Disappearing newspapers give rise to anguished discussions about impacts on the democratic process — who will keep an eye on the shysters at city hall, who will speak for the disenfranchised?
Business is different. Even massive dislocations get taken in stride. Unlike the newspaper industry, B2B consultants figure that as long as there are Bs needing to talk to other Bs, there will be B2B publishing. The question is simply what will it look like?
Not like today, according to publishing consultant Paul Conley. Giant print B2B publishers are mired in debt, and Websites aren’t selling enough ads. And so, polishing his crystal ball in a newsletter article for the American Society of Business Publications Editors, Conley predicts that when the dust settles in 2010, we’ll see that five B2B journalistic entities have moved up the ladder to dominate the market:
- Content marketers. They don’t charge business readers for their products, and they don’t sell ads. The good ones produce accurate, relevant information that matters to people who buy their products. This keeps people coming back, and many of them become customers.
- Data and technology companies. Why read about a particular gizmo when you can read everything you always wanted to know about gizmos? And then hire the publisher to install floor-to-ceiling gizmos for you, everywhere you do business?
- Small, privately held print publishers. A handful of investment advisers anticipated the subprime and liquidity crises, kept debt to a minimum, sold short, and made a killing. Most were small and privately held. People like that exist in B2B publishing, too.
- Price-benchmark publishers. Do you ever wake up wondering, what is the tanker rate from the Red Sea to South Korea these days? There are publishers who will tell you, for a price. (Not a low price. After all, if you have to ask…)
- Networks for entrepreneurs. The Web being essentially free, one vendor selling to one buyer can constitute a market. But getting the right vendor with the right buyer, and perhaps the right advertisers, that takes a skillful matchmaker. They’re out there, and more are on the way.
