I am writing to you from 35,000 feet where American and something badly branded as Gogo Inflight has granted me 12 buck access to the Internet. I mean, welcome to the 2000's, right?
Today the New York Times announced another 500 cut from the payroll - and honey they shrunk the sections! Last month the SacBee hit some 75 percent of their folks. And a huge layoff happened just now at the St Petersburg daily. What's it mean?
Everyone I know wonders whether these papers (and a whole host of magazines) firing just about anyone who’s not a star will affect our little PR industry. They're asking:
1. Will their cuts be followed by mega-ones on our side?
2. Does this mean talented reporters will take the good jobs in PR?
3. Finally: Who will we be pitching?
Print outlets have been dying, okay let's call it changing, for a while. Unlike most of us, owners have not been paying attention to a wide world of newish (free for everyone) media. While most recognized that Web properties are two-way streets, venerable newspapers and ages-old magazines kept thinking they ruled our worlds.
I laughed (out loud) earlier this year when writing to compliment Tom Friedman. In the absence of a comment board area, I clicked on his email "link," sent my message and received this:
Your message has been received and will be forwarded to the reporter…Please note that messages are delivered once per day, at 8 a.m. (EST). Because of the high volume of responses we get from readers, not all communications can be responded to personally. But be assured that we want to hear your thoughts
Let's call it what it is: "We will do what we've been doing for years and hope everyone will fail to notice there are FREE ways to get our online subscription efforts."
All of us in PR can learn from old media's self-importance. As a guy who wrote for dozens of newspapers in the 1980s, I can report (get it?) that the attitude from then remains: Editors were always telling me that they knew better. "People will read what we say because our reporting is what everyone wants—period."
Now, in these recessionary days, here is the news. In the recent past, thousands of journalists have become unemployed:
• Seventy people cut from the News-Observer in Raleigh.
• A while back over 100 gone from The New York Times including almost all the second-string critics and long-lost colleague Barnaby Feder, a science guy who has been there since, well, anyone was a reporter.
• The Los Angles Times, Orlando Sun-Sentinel, Newsday, Baltimore Sun hemorrhaging crucial staffers.
• The Dallas Morning News cutting 500 jobs in the next month.
• The Star-Ledger says if there are no takers of cuts, the parent will sell!
• Fortune Small Business drops its entire staff, The Wall Street Journal cuts a variety and Fortune kills off dozens. The Record in NJ closes down its (?) headquarters and makes everyone work at home.
• An Atlanta Journal-Constitution staffer tells us that they're having daily meetings now…and that if we have any stories pending, to hurry up and get them written.
Anyone working with any technology these days (even scissors) saw this coming. For me, it started two years ago, when the NYT was still haughtily running a weekly "Circuits" section, even as nearly every story in Biz Dail had a tech angle. Like all news junkies, when I find a Fortune magazine, I read it. I think: "Why is every story about Apple or Google or Microsoft?" If I did not know better, I'd think "Payola!"
It's like a business of celebrities—it appears only the companies with the best ratings are granted real estate!
On the other end of the spectrum, blogs, podcasts, push/pull e-newsletters and every kind of live streaming service cover what is fascinating to its "participants," and that's much more beguiling than hearing the same found-everywhere repeats. Oh, and far more interesting in PR tactic-dom too.
Most of the stories in PaidContent, TechCrunch, News.com, Mashable and even hip oldsters like CSMonitor.com are so viral we can't live without them. And as we have learned, what's shared or passed-along brings in hard-pressed ad dollars.
The take away for PR is clear: You need to look for every other place but the print media to pitch, because ink-stained pages are only picked up if you step on them after they are dropped in public places.
PR practitioners have to go for newfangled online sources. If you're (still?!?) spending all day pitching old media, you are soon going to be stuck with very little to do.
If your boss or client wants to "be in the paper" and doesn't count anything that doesn't kill trees as real media, now you just have to buy a better printer. Soon, he or she isn't going to be able to count much except what's online.
The metrics are changing faster than I can type this. The old fogeys who can't figure why a blog post is better than a few words in the Atlanta Journal are going to have the point proven expediently. Stop them in their tracks by showing them Technorati rankings and compare them to the 200,000 readers of the Atlanta Journal Constitution (and for a kicker, show them the paper'sonline rankings, which are probably lower than most uber-popular blogs).
