Steve Lloyd
Meet Steve Lloyd, President, Publisher & Editor in Chief of Lloydmedia a publisher of multichannel media properties for data-driven businesses across Canada including Foundation Magazine-a leading national publication for the philanthropic sector. He is the prolific Founder of major publications, seminal conferences and seminars and the recipient of Awards both as a publisher and journalist/writer. His lateral thinking is inspiring-please do read his thoughts envisioning the future of the Nonprofit Sector and how we might cultivate more press for our compelling stories.
1. You have achieved a tremendous amount in your career thus far Steve. Please share the achievements that you cherish the most.
After graduating school with a journalism degree, my career started in a very small way in the editorial department at Southam Business Communications in Toronto, working on business-to-business magazines, a type of media which I’d never heard of. But while there I was allowed by a very insightful publisher named Art Painter (yes, real name) to apply my ideas (good and bad) to publishing which helped shape my future approach to the media business. I also met friends during those days who remain among my closest friends to this day. I cherish those days at Southam. In the following years, I feel proud to have created and launched a wide range of magazines and conferences which explore the worlds of marketing, finance, and philanthropy, ventures for which the most positive outcomes included meeting and getting to know individuals who were kind, generous, wise, humane, and always supportive with a “How can I help?” approach to both life and business. Those philosophies became my own personal approach to working in media and communications, and left me with happy memories.
2. Steve you are a much awarded and lauded publisher of a range of media aimed at diverse audiences at a senior level. What are some of the key challenges you have faced in addressing the needs of such a wide range of top professionals?
The biggest challenges have come with the evolution of technology and the way technology both changes the landscape of communications and media, but also in how technology alters the expectation of readers, advertisers and the world of business in general. As we know from Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan “The medium is the message” and never has it been more impactful that over the past 10 years or so. Publishing, and the revenue streams that support publishers, have been diverted from a model of content+audience=ad sales, into a gushing monsoons of oceanic-sized social media platforms and other tech-powered models in which the traditional approaches are no longer reliable businesses. It’s hard for business-to-business publishers to avoid getting swept aside by mass-participation, mass-voice platforms. Learning on our part, and adaption on our clients’ part, remains the single biggest challenge in our form of publishing.
3. How have you overcome these challenges? Is disinformation an issue for your multi-media company?
The dilemmas isn’t so much dealing with disinformation as it is sustaining the process of keeping credible, strong and factual journalism apart from the un-scrutinized voices of anyone who wishes to put out opinions as fact without filters or editors to provide context. Today, anyone and everyone can connect to an audience or audiences, which is a very positive development in many ways but brings with it the potential loss of readers’ desire or ability to determine the validity of articles or commentary or blog posts or any other material that can appear to be journalism. And monetizing that content via social platforms means that the vast majority of advertising revenue is automatically flowing into the immense void of a tiny handful of corporations. We’re all familiar with those platforms and their successes. Today, publishers who provide business coverage for singular vertical sectors or executive responsibilities must fight harder and harder to capture and keep advertisers from whom the revenue is getting smaller and smaller. B2B publishers rely mostly on free distribution (or limited paid-subscription upgrades) to readers of certain segments for whom the advertisers need to engage for as potential clients. Ensuring those parameters are met and are successful haven’t changed over course of B2B publishing, but how technology is employed changes almost monthly.
4. There have been many prognostications about the “death” of major media . Clearly it has gone through many iterations in the last 10-15 yrs. Whither the future? Particularly with the emergence of AI–is the journalism profession as we know it on a death spiral?
