LEWIS 360°

Newspaper Bailout Buffoonery

With all the talk of bailouts and the US Treasury printing a few extra trillion to dole out, it comes as no surprise that yet another struggling industry is joining the party - the US newspaper industry. Give me a break. The newspaper industry has been spiraling downward long before September's meltdown (check out Paper Cuts). According to the March 24 Reuters story:

With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, Democratic senator Benjamin Cardin on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.

Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies. Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.

With all due respect to Sen. Cardin - a tragedy for our community? A tragedy for our democracy?

Yes, the economy sucks, ink costs are soaring, advertisers are running for the hills, but no bailout or issuance of tax-exempt status addresses the real reason print newspapers are in trouble - the fundamental change in the way we consume, share and discuss information.

It would've been a tragedy 100 years ago. Perhaps even 10 years ago. But now, there's ZERO barrier to entry, Senator. The amount of news and information available at our fingertips with the strike of a URL is incredible and would argue we're much better prepared as political and/or big business watchdogs.

For example, I can now read about my local Congressional representative's latest press release, click through to the voting record, uncover her position on a particular issue, use "Google News" to get a sense of the topics she's leading and commenting on, watch an embedded video in the text story responding to an opponent, read through her LinkedIn page and finish by reading her latest Tweets from the floor of the House.

The only tragedy would be shelling out more tax dollars to keep a broken business model on life support. Let the talented journalists and savvy executives figure out now how to restructure, reinvent and change rather than delay the inevitable. Just check out what the former Rocky Mountain News staffers are up to with the InDenverTimes.

One last point. The day I canceled my Sunday Boston Globe two years ago, I was honestly upset. Armed with a cup of coffee and dog at my feet, I began on the front page above the fold, worked through the editorials and opinions in Ideas, (rubbed the dog's belly), scanned the Metro stories, dug deep into the Business section, dug even deeper into the Sports pages, (said, "you're a good dog..." about 10 times) and closed with the light fare of Arts & Entertainment and PARADE. Breaking that tradition was brutal. But hardly a tragedy.

Why Google Streetview rocks my very small world

I can’t work out whether I am more disappointed my house isn’t on Google Streetview than I would be aggrieved if it were.

And while the privacy debate rages on and a brief adoption curve flies speedily through ‘how cool’ on its way to ‘now what do I do with it?’

I quickly found an excellent reason to use Google Streetview: context.

Context is more important than we realise when it comes to search. Search has too often lacked context. I can find the address of a pub, but is there a curry house or a bookies nearby? If I’m meeting a friend in Bristol, what’s the nearest pub to the station – does it look rough as boots - and is there somewhere between the station and pub I can grab a newspaper or buy a birthday card? Is there a cashpoint on the way?

Knowing these things won’t change the direction in which the world spins but it is all useful stuff. Yet gathering that information would previously have required multiple searches and thrown up many false positives en route, and in truth I’d probably just not have bothered.

However, while Streetview isn’t bang up to date it does promise to provide much of that context and more.

A small example - which I know could be more interesting, but it at least illustrates the point. Last night I met a good friend for a few drinks at The Loft bar on Clapham High Street.

Before heading off I looked it up on Streetview to establish what the nearest curry house looked like and whether there is a cashpoint between Clapham Common tube and the bar. There were both but I also saw the bar is above an Evans Cycles (though white van man was doing his best to thwart me you’ll note).

This isn’t something I knew or something I would have found out just by doing an address search. But armed with this fact – and knowing I needed to get a new bike pump (it’s 24 rock and roll my life) – I set off a few minutes early to catch the shop before it closed.

This is a case of Google actually pushing context to its users.

Of course I didn’t reinvent the wheel in the process, or discover a new way to split the atom. But such lifestyle tools are certainly useful and I did get a new bike pump...

...and OK, I didn't actually get a new bike pump because the queue was taking forever so I put it back and walked out and will now have to buy one online - but that's not such a good ending is it.

State Of The News Media Just Out

Just found an interesting report on all the developments in the U.S. news media, just – excerpts from the summary:

“Newspaper ad revenues have fallen 23% in the last two years. Some papers are in bankruptcy, and others have lost three-quarters of their value. By our calculations, nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet. (...) Perhaps least noticed yet most important, the audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating. The number of Americans who regularly go online for news, by one survey, jumped 19% in the last two years; in 2008 alone traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27%.”

Nothing new really, but very comprehensive reading with great stats.

Smoke over London

Not sure what it is yet - Sky News suggests its at Chancery Lane. We can see the flames from here...

Update: Apparently the Breams building off Chancery Lane is on fire. Sky News is now covering. No injuries reported.