Those of us who "PR" for a living have the numbers at our fingertips. We had a client (the CEO of an online company) last year who got mad because a guy from WSJ.comwanted to interview him. He yelled: "It has to be in the paper!" We pointed out that ten times more people would see it online. The guy ultimately became a former client.
Let's all learn from print's fall from grace. All they needed was to make the content exciting and get the reader "involved," and really participate. But no, it appears that was not in the paper cards.
In PR, we've always known that communication works both ways. Give and receive. Speak and listen. And that trying to make folks pay for what they can uncover for free is, well, just bad business.
Every day, smart PR folks uncover another online bigmouth to get our messages out there, as we wave buh-bye to what once ruled.
Hail to the cheap.
Good stuff, all the way around. I tend to agree with you, although it disturbs me to see traditional media go buh-bye. But PR folks need to get over our old way of thinking and look to these new opportunities.
ReplyDeleteI think your point is valid in a national sense, however, I think there's one area of print that can thrive (with smart decision-making): the weekly community paper.
ReplyDeleteMost everywhere, the "marquee" paper in town is foregoing the local news that people generally cannot get online.
A lane closure on a suburban back road is a hassle, but when the only place that ever explains what's going on with construction is the free community paper. People's kids get written up in them all the time. Some of them are FREE.
I think all of us in media relations need to wean our clients off of the "big hit" that is great for impressions but bad for every other measure. If we need print, we need to drill several levels down.
If you're (still?!?) spending all day pitching old media, you are soon going to be stuck with very little to do.
ReplyDeleteSince my job is in social media communications at GM, I'm a huge advocate for the need for PR practitioners to engage in it more often. Perhaps, even to the point of scaling back traditional media efforts.
I agree with you that there is enormous potential for PR practitioners right now as the traditional media landscape evolves (I don't think we'll ever be without newspapers, radio or TV news). However, I think we, as PR people, need to get out of this mindset that our only role in public relations is to engage the media. There is so much more we can and should be doing. Media relations is simply a tool to help us manage our relationships with our publics. It is a means to an end.
Great to see Blogger let you guys back on.
Adam Denison
GM Social Media Communications
I agree with everything you say here; pitching the self important old media is quickly becoming much more work than it's worth in many cases.
ReplyDeleteI think the primary challenge, as you already suggested, is getting clients on board with this sea change. Not only does print have that tangible quality that so many clients find endearing, the accepted standards for ROI measurement in PR are still tethered to print coverage. And, while Technorati is okay in some respects for ranking a blog's authority, it (or something else), needs to be more reliable and include incoming links from microblogs, social bookmarking sites and other social networks before it can be relied upon for accurate measurement.
I really believe that once the metrics are in place to accurately indicate the value of online coverage that traditional PR types and clients will come around.
Thanks for the great post, you've given me lots to chew on here.
Adam's comments are right on.
ReplyDeleteClearly we need to learn about and build relationships with "new" media, but we must also convince our clients that media relations is just one way (and often not the best way) to have your story told.
Taking your story directly to the audiences you want to reach is much more cost-effective today.
Whether its "new" media or traditional media, journalist or blogger, their job is not to tell your story. Sometimes it's best to cut out the middle man entirely.
To Jay's point about weekly community newspapers: In my community, West Seattle, the storied, old weekly is getting its clock cleaned by the West Seattle Blog -- http://westseattleblog.com/blog/. It was a labor of love, or audience building, for a year or so, but recently started selling advertising, and there's a line out the door. If there's a lane closure, WSB has is now, not next Wednesday when the paper comes out. The paper could have done this, but it didn't.
ReplyDeleteInteresting stuff.
On large scale online is crunching traditional media. However, on a small scale, good old print is still king. If you are in a small, regional market and want the people in your town to know about your client, you still can't beat the papers. I find online works great form my larger clients, but the newspaper is still king in a market of 500,000 or less. That will change, but not yet.
ReplyDeleteNew online media should also look out. The trajectory of the Internet is entropy. In the future news will be verified by algorithms and anyone who wants to will report. In short, there will be now news sources, just news filters.
That will become a populist news culture with personalities as kings.
I love this blog---you guys rock. No question. Been lurking around but really liked this post. So had to come out of shadows to say hi.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. As a pr pro and freelance travel writer/blogger, I work both sides of the media fence.
