Ten years ago the Internet was in its infancy and most people got their news from newspapers and TV and the public, journalists and PR people alike were all accustomed to a 24-hour news cycle. That has changed dramatically in the last five years and we now live in a 24/7 news cycle where people expect to see eye-witness accounts of events as they are occurring.
This has wrought some major changes in how journalist go about news gathering and reporting. And since a large part of our job as PR practitioners is media relations, it affects our work too.
We need to understand the current media landscape: What journalists need today, how best to work with them, where the opportunities lie for PR news material — and what that means for Press Releases.
Jim Brady of the Washington Post says, “As journalists we can’t sit back and say this is how we’ve reported on the news for the last 50 years. The world is changing, how people consume media is changing – by the day. We’re fighting for the attention of every reader. It’s hard, but we have to figure it out and learn how to produce better journalism.”
This means journalists have to learn new skills. Every media outlet has a website and they want more than just a text story: they want images, audio and video. A tough challenge for journalists, but a wonderful opportunity for PR practitioners!
Over 40% of journalists say that their dependence on PR news content will increase as a consequence of these changes.
How does this affect the way we write a press release?
We have to move from text only to the social media news release – we have to provide images, video and audio with our news releases so we can help journalists do their job in this tough new media environment. Just as they have had to learn to produce excellent digital content and use open, collaborative tools and methods, so must we.
Take a look at the big changes that have taken place over the last ten years:
- In 2000 only 46% of US adults used the Internet.
- Just 5% had broadband at home.
- No one was wirelessly connected.
- 10% were using the so-called “cloud”—or hosted applications, or services delivered over the Internet.
- While there were vigorous conversations going on in forums and message boards, there were no social networks.
- Connections were slow and stationery and focused around your own computer.
Fast forward to 2010:
- 79% of adults use the Internet.
- 64% have broadband at home.
- 59% connect wirelessly.
- Two-thirds use the “cloud.”
- Forrester Research reports that 59% are active in social networks.
- Connections are faster, mobile and focused on outside servers and storage.
- The Internet is the third most popular source for news, trailing behind local and national television, but ahead of newspapers and radio broadcasts.
- Almost two-thirds (61 percent) of people get news online and 68% have watched a video news story online. (Pew Research Center‘s Project for Excellence in Journalism)
By 2008 we started to see the effects these changes were having on the traditional media:
- Detroit newspapers lost so much revenue they announced a plan to publish and distribute a traditional paper only two days a week, according to the Wall Street Journal.
- NPR had lost so much revenue that it announced it would cancel programs, once considered the network’s future, to conserve resources for its decades-old hits, according to an NPR announcement.
- NBC ‘s revenue was down so much it decided to program four hours a week of traditional prime time entertainment. (The press release is available here.)
- The Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and a host of other newspapers, filed for bankruptcy protection from its creditors, sending shockwaves throughout the industry.
All these changes have placed newsrooms under financial pressure, as they see their circulations dwindle and ad revenues go up in smoke. Who ever thought we’d see the end of the daytime soaps due to lack of sponsorship?
Media companies are struggling to adapt to the new real- time, 24/7 news cycle fueled by Twitter and FAcebook.
Journalists across all categories are under pressure to produce more stories faster – and, wherever possible, stories that break news. They’re using blogs, Facebook and Twitter, as well as continuing to produce news and features for print, online, video and audio formats. The European Digital Journalism Survey 2009 polled over 350 journalists across Europe and discovered that one in three thinks that their traditional channel may well be taken off the market. For one in five that’s already happened.
Some newspapers have shut down and others are on the brink of extinction. The result is an increased workload for journalists with over 40% confirming they have to produce more content. Almost a third of the journalists polled (29%) say they have to cover more beats and work longer hours.
One silver lining s that there is a strong move to video news online. Broadband connections have made it possible for people to watch video online and the number doing so has jumped remarkably since December 2010. 85% of media websites now offer video. Most print publication now give video cameras to their reporters and expect them to bring back visual material that enhances the story they are reporting on. This is another opportunity for PR, as we know how to tell a story in a video news release.
See this post on the most underused tactics with online video
One of the key findings from World Journalism Education Congress (WJEC2) was that social media is now an essential part of a journalist’s kitbag. Blogs and social sites are tools for news-gathering and dissemination; for investigation and crowd-sourced fact-checking. Newsroom editors say that social media conversations influence the news that gets reported. Perhaps most importantly, though, they are platforms for engagement with what NYU’s Jay Rosen famously dubbed “the people formerly known as the audience” — each one of whom is a potential source.
What are the implications of these media shifts for PR and the news release?
- Social networks have become the filters, curators and distribution channels for the news.
- Consumers are in charge of the news – they’re active in the news gathering and distribution process.
- There is more information available, but people spend less time with the news.
- Media outlets see more participation and engagement, yet less revenue.
- News media is trusted less.
This poses new challenges for us as we write our news releases. It’s no longer enough to craft a release in the old inverted triangle format and dash it off to a handful of reporters. We have to make them relevant for search engines and interesting to the people who find and read them online. Releases have to be shareable so that people can pass them along to friends in social networks. And, above all, they must be a resource for digital journalists and bloggers who are always on the lookout for fresh content and sources for articles.
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