While journalists minds are focused on the "Death of the News as We Know It", management is busy trying to catch up the print product to electronic news standards. USA Today recognized the salience of this approach to news reporting when it began in 1982 - the short stories (with only one jump from Page One of each section), "pertinent to readers' lives" headlines and colorful design mimicked then-emerging cable news channels' styles of reporting.
Today's challenge is even greater - what news is being consumed by the vast majority of younger readers if balkanized and customized to an unprecedented degree - delivered directly to your inbox by sources as varied as Yahoo! and Facebook. Digg and Reditt enable bloggers to show up the same way. Google Search and now Bing offer Web surfers to seek expertise to a very specific degree.
So what's a newspaper to do? The latest to strip off the trappings of traditional news reporting and jump into the ring of redesign is The Venerable Washington Post. Seems "venerable" is now a bad word - that long, in-depth reporting and deep investigation are Bad Words has become incontrovertible TRUTH. The new design features a framed format: stories are lined off from one-another to give them that trendy "school newspaper" look, as if readers might otherwise be unable to tell where one story ends and another begins. The center hole of the front page, beginning above the fold, boasts a large color photo designed to draw the reader's eye and evoke a particular emotion (a recent edition showed one candlelit mourner of the Fort Hood massacre with a tear tracing his cheeks) that could tell the entire story without words. Apparently, a reporter's crisis is good news for the photojournalist.
Experimental give-away versions to tease younger readers who, say, ride the Metro to work everyday seem to offer crumbs of news and more activity listings or lifestyle news, with still more color pix (often badly reproduced). The Express is The Post's giveaway paper: theoretically, a trifle to whet the appetite for the daily's filet mignon. How many consumers of cookie-cutter news convert to Chef Katharine Weymouth's five-course, white tablecloth banquet remains to be seen.
Further accentuating the trend of McNews: columns in The Post now sport thumbnail photo-sketches of their authors. This seems to be so that fans of, say, Mike Wilbon's sports commentary can recognize their fearless commentator on TV - where the Post can further profit from his appearances. Even such lesser mortals as E.J. Dionne or Richard Cohen, who have much to say on serious news can become Post "brands" when they appear in other media, both online and off-. Personality journalism does not reside solely within the cover of "E" or People anymore.
Not that The Post had an original thought in creating this visual fingerprint for its regulars - the Wall Street Journal originated the trend. WSJ seems intent to prove itself as the only member of the mainstream media that can monetize its own online product by leaving its content accessible only to subscribers. Whether the purveyors of this brand can indeed see their strategy become profitable remains to be seen, but it is also true that, if one searches for a specific online headline and byline hard enough it may often be picked up and repackaged by online aggregators for free access.
It's a crap-shoot that newspapers are betting will save the brand, offer more ad sales opportunities and keep the news viable. Whether newsprint will survive the onslaught from its many digital options is debatable.
Before the funeral begins, perhaps we should undergo an examination of all this "new" news and its many sources to determine whether the heralds of doom have the story right. From citizen journalists to bloggers drawn from the ranks of former mainstream reporters, there is evidence of new momentum to telling the story of our lives. It may look different in a news generation, and there's no question that delivery channels have grown. It might even be Good News, that reporting and reading are more democratized than at any time since Thomas Paine's Common Sense or Poor Richards Almanack in the early days of the Republic.
Any way you look at it, the trend towards many sources of news beats state-controlled media where free speech is stifled and the only sanctioned news is what "they" say it can be.
The News Is Dead, Long Live the News.
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Top 10 Rules for the "New" Media Relations
With all the focus on journalists gazing at their navels while lamenting the decline-and-fall of print (and even broadcast) journalism as we know it, I have yet to see my colleagues on the other side of the pitch expound on how those of us trying to place news stories in the media are supposed to do our jobs.
