Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
After the breaking news article “Who swindled Sarajevo Brewery with this?”, which we published on Thursday, 7 September, I now fully understand the daily papers (and the other media who followed their example), why they govern their editorial concept with the notion “the worse the better”! On 7 September, our portal was visited by 15,600 people. A record we will not break for a long time. And we don’t want to raise the readership with this kind of news. We don’t sell clicks like the newspaper publishers who sell the circulation of their daily newspaper and weekly magazines to advertisers. Still, there was an effect. Of these 15,600 people, most of whom visited the portal for the first time, some of them subscribed to the newsletter so our visits have recently tripled in size and stabilized there.
More blood, more wars, more killing, more political and economic crime, kidnaps, rapes, fights, traffic accidents, family violence, adultery, divorces, hunger strikes… it doesn’t matter – even fake news are in the mix. That’s the only thing people like to read. So, if they love it, let’s give it to them. Newspapers have to sell. The better the circulation, the better the ad sales, and at a better price. Journalists have drowned into the “blackness”. That’s why the negative mentality has formed in the minds of the readers. The fear of everything and anything has creeped up into their brains. And when a person is afraid, they spend less – saving the money for rainy days. And so the advertisers are cutting the branch on which they sit. By advertising in newspapers they actually support the spread of fear and thus directly affect the reduction in sales of their own products.
But this isn’t the invention of current times. That’s how newspapers were born in the first place.
In the thirties of the nineteenth-century, publishers still didn’t know about the source of revenue we now call advertising. In the then New York – a city with just over a hundred thousand inhabitants – the total circulation of daily papers barely reached several thousand copies. Newspapers were issued by political parties, interest associations, wealthy industrialists, and some enthusiasts whom we could describe as print bloggers. They didn’t make money from these magazines. They were primarily interested in political influence and social prestige.
Ordinary citizens didn’t care much for the daily papers. For them, they were too expensive, they didn’t have time for reading, they couldn’t see themselves in the political and literary discussions of the higher social layers. In addition, print enthusiasts Benjamin Day was convinced that great market opportunities lie in magazines. He wasn’t interested in politics, certain groups of merchants and businessmen. He wanted to sell magazines to ordinary people of New York, and to earn as much money as possible doing so. The first issue of the New York Sun was dedicated to suicides. Every day, he published new stories of crime, murder, divorce and fates of ordinary citizens. To cover the black chronicle, he employed first professional journalists who spent the entire day speaking to the police, sitting in courts and recording rumors at locals and restaurants. He boosted circulation with fictional stories, among which the most famous was the 1835 article about the life of the Moon, which was falsely attributed to the most famous astronomer of that time, John Herschel. The readership of his magazine grew larger and larger, and soon the first advertisers started to advertise with Day, who smelled profits in his daily newspaper. Among the first came a pharmacist who began to advertise his mouthwash … And so it began.
We recently watched the direct broadcast of the boxing match of the century from Las Vegas. One retired boxer and one debutant fought in a match that turned around $1 billion from sponsors, television rights, and ticket sales. Again – sponsors who funded the opportunity for viewers to see a fight with a lot of blood. And not just sponsors, but local advertisers as well. Television stations purchased expensive broadcasting rights and sold advertising inventory to their local advertisers. Everything goes in circles.
One of the greatest thinkers of today, Dr. Edward de Bono, spent two years trying to convince United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to convene a Security Council session that would adopt a resolution that will compel all daily newspapers to publish at least one page of positive news. That persuasion lasted until UN ambassadors said they were not the right address for it, but their foreign ministries from which they receive instructions to vote at Security Council sessions. De Bono gave up when he realized that politicians would never support his proposal. It also suits them to keep their peoples in constant fear because it makes it much easier to manipulate and control them.
My freedom and the freedom of my associates has no price. We do what we love and we try to do it the best we know. The excitement I feel when I open a blank folder for Media Marketing at 5 o’clock in the morning, and I know it needs to be filled in during the day, is invaluable. Today again I have one piece of news from the advertising industry that would attract 15,000 more visitors, but we will not post it. If we get hooked on that, we’ll soon become an AD tabloid, and that’s not our goal. The advertising industry cannot grow on scandals, but on examples of good practice, successful creatives and brilliant creative ideas.
We won’t do it, even if no one ever buys a banner from us.