The Year When Companies Discovered The Social Web

German business newspaper Handelsblatt writes about a recently published survey which reveals that over 80 per cent of the biggest European companies are using social networks and tools like Wikipedia to manage their reputation.

This confirms my observation that over the last 12 months (nearly) all companies have finally realized the power of the Social Web. And although some people may still think the web offers great opportunities to save money - it is more the ability to target certain user groups much more efficiently than ever before which really makes the web interesting. The fact that Wikipedia rules in this research still seems to indicate that the companies are still going for large audiences rather than using the really Social factor in the "new" web.

So, still some wy to go for many it seems.

The survey, carried out by Swedish consultancy H&H, says that the last 12 months have seen a steep increase in companies using social networks to do their PR. The most popular platforms today are Youtube (where many companies already have established their own video channels), picture portal Flickr, presentation portal Slideshare and Apple's audio platform iTunes. Surprisingly (or not), the top target for online PR is Wikipedia though.

Interestingly the research also shows that 90 per cent of the analysts, shareholders and business journalists contacted said they are increasingly using these channels to gather information.

European Social Media PR leader is Siemens, followed by Vodafone and BP. When asked about the quality provided by the ocmpanies, they rated Deutsche Post as the leader.

And yes, here comes the country ranking (how we love it): Quality-wise German companies are best in European Social Media PR, followed by Finland and the UK. If ranked by quantity of Social Media usage France is the leader followed by British and German companies.

Do or dye

Gentlemen prefer blondes – and of course they have more fun – but fair-haired women are increasingly dyeing their hair brown to cope with the recession, according to a cracking new PR story.

Allegedly, one in three women is going brunette to be taken more seriously in the office. (And needless to say, hair dye isn’t a million miles away from the remit of Superdrug, which commissioned the survey of 2,500 women.)

As always, a tenuous celebrity link draws traffic to any story. So according to the Daily Mail, women changing their tresses have “followed in the footsteps of Scarlett Johansson and Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie". Two obvious victims of the downturn.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. changes News & Current Affairs editorial agenda

Difficult economic times are hitting media companies the world over and disrupting the way they do business. Australian government funded TV station, the ABC, appears to have departed from its traditional news and ‘current’ affairs editorial agenda. It remains to be seen whether the change will net a greater audience for the public broadcaster.

Give your PR team Freedom and Access

There's been a bit of chatter responding to Seth Godin's post on The difference between PR and publicity. If you're strapped for time, busy churning out another "new hire" press release and email blasting it to 1,500 journalists*, here's the cliff notes version: too many professionals in the marketing/communications industry think about only the "end" (i.e. ink) and not the "means" (i.e. strategic examination of a story").

While I agree with Seth's main point that we need to craft compelling stories, lost in the echo chamber of response is a key reason why most PR firms focus on the "end" and not the "means." Because, sadly, clients rarely measure agencies on brainstorming sessions, day long strategy debriefs, data dumps from product groups, fact finding missions with HR teams to understand the company ethos, etc. They measure us on quality and quantity of coverage. Simple as that.

So shame on us if we sidestep client relations and focus solely on media relations. Surprised this point was lost. Or, perhaps I missed it as I was busy pitching NBC Nightly News on my client's newly launched, really cool SaaS-based router monitoring dashboard**.

Ultimately, the communications professionals that master pitching CLIENTS on a story rather than the MEDIA on a story are most impressive to me, and, frankly, most successful. As PR professionals and not Publicity professionals, it’s up to us to manage the expectations and educate clients on the story we should tell that will resonate in today's hyper speed news cycle. We need freedom and we need access and YOU have to demand it. Though it can be uncomfortable for the client, taking them out of their comfort zone, in doing so, we'll be able to tell an actual story, which leads to ink. In the end, coverage is king.

*before you rant about that's all PR people do, this was a bad joke.

**that was worse.

Last few days to reserve space at Global PR best practice event

The next LEWIS PR industry forum on April 1 is proving a popular topic but there are still some places left. Check out the speaker line up here and reserve your space by emailing sallyc@lewispr.com

Chocolate tax is sweet PR

“‘Chocolate tax’ to tackle obesity’” screams a BBC news headline today, the only indication of its falsity being inverted commas. Not a report about changes in taxation – more a paraphrased quotation from a Scottish GP.

It’s certainly captured a lot of attention. The BBC News 24 coverage attracted so much viewer vitriol that some readers’ comments were ‘too rude to read out loud’.

And as one concerned reader writes on the BBC forum: “People need more education not taxes! What are the [sic] going to think about taxing next?”

The comment that “obesity is a mushrooming problem” could provide a clue. Stock up on button and large-cup varieties now - before it's too late! (Sorry.)

Photograph: LEWIS Imagebank (http://www.lewisimagebank.com)