Roger Lynch, ceo of Condé Nast, has explained something about the future of the company a few days ago. He did so in an interview by TBPN. I discovered the video and this article by Danny Goodwin of Search Engine Land thanks to my friend and colleague Maurizio Martorana. This comes weeks after the announcement Wired Italia’s going to be shut down, generating questions about the whys of the decision. Let’s summarize what Lynch says.

1)  32:40   He doesn’t rely any more on SEO. In his words: “Last year, I told our teams: assume there’s no search. You have to have your businesses planned as if search is zero.” “We don’t expect it to be zero… We expect it to be a single-digit percentage of our traffic. Very low.”

2)    This is due to increasingly intrusive ads by Google, which privileges paid content.

3)    He says that Condé will still privilege human generated content. “We’re gonna always have human created content”, he states (though in a previuos email the role of artificial intelligence was stressed)

4)    In his decisions where and what to cut, Lynch will privilege the brands with “strong direct audiences, subscription potential, clear authority in a niche or category”. “Today, you need to be really nailing a specific niche where you have a loyal audience that’s willing to pay and and … If you have a brand where you’re investing in the journalism, if you have to make significant investments in journalism, supporting that just with advertising is a tough place to be.”

5) Journalism still has sense, according to Condé ceo (I admit I agree). “If you want to spend six months investigating stuff, Substack is not the medium for that: the New Yorker is”.  So, he’s open to investigations. “The subscribers reward us for that kind of journalism. When we come out with these pieces, we see the numbers of the subscriptions spike. I don’t think it works so well on Substack. Other things work well on Substack”.

6) at minute 17:50 he tells a curious story about Milan’s offices and the company’s brands playing one against the other

7) at minute 20:50 he speaks about the strongest and weakest brands in the company’s portofolio (even at 38:00)

8) at 21:00 speaks about Condé having no political interests to pursue (almost total editorial freedom – rare not only in Italy – I can confirm)

9) 27:34 speaks about the role of the events, pivotal in today’s publishing. “Less events, more cultural. […] I think we found a strategy”.

10 ) 39:50 about new hirings and AI

In a nutshell: no intermediation by search engines, more events, niches, integration. Amen.

An era is gone. Condé will try to disintermediate, away from search engines and platform, to build loyalty from customers on its own properties.

In a world made of too many breaking news (let me laugh while saying it), the bet might be, according to Lynch,  getting back to the past: try to be one of the few newspapers and magazines that the average reader reads and trusts.

This is good news. Even because I’ve never liked Seo writing, incidentally.

#wireditalia #journalism #condenast