Clement Charles

Flexibility is one of the most prevalent words in management and economic theories. It’s a concept which must constantly evolve in order to reflect and be adjusted to the dynamics of a market where change is continual.

It can therefore be difficult in this context, if not contradictory, to give a single definition to the word. Modern economies are sure of only one thing: “We can’t foresee what needs to be done, but it needs to be done fast,” explains Christophe Everaere, organization theorist. He adds that “flexibility can be defined as a capacity to adapt under a double constraint: uncertainty and urgency.”

The definition of flexibility must not be strict or rigid, but calls for modifying our strategic outlook. As it becomes harder to plan for a future whose imperatives are as yet unknown, strategic planning is disappearing, giving way to strategic management, which is less pyramidal, more dynamic and open. While purely hierarchical systems are built based on a genuine fear of the human factor, flexible management encourages nonhierarchical relationships which allow people to constantly adapt. Addressing the need for flexibility, externalizing is often seen as an easy solution, implemented for reasons of capacity (i.e. balancing expenses and workload) or specialization (acquiring know-how and new or complementary specialisms). “Subcontracting displaces costs and production variation management outside the company, thereby realigning them back to their main occupation,” explains Everaere, adding that “realigning leads every company to further specialize itself in areas in which they have a competitive advantage, drawing upon partners who are good, or even the best, in their respective sectors.”

Harsh as it is, this purely individual logic is nonetheless not enough. Lacking in subtlety, these practices are a menace to the very existence of suppliers in the long term. With products as complex as media products, the cost of recruiting partners in view of externalizing is always higher and needs to be gauged when calculating profitability. An externalization ecosystem’s durability must also be considered in the context of strategic reflection, as a vital element of long term savings.

While it would appear obvious that flexibility is becoming a requirement across all media companies, by putting forth thought and effort, these structures could be made more efficient, as well as more open, less hierarchical and rigid, offering employees and partners alike a better work environment, and thereby ensuring a more durable, serene future for all.

Syndication is often understood in the world of the Internet as a simple exchange of RSS, allowing one to publish the “headlines” of the other by sending the user back to its site. A more extended understanding of syndication could actually solve a large part of the problems of written press.

In the USA, syndication has been existing since a long time in the field of the television, and is understood as the real exchange of complete content. In term of business models, those local channels are actually basing on exchange (minutes against minutes), on “shared” buying (each ones of them pays a small part of the full total) and of promotional or sponsored barter (the broadcasting of the program actually creates notoriety for the producer and\or the sponsor).

The written press, and in their various web and online version, could actually adopt the same method, in order to enrich their content proposition at low cost while concentrating their resources on the production of the subjects with high added value which make this media unique. The setting-up of this exchange is not so easy and induce risks, post perceived and real ones, which must be covered to enable the lift-off of this strategy.

First of all, parties must consider each other as valid partners, credible partners, with a level of quality and credibility, which is equivalent or similar to both parties.

Secondly, the two actors of the exchange must not be in competition for the same audience, first in terms of strategic territory of the media, secondly and in lesser manner in terms of target groups.

Thirdly, syndication must be fair to be sustainable, and none of the parties must have the impression then the other shave more benefits in the situation. In that logic, the setting of the objective value of a content must be based on the right mix of qualitative criteria (ex: scoop) and quantitative criteria (ex: size).

The shared trust and the setting-up of common values are requesting a lot of efforts within the written press, a complex industry and often a bit conservative. Logical and efficient, syndication is the rational solution and an excellent means to be able to publish massive quantity of high quality content without having to bear all the costs of it.

To enable the raise of syndication, intermediary actors are now appearing and positioning themselves as ” third party guarantee”, as an escrow in a financial transaction, proposing a series of tools that allows to organize as well as to structure a marketplace of publishing rights, a marketplace to acquire rights of original and adapted content.

Ring any bell ? 

“Superficial, sudden, unsifted, too fast for the truth, must be all telegraphic intelligence. Does it not render the popular mind too fast for the truth? Ten days bring us the mails from Europe. What need is there for the scraps of news in ten minutes? How trivial and paltry is the telegraphic column?”