As reporters get laid off, their beats are increasingly outsourced to freelancers or bloggers, mostly ex-reporters, but some upstarts who claim to know how to write. These people are not listed in any reputable media directory where one could check their bona fides (alas, no Vocus or Bacons identities available), although some have Web sites or clips that are posted from previous writing gigs. They are not identifiable in any systematic way. They represent only themselves, and often are impervious to the standard restraints or ethical concerns that journalists working for mainstream media have had as guideposts in the past. It is the Wild, Wild West.
Glamour, Ladies Home Journal, Washington Post Health...these are but a smattering of the many MSM whose writers no longer appear on the official masthead. More disturbing, television news, formerly the gold standard of story placement for flacks seeking credible...and creditable...placement for news, are increasingly hiring stringers or independent producers for research, story development and production when bureaus, both in the U.S. and overseas, fold.
It hits us in unexpected ways. Like the "investigative" story plumbing decades-old date about a government agency sourced for a local Examiner newspaper in a major metropolitan area that gets "broken" by the Examiner reporter during a news interview with an anchor on the CBS News affiliate - without bothering to ask the agency for comment. Or the documentary aired on a national cable network produced by a company in Australia using a producer in San Francisco...who doesn't have a travel budget to interview sources outside Northern California. Or the pitch to the newspaper editor for a lifestyles section that folds without notice while the entire editorial staff just disappears.
Today's Wild West scenario is not so different, perhaps, from the yellow journalism at the turn of the last century, with the exception that, today, any Tom, Dick or Harriet can open a Twitter account and post "news", so that the proliferation of people calling themselves reporters is exponential. And it's not always obvious who's good, who's not, and who's just looking for his/her 30 seconds of fame.
Why does it matter? "Free media", the art of placing stories in outlets to promote ideas, products, ideas or services, is still an important arrow in the arsenal of the public relations professional. In fact, seeing the company's name or product in print is often what clients, or companies, mean when they talk about PR.
So, it's not business as usual. What to do?
Today, with shrinking news staff in even the biggest media, the more you can do to help a reporter find you, get the story and pitch it to their editors, the better chance you have of getting your story picked up.
Here's a new Top 10 for enhancing media placement:
1. Build your reputation online and off. Become a trusted news source by being reliable, never feeding bogus stories, and meeting deadlines.
2. Register (and tweet) on HARO (Help a Reporter Out), Be A Source, TV Newser, etc.
3. Follow reporters on Twitter - they sometimes follow back or respond to replies to their tweets.
4. Blog about things that have things to do with your company or clients, and sometimes things that don't but about professional concerns or events to spread the good word.
5. Network like hell: events proliferate but there are also bars and restaurants where reporters like to hang. Organizations like MediaBistro have sprung up with the goal of training pink-slipped journalists to do something else in the writing field. Maybe even compete for your next job.
6. Email journalists & formers to see where they land and keep in touch.
7. Get LinkedIn, Facebook, and put your best opinions out there in the ether...
8. Worry about getting good content, repackaging for various media and keeping your contact info up-to-date.
9. Know who you're talking to - and who they're reporting for. They are not always writing only for their primary news outlet. Even the venerable NYTimes employs hacks scribbling for other media. Check out Times Public Editor's recent mea culpa at http://bit.ly/19KYIa
10. Don't rely on news releases, or at least not traditional news releases to sell your story. Social releases embed links, videos, photos, bios and other resources.
In decades past, PR people were best who were invisible, persuading, cajoling and spinning behind the scenes, then pretending our clients magically appeared on the pages of the Wall Street Journal by their own merit.
Today, we are visible producers in our own right. In the new world, re-purposing content, packaging and placement our tools in trade. "Hits", Friends and Followers now become our measure of success.
No one quite knows how to master this new art form yet because the media are evolving, the old news placement ways aren't solving, the doors are revolving.
So by experimentation and practice, we can emerge from this electronic free-for-all as the new news and in it. In a good way, of course.