ReplyDeleteI have a presence on Facebook,(although my 16yo is NOT happy about it) a website, www.nancydbrown.com, and I'm on twitter and fliker.
I hope more PR people and their clients, wake up to the power of bloggers. Newspapers line bird cages, blog posts live on forever.
P.S. I welcome pitches from pr people in the travel industry.
I think it's about time some one addressed this! What a wonderful (sort of slap-in-the face-ish, but still wonderful) post.
ReplyDeleteObserving and studying current trends and shifts in modes of information consumption will clearly show, as this post explains, that the Newspaper is diminishing in its effectiveness in reaching the masses.
One reason being New Media: As info consumers continue to turn to newer and faster sources of information for "news," it's just a matter of time before “Armageddon” hits. This is the beginning of the end. And yes, it’s a hard pill to swallow; to detach from what was once hailed as a cornerstone, and a traditional, reliable source of news and quality stories but it's only a matter of time before today's Newspaper becomes yesterday's Newspaper. Fear of unknown and unfamiliar cyber-terrain will continue to cripple the industry impeding expansion and utilization of new media in delivering messages. The key is to confront and not be a victim of this fear factor in an effort to adapt to these new mediums of communication and capitalize on their strengths...
Another reason for this fall is poor or just flat-out lack of quality messages. We can sit around and blog about new media and traditional media all day long but when it comes down to it, the message is the key component. Without quality and credible content, you have nothing, no matter how you pitch it. This is better stated in the quote below taken from Curley & Pynn's blog, Taking Aim as Roger Pynn goes on to explain the importance of Targeted Messages:
"Message is always first. Without a message you have no reason to communicate. Whether we choose some old fashioned form of delivery (like a postcard or a newspaper) or instead create a viral pathway through a social network, we ought to be more concerned with targeted messages."
I agree, the window of opportunity for pitching to print media is closing rapidly. Being part of the generation who is soon to come into power, I know first hand that information is much more likely obtained via internet than print. The term traditional media is constantly being redefined. It is no longer a question of will people accepted it, but a statement of how soon will they be forced too.
ReplyDeleteBlogposts may live forever, but most of them on a far reach backwater of the Internet galaxy. It's the Wild West right now and that's making it a lot of fun. Relevance counted in "traditional" media and it will count in the future.
ReplyDeleteRead, "Culture of the Amature." Anyone who fancies his or her self as a savvy "new" media person should read it.
For all its somewhat premature youthful crowing, this blog is basically true. Like Richard, I wonder who we public relations people will be dealing with in the future. It will take a while before the blogosphere settles down into anything resembling a reliable, widely understood media landscape.
ReplyDeleteAnd new media are not the only factor in print’s much-heralded demise: they are only deepening the cuts made by greedy media owners who have had more respect for the next quarter’s earnings than for serious journalism.
However, I am less worried about whom we will pitch stories to – hungry flacks will nose out the appropriate sites and blogs and enjoy doing it – than I am about where we will find serious daily analysis of public issues. A quick Twitter from Starbucks, or even a few minutes’ blogging, doesn’t give us the professional punditry that, at its best, contributes to constructive public debate. Society stands to lose a lot more than publicity targets.
If there is a slight flicker in the gloom, it’s hinted at in Adam’s post above: we in PR may get a much-needed push to stop defining our field solely in terms of media relations. It perpetuates misunderstanding not only of our profession, but of the most effective ways to communicate. Let’s use this major media shift to take fewer orders for free publicity and do more educating of our clients.
Elizabeth Hirst
Hirst Communications
I very much agree with your reasoning. As a PR student, we are constantly being told that social media and the internet in general are going to be the main vein for communications in the furure. I fall of print media isn't somethng to fear.
ReplyDelete"I fall of print media isn't somethng to fear."
ReplyDeleteI think it's "The."
We are rapidly moving into a media era without editors. It will mean a lot more than the end of the power of large media sources, it means the complete change of the language and how we communicate.
Remember, what we think is going to happen when a big change comes usually doesn't happen. Then, later something much bigger, and usually unexpected, does happen.
That's the rule of change. (Loosely adapted from comments by Arthur C. Clarke.)
Great blog here.
Thanks,
Molarsaur.