Gleaner's new boss embraces digital media

• Barnes outline's vision for North Street company
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Stressing that digital media is becoming increasingly ripe for exploitation, The Gleaner Company has told its shareholders that it is positioning itself to take advantage of its online properties, including, where practicable, entering strategic alliances with, or acquiring players in this segment of the media market.

"Our strategy is geared towards embracing the changing needs and sophistication of our stakeholders, while generating sustainable growth in our business segments, whether organically, or through acquiring new businesses," The Gleaner said in its annual report to stockholders at last week's annual general meeting.

Those sentiments are read as an intent by, the company's new managing director, Christopher Barnes, to push online and digital services.

The Gleaner Company owns this newspaper, its afternoon stablemate, The Star, Power 106 radio station, among other media-related properties.

Barnes, now 38, took over as the company's managing director in February, succeeding Oliver Clarke, who stepped down from a job he held for over three decades, but retained the post of chairman.

So, last week was Mr Barnes' first AGM at the helm.

Only four years older than Clarke when he first sat in the managing director's chair, Barnes, an engineer with an MBA and a background in finance, joined The Gleaner Company four years ago.

He came to media at a time when the Internet was heading into maturity, traditional players were striving for ways to leverage technologies for profit, and young enough to have been a child of the digital age.

"Oliver Clarke, in the 1970s, saved The Gleaner Company from collapse and built a formidable institution with a brand that is powerful and credible," explained one market analyst.

"Now, Barnes has assumed the baton," he added.

"His challenge is to lead The Gleaner into the digital world, in a Jamaican economy that is not particularly healthy."

Barnes has indicated that he is fully aware of the challenge and the environment in which he has assumed it.

"We have shown that we are not afraid to try new things," he wrote in the company's annual report, making reference to a strategic partnership the company entered with a digital media company that operates digital signage in stores, offices and other public spaces. We are working to grow that exciting business," he said.

At the same time, Barnes noted that The Gleaner had redesigned its website, and without compromising the quality of its print products, instituted real-time delivery of content and upgraded its multimedia offerings and delivery systems.

For instance, the company launched a BlackBerry application for its online content and is making increasing use of social media services such as Twitter and Facebook. It is also re-engineering its newsroom, to further integrate its print, broadcast and online operations.

"Our online properties are well positioned in an environment which is becoming ripe for online advertising," Barnes said.

Important, too, The Gleaner has, or, will have, cash in the bank to take advantage of opportunities, including acquisitions, if good, affordable ones arise.

The company, for example, is entitled to $1.3 billion, or 46 per cent, of a defined benefit pension fund that it discontinued last year. It also has additional liquidity netted from the sale of Sangster's Book Stores.

In the last financial year, The Gleaner booked $468.2 million in pre-tax income from winding up the defined benefit pension scheme it used to operate, helping to push its after tax profit for 2010 to $431 million, more than doubling the $208 million for 2009.

But optimism, notwithstanding, Barnes made it clear that The Gleaner, whose revenue last year slipped, three per cent, to $3 billion, was in no cake walk.

The Gleaner Company, he remarked, was doing business in circumstances of "a sustained economic downturn, characterised by lack of growth, high unemployment and a high cost of living".

It also faced a "proliferation of media choices, fighting for a piece of an ever shrinking pie".

Part of its response, in addition to the focus on leveraging the new bits of the business, was to keep costs tight.

The Gleaner is also targeting small and medium-sized enterprises which, historically, are not advertising - in part because they have not had the money and also because media has not made themselves easily accessible.

"For small and medium-sized companies that are looking for ways to expose their products and can't afford the regular advertisements, we will offer them specials so that they can learn the value and so be enticed as future advertisers," said Barnes.

In addition to working more closely with traditional advertisers and advertising agencies, said the managing director, the company would be seeking to improve on customer service, continue to grow online advertising as well as seek out synergistic partnerships with other media players.

"We are optimistic and have the right team and right strategies in place to deliver the results our stakeholders have come to expect," he added.