Prediction: Industry Trades Will Come Back
Back in the day when I was in PR, we had industry trades. They were a lifesaver for b2b PR, and a place where we could place a story even when it was inappropriate for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. If we had niche news, we’d do some research, make a list of the appropriate trades for the product we were shilling, and send them the information. The PR professional used the industry trades as a fallback, because clients never appreciated them.
But chances are, you’d have a better result there, and your client would have a better result as well, reaching the audience that really was interested in his content. And as for the publishers of these trades? Well, they stayed happily in their verticals and made fortunes with little niche magazines.
All that went away with the internet. In the last twenty years, most industry trades have folded, and those that are left are struggling. They’ve definitely done away with print editions, but their niche sites are perhaps too small to attract enough visitors to please an advertiser.
Thus, former tech stars Nilay Patel and Joshua Topolsky, when they started The Verge after Engadget immediately sought to enlarge its provenance past tech to culture in general. And Bloomberg, long known for stellar business news, branched out into culture as well, snaring Topolsky, who used to be a music producer, to help.
None of this is working. Bloomberg has gone back to its roots. The Weather Company, owners of the Weather Channel, has also retreated. Topolsky is now a podcaster. Why?
Because it is very difficult for general purpose publications to survive when there are so many of them. After all, how much can a single person, even someone like myself, who spends all day reading and writing on the computer, can’t get through all the articles in The New Yorker, The Times, The Awl, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Medium, and…the list goes on, unfortunately for the publishers.
That’s why I believe we will go back to the days of industry trades, where publications will cover in depth what their readers really want to know, and advertisers will stop buying any old crap at scale. Industry trades are the real antidote to ad blockers, because bought correctly the ads are useful to the customers.
Industry trades are also an antidote to Facebook and Google taking over the entire news ecosystem. They are like a quiet corner where people of like minds, publishers, readers AND advertisers, can go to talk to each other.
