When Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey spoke at the Association of Online Publishers earlier this month, people seemed to focus on her predictions that 2009 would be a repeat of 1999 with the digital bubble bursting.
I hadn’t heard the whole speech until today, but journalism.co.uk has a natty recording of the whole thing. I think it’s worth listening to, not least in terms of how TM strategy is communicated.
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Well! I didn’t get an interview with Her Slyness after all.
But we were introduced and I did have a short chat with her (without my notebook).
We chatted about Web 2.0 and my recent rant about Roy Greenslade’s departure from the NUJ.
She said that she realised that there was a desperate need to invest in new technology because without it (nodding her head towards my iMac running OS 9) young journalists will just leave the business and find somewhere else to work.
She was keen to stress she was excited by the explosion of the web but was, of course, keen to find a way to generate the same revenues online as generated from print.
Then she said her plan was that the Post & Mail was going to have a new IT system and websites that would “blow the competition out of the water” and we would soon be far ahead of what any other newspaper group was doing.
I asked her if she thought Trinity Mirror would be able to create sites to rival The Guardian. She said yes, and The Telegraph too.
She said she had been doing a lot of research on what made a good news website. She said she recognised the good stuff that had been done by competitors but that there had been “dead ends” that they had gone up too, that she would like to avoid.
But, she said, the good thing about the web was that there was an opportunity to experiment with new ideas in a way that wouldn’t financially impact in the same way as doing it in print.
Her parting words were that she would “watch my career with interest”, which was unnerving.
As one colleague suggested, perhaps in the current climate the best I can do is to return the favour.
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Ok, this one is a HUGE longshot and I probably shouldn’t be blogging about it. But… what the hell! I’m excited!
It appears that Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror will be in the Post & Mail house tomorrow (Monday)… and The Birmingham Post has requested an interview with her for the Media & Marketing page. That means I’ll be doing the interview! Cripes!
We’ve not had any confirmation yet on whether or not she’ll do it (I’m not even sure how long she’s going to be in the building). But, if this actually comes to pass, I think I’ll be asking her to outline her digital strategy for the Trinity Mirror Midlands division, now she’s decided not to sell it.
If you have got any others, let me know ASAP!!!