Talk to me on Twitter @dcoffbeatartist
As reporters get laid off, their beats are increasingly outsourced to freelancers or bloggers, mostly ex-reporters, but some upstarts who claim to know how to write. These people are not listed in any reputable media directory where one could check their bona fides (alas, no Vocus or Bacons identities available), although some have Web sites or clips that are posted from previous writing gigs. They are not identifiable in any systematic way. They represent only themselves, and often are impervious to the standard restraints or ethical concerns that journalists working for mainstream media have had as guideposts in the past. It is the Wild, Wild West.
Glamour, Ladies Home Journal, Washington Post Health...these are but a smattering of the many MSM whose writers no longer appear on the official masthead. More disturbing, television news, formerly the gold standard of story placement for flacks seeking credible...and creditable...placement for news, are increasingly hiring stringers or independent producers for research, story development and production when bureaus, both in the U.S. and overseas, fold.
It hits us in unexpected ways. Like the "investigative" story plumbing decades-old date about a government agency sourced for a local Examiner newspaper in a major metropolitan area that gets "broken" by the Examiner reporter during a news interview with an anchor on the CBS News affiliate - without bothering to ask the agency for comment. Or the documentary aired on a national cable network produced by a company in Australia using a producer in San Francisco...who doesn't have a travel budget to interview sources outside Northern California. Or the pitch to the newspaper editor for a lifestyles section that folds without notice while the entire editorial staff just disappears.
Today's Wild West scenario is not so different, perhaps, from the yellow journalism at the turn of the last century, with the exception that, today, any Tom, Dick or Harriet can open a Twitter account and post "news", so that the proliferation of people calling themselves reporters is exponential. And it's not always obvious who's good, who's not, and who's just looking for his/her 30 seconds of fame.
Why does it matter? "Free media", the art of placing stories in outlets to promote ideas, products, ideas or services, is still an important arrow in the arsenal of the public relations professional. In fact, seeing the company's name or product in print is often what clients, or companies, mean when they talk about PR.
So, it's not business as usual. What to do?
Today, with shrinking news staff in even the biggest media, the more you can do to help a reporter find you, get the story and pitch it to their editors, the better chance you have of getting your story picked up.
Here's a new Top 10 for enhancing media placement:
1. Build your reputation online and off. Become a trusted news source by being reliable, never feeding bogus stories, and meeting deadlines.
2. Register (and tweet) on HARO (Help a Reporter Out), Be A Source, TV Newser, etc.
3. Follow reporters on Twitter - they sometimes follow back or respond to replies to their tweets.
4. Blog about things that have things to do with your company or clients, and sometimes things that don't but about professional concerns or events to spread the good word.
5. Network like hell: events proliferate but there are also bars and restaurants where reporters like to hang. Organizations like MediaBistro have sprung up with the goal of training pink-slipped journalists to do something else in the writing field. Maybe even compete for your next job.
6. Email journalists & formers to see where they land and keep in touch.
7. Get LinkedIn, Facebook, and put your best opinions out there in the ether...
8. Worry about getting good content, repackaging for various media and keeping your contact info up-to-date.
9. Know who you're talking to - and who they're reporting for. They are not always writing only for their primary news outlet. Even the venerable NYTimes employs hacks scribbling for other media. Check out Times Public Editor's recent mea culpa at http://bit.ly/19KYIa
10. Don't rely on news releases, or at least not traditional news releases to sell your story. Social releases embed links, videos, photos, bios and other resources.
In decades past, PR people were best who were invisible, persuading, cajoling and spinning behind the scenes, then pretending our clients magically appeared on the pages of the Wall Street Journal by their own merit.
Today, we are visible producers in our own right. In the new world, re-purposing content, packaging and placement our tools in trade. "Hits", Friends and Followers now become our measure of success.
No one quite knows how to master this new art form yet because the media are evolving, the old news placement ways aren't solving, the doors are revolving.
So by experimentation and practice, we can emerge from this electronic free-for-all as the new news and in it. In a good way, of course.
Talk to me on Twitter @dcoffbeatartist
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