Who’s actually responsible for the e-paper?
Well then, who is? Do you have a clear answer within your publishing house? Yes? Excellent!
And who’s responsible for print? What do I mean by that? I mean, who decides how print looks, how it feels, what its scope is, how it’s priced, where it’s distributed, and where it isn’t? In essence, this refers to an individual who assumes responsibility for the product itself. Is that responsibility spread across different departments in your organization? Thought so. Then let’s talk about why it’s time to move away from functional responsibility, like “reader markets,” and toward product ownership.
No, I’m not referring to “cross-functional, incapable of making any decisions in the end” product owners. I’m talking about fully accountable product owners with disciplinary responsibility and their own profit-and-loss statement for their product. More on that shortly.
We’re heading toward a three-way split in subscriber numbers: one-third print, one-third e-paper, and one-third digital “Plus.” That makes the world a more complex place. Welcome to product portfolio management. Because only with a portfolio mindset can you develop outstanding products and align them with specific target audiences. The reason such an approach isn’t happening in most publishing houses today lies in their structures: functions are at the center. To put it another way, multiple individuals share responsibility instead of just one. The result? This leads to a dispersion of accountability and, ultimately, the production of inferior products.
A current example illustrates this well: “Where can we still deliver the printed daily newspaper?” Logistics says, “We can deliver anywhere; it just costs differently.”
The circulation department says, “For us, it’s all about revenue and reach; every subscriber counts.” The editorial team says, “We need to reach as many readers as possible; we can’t afford to cut anyone off.” The managing director says, “Looking at the numbers, we’ll be running at a loss soon.” So what would an empowered “product owner for print” do?
Functions need to move into the background, and the product needs to take center stage.
Together with 20 editors-in-chief, we discussed the newsroom of the future and its organizational model in mid-2024 as part of the DRIVE project in Hamburg. One of the outcomes was this illustration:
The focus is on full product ownership. Within each product stream, all functions that are essential to the product are assigned under the same disciplinary structure.
Example: Print page production belongs to the print stream. Pricing for print does too. And the print product owner acts as the commissioning party for printing and logistics. Subscription marketing is also distributed across the product streams because what works for print is not the same as what works for Plus.
How can that work in practice? Here are a few thoughts:
- Each product has a clearly defined product owner with their own profit and loss responsibility (for the business-minded among us: think of it as a contribution margin–based P&L, and yes, editorial costs are not allocated to the products). The product owner is responsible for optimizing this P&L.
- Employees working within a product stream are assigned to it on a disciplinary basis.
- Product Owners report directly to the management board.
- Product Owners act as clients for other departments that provide core services to their product, for example, in the case of print, for logistics.
- Certain functions, such as page production, are being transferred from the editorial department to the product streams.
- New interfaces will emerge; clear rules of engagement need to be established (for example, when products are bundled).
- Additional rules are required: for example, the print P&L benefits when a print subscriber is converted into an e-paper subscriber and handed over to the E-Paper Product Owner, essentially a one-time lead compensation. This arrangement ensures that readers end up with the product that best fits their needs.
- This is explicitly not a matrix organization. Product Owners hold full end-to-end responsibility.
- Product owners define the formats their product requires and coordinate these with the editorial team.
But isn’t content just content? No, print, e-paper, plus, app, podcast, and newsletter—each product targets different audiences and requires a different approach to content: video vs. text, summaries vs. long reads, or bullet points instead of continuous copy.
And now, there is finally someone responsible for the e-paper. And for print. And for Plus. It’s about time.
Would you like to learn more?
We’d be happy to discuss these topics in more detail and share further insights.
Contact:
Christoph Mayer, Managing Partner at Highberg
christoph.mayer@highberg.com
Gregor Landwehr, Senior Consultant at Highberg
gregor.landwehr@highberg.com
