Mainstream Media Aflame
This week has seen a lot of shake-ups in the mainstream media.
A massacre at CMP was announced yesterday, with several publications shuttering and journalists’ fates left in limbo.
Today, major shake-ups declared at the WSJ.
According to a former Boston Globe employee who visited us yesterday, these upheavals can be traced all the way back to the first Iraq War in the early 90’s.
It was during this conflict that TV and the Internet made hardcopy journalism nearly superfluous. The hard news was happening in real-time (“watch a missile strike, from the nose-cone of the missile itself!”). The daily paper became a place for reasoned analysis & recaps, a place to read about yesterday’s news. And reasoned analysis doesn’t sell well in our hurry-hurry culture.
Since then, of course, TV and the Internet have continued to evolve, to be ever more visceral and impactful. Embedding journalists with combat troops? How could a Gray Lady compete with that kind of excitement?
On the Internet front, I’d argue that few publications have shown an interest in making their Internet sites anything more than a re-purposing of hardcopy content. Innovation exists, but is sparse. This is only now starting to change, and with all due respect to the management of these afflicted publications, perhaps this week’s shake-ups are evidence of a necessary change of mindset?
As noted in the NYT article about the WSJ tempest: “Dow Jones described the changes as a major step toward ‘the integration of The Journal’s print and online news operations’ into a seamless whole - a transition that most news organizations are grappling with.”
These going’s-on mean many things to PR pros...
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In a June 12 article in the NYTimes, outgoing PM Tony Blair attacked the media landscape:
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Mr. Blair dwelled on changes in news reporting, including the impact of websites on traditional newspapers and broadcasters and the introduction of a rolling 24-hour news cycle, to complain that “the media are facing a hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before … The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by ‘impact.’ Impact is what matters. It is all that can … get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge… (Accuracy is) secondary to impact.
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What this means? Fewer publications and more competition for the table scraps could mean that the media we deal with become increasingly focused on edgy, cool stuff; celebrity-related crapola; leaks; controversy … it could even happen at the InformationWeek level
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Longer-term, less pubs = less opportunities for coverage. Our jobs just got a bit harder.
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Less mainstream pubs could also mean that it’s time for some clients to take a harder look at opportunities in the blogosphere.
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Comments
I just think the media's unable to face their actual communities and provide them the information they want. Then they rely on sensationalism, which works, short term, but long-term continues to hurt trust. I mean, who takes the New York Post seriously?
It's a continued evolution. The ones that fail to adapt to the new environment are suffering. And will continue to suffer.
Then look at USAToday.com. Phenomenal increases in readership. And why, because they allow User Generated commenting on their stories... Good and bad. It's still re-purposed content, but it's getting closer.
GL
P.S. It's highly likely WSJ was a pre-acquisition purge requested by the buyer.
Posted by: Geoff Livingston | June 14, 2007 11:24 PM
Blair hit it right with the "impact" statement - but it is a paraphrase of something John Stossel wrote about a while back.
Most often, the important things happening around us happen [i]slow[/i]. The trends, the influence. The context that shapes who we are and how we think about what we see.
It is a case of micro-analyzing the bark, ignoring the tree as a whole, and forgetting there was ever a forest to begin with.
Posted by: Ike | June 15, 2007 10:17 AM
While there are significant changes in how messages and news are transmitted to audiences - Todd points out that it's time for clients to take even harder looks at blogosphere opportunities - I disagree that there is less opportunity for coverage.
On the contrary: if clients and their counselors (or even readers) will be smart about their offerings, there is even more opportunity to appear in MSM publications.
News outlets, especially dead tree publications, are diverging into distinct elements: Digital and print. Some messages rely on words, some are more effectively delivered through multimedia.
Some are rich narratives that demand the intimacy of paper; you're mesmerized on the train and clutch the paper. You're enraptured by the back story so you take it with you and read it in bed. It's the same reason gravitate toward fine novels: Rich story telling is captivating.
The same story can be told in pithy, snarky bursts. Maybe, to fall on the cliche, a picture is worth a thousand words. Or in the age of YouTube or the video iPod, maybe a moving image is priceless. Mainstream publications are ramping up their digital capabilities, but many newsrooms still lack the technological sophistication to make things happen. This is a time when careful spoonfeeding can take place.
Posted by: DashThirtyDash | June 17, 2007 10:49 AM