The best days are ahead for news organizations that adapt and innovate
Jakub Parusinski is an optimist for the future of quality journalism, even in Eastern and Central Europe where press freedom is under threat. He believes the problems the media are facing–censorship, lawsuits, layoffs–are manageable.
And he has a solution that is simple but might sound simplistic. They need more money, and he believes he knows how to help them get it–through experimenting with new revenue sources, adapting, and iterating.
With this vision in mind, Parusinski, 36, and a small band of like-minded optimists, have formed a media consultancy, Jnomics Media. Parusinski, the managing director, has experience as a journalist, media manager, and strategy consultant. He worked for three years for the global management consultancy McKinsey & Co. and says Jnomics, although modest today, aims to be “the McKinsey of media”. (Here are some of the clients of the 2-year-old firm.)
An overlooked niche
Many consulting companies avoid working with media for two reasons, he believes. First, most media companies can’t afford the fees of the big-name consultants. Second, they fear the potential exposure. Parusinski previously worked as a consultant with a lot of banks. “If you fire a banker, no one cares. But if you fire a journalist, they have 50,000 Twitter followers.”
It was while working in the banking sector that he began thinking about how its digital disruption was similar to that of the media industry. Smaller fintech competitors avoided the capital costs of fancy bank headquarters and branch networks. Digital media avoided the costs of printing plants and distribution networks. However, the banks that invested and transformed themselves gave Parusinski some ideas about how to do the same for media.
“They can fight again. Media as an industry has better days ahead. With the injection of new resources, whether AI (artificial intelligence) or whatever, that’s where I see the new opportunity.”
“There was not much sympathy for banks that disappeared, not as much for sympathy for the media that have disappeared.” The media that survived “the first apocalypse” have learned a lot of lessons and now have another chance.
Some common mistakes
One of the problems with news media organizations is that they see themselves as saviors of all of society’s problems, Parusinski says. “They need to be more realistic.” He advises his clients on taking care of themselves first. They can’t change the world if they can’t meet payroll.
He acknowledges the global challenges to media–robot-driven propaganda, censorship by authoritartian regimes. But the media can’t solve the problems on their own.
“We don’t have the resources. We don’t have the financial or intellectual firepower. Let’s be honest. A lot of great minds have left the sector and great minds perhaps more importantly have not entered it because there were so few opportunities.” There would be more opportunities if there were the financial rewards that social media have offered, he believes.
Another mistake: “Media are victims of looking for global and perfect solutions rather than iterating and refining things that work a little bit. If you keep improving a product by 10% a year, after ten years, it’s amazing. If you keep ditching it and looking for something that is going to solve 90% of the problem, not even thinking about 100%, the chances that you’ll find a silver bullet are really, really small.”
The media in Central and Eastern Europe
Before his stint at McKinsey, Parusinski got into journalism somewhat by accident. “I was always interested in writing.” He was hired to interview business people and write economic forecasts at the English-language Kyiv Post in Ukraine. In just three years, he went from reporter to editor to CEO. He also wrote for the Economist and the Financial Times.
He never studied journalism. He got his degree in business and economics in France, a master’s degree in political science, and later an MBA from INSEAD. “It took some time to learn the journalistic skills, but the knowledge from other areas was actually more useful for writing content that would be appreciated by experts and being able to go deeper into the topic.”
He is chairman of the board of the Kyiv-based Media Development Foundation, whose mission is to “empower media to build stronger societies”. It provides training and business consulting to journalists and independent media “especially in post-authoritarian states”.
The post-Soviet countries, including his home country of Poland, have felt slighted by the European Union, despite benefiting from trade with the large partners, such as Germany, he says. They feel frustrated because they were promised membership as full partners but are treated as second-class citizens.
Advice for the next generation
One of the reasons I wanted to interview Parusinski was to hear his opinions on how journalism students should view their career possibilities, what they should study, and so on. I thought they could benefit from his broad experience. He has lived and worked in France, Australia, Ukraine, Norway, the US, and England.
He counts English, French, and Polish as his best languages, followed by Russian. He has dual citizenship, Poland and Australia.
He recommends that students learn how digital ecosystems work. “You should learn how to code. You need to understand the language that these people speak because they’re building the ecosystem in which you will make it or break it.”
“A diversity of experience is incredibly helpful. If you want to understand what’s happening, you need to spend some time in different organizations. Because the world is very complicated”.
“If you spend even a summer at a big corporation, you’ll understand that it’s complete chaos and someone has a priority and something shows up on a calendar and oops, something gets delivered. And it’s all pretty random.” This is especially true in media organizations, where everything is driven by deadlines and short time horizons.
His main recommendation is that students learn creative problem solving. He is a big believer in learning this skill through simulations and role-playing, where groups of students are given some data and a problem and have a few hours or days to develop a solution.
He also places a premium on communication skills and team management skills. “These are things that are very rare in media. If you come into a media organization with those skills, you can really shine.”
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