Major media has migrated to an entirely new form, in which the platforms that control the largest audiences are not necessarily based on journalistic principles. (I used to jokingly ask my friends, “Why do you think _________ is free to use?”. They frankly didn’t care as long as they weren’t spending to use it.) Media channels today are extremely automated and were from the very beginning, using what we can now call AI but were built around algorithms, segmentation programs, targeted-delivery and other tools to refine the content shown to each “reader”. Most automated advertising programs don’t distinguish among the types of content they place the ads within. They simply, and extremely effectively, use traditional direct marketing tactics, to ensure the best possible response from the readers (i.e. members, surfers, scrollers, etc.) for any given topic or affinity to the individual person who is browsing. Media as we have known it since the birth of newspapers relies on trusted, real-world people to ensure that what appears in print is clearly fact-checked, credible, and if opinionated, is identified as such. The newspapers were trusted, supported, widely read and very profitable. In some countries, they still are. I’m always amazed when I go to the U.K. or Ireland at the number of newspapers and print magazines they have, and how may people can still be seen buying and reading them every morning. In Dublin, you can pick up any one of about five daily newspapers each morning as you head for work, board a train, hop on a bus or sit with your coffee. And many people, young and old, are still doing exactly that. I’m hopeful and enthusiastic that we’ll find the best solution to keeping alive the world of trusted, reliable, journalism.
5. The Nonprofit/Charitable Sector is facing major resource issues-be it donations from individuals/attracting and retaining talent/volunteers. How do the leaders of the Sector need to change their thinking/efforts to thrive in the next 20-30 years? Are mergers and acquisitions a key component of the survival of the Sector?
I’m not sure I’m entirely qualified to offer solutions to those challenges but I do have some thoughts and some initiatives I’m helping with, or working on, which might impact the sector over the next few years. One of them recognizes the importance and power of the volunteer segment of our sector, which comprises almost 80% of the nation’s population. There are upwards of 28 million formal volunteers over the age of 18 in Canada (depends on which research you cite, but government numbers place it in that range) and I envision a platform which leverages the inherent power and impact of the volunteers into a single workforce that any sized charity can tap into instantly. This is a real-solution-in-progress that I’d be happy to share with sector leaders who are open to new ways of approaching their most-trusted supporters. What’s more, I think nonprofits and charities need to find ways to share the wealth among the full sector. The largest organizations are (rightfully) recipients of immense donations from individuals and foundations whose benevolence is in the millions of dollars. Perhaps there is a way to ensure that small portions of massive donations are pooled to allow distribution to the bulk of the nation’s 85,000+ charities. I think that generosity and goodwill can trickle down in ways that don’t deter major donations or reduce their impact, but provide a stone-in-the-water ripple effect for every charity that struggles to survive on the outer shores of that deep pond. Let’s invite them into the deep end once in a while. It’s not easy but I think it’s possible if we all believe in the sharing economy that we love so much.
6. The Nonprofit Sector has struggled to be recognized by Canadians as an economic as well as a social force contributing to their well being. Many of us have endeavoured to motivate print and digital media to spotlight the vast Sector and its achievements-with limited success. How do we motivate varied media to profile our Sector and the stories of our heroic frontliners pro bono?
I think the general media does a reasonably good job of ensuring many charities get a voice in the larger media. Canadian newspapers offer stories on a regular basis, and some have specific columns (e.g. Paul Walde in the Globe and Mail) which tries to provide some publicity and support for small or resource-restricted organizations. There are giving guides which are published by some media companies (e.g. Ottawa Business Journal, and Foundation Magazine) and they are possible because of advertising-sponsor support that allow the publisher to offer large-scale profiling and donor appeals to charities/nonprofits but that’s still an expense for the philanthropic organization.) Perhaps one approach that might be considered is an umbrella organization which exists to help lesser-funded charities to pool resources to get the world out, connect with both individual and business donors, and provide editorial content that is vetted and professional by freelance journalists or communications professionals who volunteer some time.) I know by experience that almost all publishers are open to ideas to help charities get the word out; they just also need to be sure they keep their own doors open, and that’s always driven by advertising revenue. Organizations like CanadaHelps are also exploring ways to effectively offer their platform users to appeal to potential and existing donors without having to part with precious funds. We’re working with associations and organizations to explore those types of possibilities, with specific free-insights newsletters. And Foundation Magazine is always open to pitches from any charity-nonprofit-foundation for possible stories and coverage. It doesn’t need to come from professional public relations people or communications companies. Anyone can email me and suggest a story. We can’t guarantee it but we will always answer and explore it as an idea.