoxically, no
journalist company has
closed shop during the
last decade.

7. Rather, the number
increased!

8. Very few individuals
care to see paper
newspaper.
(most of the subscribers are companies and government agencies)

9. There’s practically no
advertisement effect.
Still, companies do
publish advertisements
on newspapers.

10. There are two secrets
behind the survival of
newspaper companies.

11. First, the newspaper
posts a serious threat
to companies.

12. Some journalists say,

13. “I may not be able to
make you thrive, but I
can certainly make you
go bankrupt!”

14. If no advertisement
comes, they began
attacks.

15. With advertisements,
there’s a peace.

16. A public relations
officer in a company
said,

17. “Any news article that
mentions the CEO or the
president of the company,
we have to remove at
whatever cost.
Like even if it costs 100,000 dollars.”

18. That is how most of the
journalism in Korea
survives.

19. There are many
instances of news
articles disappearing.

20. There are transactions
where the disappearance
of an article is traded for
advertisement contracts.

21. Second, decreasing
number of advertisement
is compensated for by
supports and sponsoring.

22. Some of the companies
recorded almost 60% of
the advertisement
expense from supports
and sponsoring.
There is no official statistics on this,
But according to a research by Media Today,

23. 60%
Advertisement Supports and
Sponsoring

24. They pay money
asking for a
promotional news
articles.

25. Readers would believe
that they are news
articles.
(They don’t even care to state that it’s an advertisement. And, you can
clearly see it’s not what we call these days the “native ads.”)

26. Sometimes, they pay
for an article that
attacks a competitor.

27. Sometimes, an article
that argues that a law
should be passed,

28. And, other times, that
a law should not be
adopted.

29. They are all traded.

30. The on-paper
advertisement doesn’t
work, anyway,

31. So, they pay money to
buy newspaper articles,
for better, more direct
and immediate results.
Astonishing number of news companies are engaged in this type of
transactions.

32. (Sometimes, even the
government buys an
article with money.)

34. Lots of conferences and
forums organized by
news companies are
supported by
numerous company,
at a cost of as little as tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of
thousands of dollars.

36. There’s even a
newspaper company
that boasts a million
dollar revenue for a
single conference!

37. That’s a de facto
bribery,
for not attacking them.

38. Companies definitively
prefer this types of
transactions,

39. Because they certainly
can block critical
comments and control
the public opinion,
For such a meager expense!

40. No native ads can take
root in Korea.

41. Very few trusts
journalism,

42. Already most of the
journalist company have
been engaged in the
transaction of news
articles for
advertisements.

44. The bondage between
journalism and
companies begets
political biases.

45. The journalism shares
the interests with the
advertisement
accounts.

46. Conservative newspaper
companies account for
more than two-thirds of
the overall revenue and
circulation number
of the overall newspaper market.

49. These newspapers take
the stand for
companies on sensitive
issues.

50. They attack labor
forces.

51. They object to
increased taxation.

52. And, during elections,
they release articles
favoring conservative
political parties.

54. Main theme of the
stories is how to earn
money and make a
living.

55. Many journalists have
experienced their
articles removed,

56. or published with an
entirely different
themes.

58. The contents
distribution
environment in Korea
is very unique.

59. 30 million out of the
internet-consuming 40
million users have
designated the Naver as
the start-up page of the
PC web browser.
Even the mobile internet is heavily influenced by Naver.

60. About 20 years ago, when
we had a portal for the
first time, Naver and
Daum began purchasing
news contents.

61. When a journalist writes
an article and sends it,
then an editor uploads
the same article twice, on
their own website, and
then on portal sites.

62. You can see all articles
of all newspapers when
you visit the portal site,
so readers don’t even care to visit the newspaper sites.

63. Newspaper companies
in Korea have
practically no online
profit model.

64. Online advertisements
have such a low
efficiency ratio,

65. So that they have to
compete with quantity,
not quality.

66. CPM (Cost Per Millennium) ranges
between 500 and 4000
Korean Won.
0.5~4 dollar.

67. CTR (Click Through Ratio) is as
low as 1 to 3%.

68. CPC (Cost Per Click) is between
50 to 150 Won for
mobile sites, and
between 200 to 250
Won for PC websites.
0.2~0.25 dollar.
(you can earn as much as 300 Won with Google Adsense).

69. If you insert as many
advertisements as
possible, you can earn
about 2 million Won for
a 100,000 views,
2000 dollar.
but that would result in a very unpleasant screen composition.

70. No good, meaningful
articles are read,

71. But provocative,
gossip-like articles are
read.

72. So, you have to display
on the front page
whatever article that
can attract clicks.

73. It feels as though good
articles worth reading
are covered by
garbage.

74. Readers don’t trust
journalism, and try to
stay as much away
from their websites as
possible.

75. The Wall Street
Journal gave up on the
Korean language
edition exactly for this
reason.

76. Even excellent articles
earn very little
advertisements.

77. Brand advertisements
are practically
nonexistent,

78. and almost all online
advertisements are
paid for according to
the degree of exposure
and clicks.

79. Korean journalism has
made a deal with
corporate powers to
survive.

80. In exchange for not
writing articles criticizing
corporations, they receive
supports and
sponsorships.

81. To earn cheap internet
traffics, they pour out
low quality articles,
degrading their own
values.

82. All experiments for
paywall methods has
resulted in failure in
Korea.

84. What meager hope left,
if there is one,

85. Is that there are
increasing number of
alternative journalisms
living off the voluntary
sponsorship of readers.
These journalists earn the sponsorship of not corporations, but readers.

86. Newstapa 35,953.
Ohmynews 11,678.
Gobalnews 7,509.
Voiceofpeople 7,250.
Pressian 2,069.
Mediatoday 674.
These are number of sponsorship reader.
They pay 10 dollas per month. (8, April, 2016.)

87. They reduce their
reliance on
corporations, and they
never care for click-
through rates.
They survive solely based on the value of the contents.

88. Our only hope is
increasing number of
journalism companies
survive solely with the
power, and the value of
contents.
Small but powerful media.

90. Thank you.
My web site is
http://www.leejeonghwan.com .