June 20, 2016

tronc Unveils Its Content Monetization Engine

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A couple of months ago, the company that owns the LA Times drew mockery for its plans to introduce a “content monetization engine” that would “create more revenue…than you’ve ever seen.”

Then, a few weeks ago, they drew yet more mockery by renaming themselves tronc, for Tribune Online Content. Seriously. tronc. All lower case. I thought we’d gotten over that kind of nonsense in the 70s.

Today they officially began trading as TRNC on NASDAQ—and employees began receiving videos describing how all this content monetization will work. Monday’s blast features Malcolm CasSelle, tronc’s Chief Technology Officer, and Anne Vasquez, tronc’s Chief Digital Officer, who team up to toss around a whole mess of trendy buzzwords. tronc is all about “having a tech startup culture meet a legacy corporate culture.” They tell us that an “optimization group” will feed content “into a funnel and optimize it.” There will be “machine learning” and “artificial intelligence.” Stories will be “more visual.”  But what does all this mean? About three-quarters of the way in, we finally find out. It’s all about video:

VASQUEZ: Right now we’re averaging about 16 percent of our article pages have the type of video player that we can monetize. By 2017 we need to get to 50 percent of our article pages have a Brightcove video player attached to it.

CASSELLE: The CPM that we can earn with a video, or visualized content, is significantly higher than a page without it. And that’s the reason why we have to raise these numbers. It will significantly increase our annual revenue per user, which is a key metric for us to grow as a company.

I have too many friends who work for the Times to give this quite the snark it deserves. And besides, who knows? Maybe print really is dead. Maybe video is the future. And not just any video, but video being played on a Brightcove player that can be suitably monetized.

I hope there’s more to tronc than just this. Using artificial intelligence to slap monetizable viral videos onto every piece of journalism tronc produces is surely a wonderful thing, but it’s not exactly a vision of the future likely to inspire the troops. It sounds more as if reporters are now going to get daily summaries telling them how many of their pieces have Brightcove video attached, with stern talking-tos for everyone who fails to make their 50 percent quota. Exciting!

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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