Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The grizzled vet and the digital native: Journalism has plenty of room for both to succeed. I spent eight years at AOL and I'll say this: I saw none of the great, all of the bad and some of the good. ...

The blood sport during my AOL days was about the future of media companies — who would or wouldn’t survive the digital onslaught. Actually, it was much the same during my time at Newsweek in the 80s (who needed three newsweeklies in a broadcast world). Ditto when I joined The New York Times in the 70s (was the city big enough for both The Post and Daily News). Now, the social Web with its echo chamber turns up the volume daily — and makes it more personal, too.

It’s far more about the fate of the individual journalist. That quickly gets down to the paycheck. Will there be one? How much? Who gets it — the “professional” or the pretender? Consumer demand for credible news and information is greater than ever. The problem is the 100-year-old model for producing it is forever broken. That’s why more attention must be paid to finding new ways to produce quality journalism — efficiently, at scale and at a price supported by mobile CPMs, which at best are 50% lower than desktop CPMs, which if you’re lucky come in two-thirds lower than print CPMs.

In other words, a high-cost newsroom structure built for the print age will never work in a smartphone or tablet world. A few startups are experimenting with new models — Vox Media, Machinima, Bleacher Report and Storify are a few that I follow. Among traditional media companies, FORBES is the only one I know of charting a new course....

That’s not to say that other social networks aren’t important, they certainly are – for example, we were the first newspaper to reach 1m followers on Google+ in July 2012. We’re also figuring out what platforms fit with the brand as and when they pop up – for us it’s less about being everywhere and more about being represented well in a few places....

When it comes to getting general news and information, consumers worldwide put as much trust in search engines as they do in traditional media — and more in both than they do in social media.

But, the numbers don’t portray any single source as highly trusted, which suggests that consumers are at least trying to vet the accuracy and trustworthiness of what they find in today’s information-saturated world.

The data comes from the recently released 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer, the 13th annual global survey that uses data from “informed publics” — college-educated individuals in upper income brackets that follow public policy issues and are active media users....

...As more people in any given newsroom are publishing to social platforms — andas more people bypass the homepage and instead use Twitter and Facebook as the entry point to any given news site — analytics companies see new opportunities to help media companies leverage real-time social data. 

Visual Revenue, a predictive analytics firm that focuses exclusively on media companies, is this morning rolling out a bundle of tools to help editors measure the effectiveness of social publishing in real time.

“So, if you push a story right now on Nieman Lab, 40 clicks into it you might see 17 retweets, two favorites, some manual retweets and that’s all great, actually,” Visual Revenue CEO Dennis Mortensen told me. “But how do you really add all of it up?”...

The arrival of the web knocked the news industry's relationships — with advertisers and with readers — out of alignment. But there are signs a few small repairs are working....

Misalignment grew, with readers and advertisers, as both themselves went increasingly digital. Think about it. In the old print world, advertisers paid up but really got a huge — and effective — audience, which moved goods and services. In this new digital world, they could buy online display that has never approached the results of print. Clickthrough rates tumbled toward the miniscule, tangible evidence of the growing disconnection. Shoppers found little usefulness in the advertising. Online advertising may have brought in a few billions, but publishers came nowhere close to creating the kind of local marketplace the newspaper had created.

Cultural misalignment. Reader misalignment. Merchant misalignment. Shopper misalignment....

One of the first things that crops up in conversation these days is the language of digital. The word content is over-used by marketers and publishers. The term does a disservice to the creative process behind it. I find it quite hard to think of stories as content – it’s so far removed from what it takes to do. In the digital age, journalism is still – just – clinging on by its fingernails and using the catch-all moniker of content is not helping its standing.

Content covers all players, from finely honed pieces by professional journalists and commentators, to rants by amateurs. However, just because everyone now has access to a publishing platform online, doesn’t meant quality editorial is a dying art, nor does it mean that those producing quality editorial should ignore the changes happening in the publishing world. On a site like xoJane – to which I contributed to for a short stint – you’re trying to connect with people. You’re no longer handing down stone tablets for them to read. I think that’s a very important – and good – part of what’s happened to communication....

As more consumers access news on their mobile devices, news organizations are seeing traffic to their websites from desktop computers flatten or decline. And in some regions, such as many parts of Africa, users are leapfrogging the Web altogether and going straight to mobile.

Joining Bergman to discuss the news industry's transition to mobile were Poynter's Regina McCombs and Damon Kiesow, senior product manager for mobile at the Boston Globe and Boston.com.

The chat included several helpful tips for newsrooms making the transition to mobile....

"Internet Users Demand Less Interactivity," read the headline of a recent article at The Onion. A (fictional) Internet user commented:

"Every time I type a web address into my browser, I don't need to be taken to a fully immersive, cross-platform, interactive viewing experience...I don't want to take a moment to provide my feedback, open a free account, become part of a growing online community, or see what related links are available at various content partners."

Are magazine app users starting to feel the same way? Faced with floods of online content, readers open magazine apps for a cohesive, relaxed reading experience -- only to cope with massive file downloads and confusing, complex interfaces.

A new batch of magazine publishers wants to move in a different direction. Drawing on the concept of "subcompact publishing," recently articulated by Craig Mod, and often mentioning Marco Arment's The Magazine as inspiration, these publishers are creating minimalist magazine apps that do just enough -- and no more -- to provide a focused, deep, quality reading experience....

...Take Twitter for example. A wonderful way in which friends can talk to friends and friends of friends who are on the spot. But, if one has a look at who has large followings, a lot of journalists are right there.

In almost every case, journalists who have the largest followers are those who are not only on the ball and on the spot but who have in successive 140 character messages been able to succinctly and accurately move information to their followers.

Generally speaking, journalism needs to up its game. Professional hacks need to be able to place themselves on a much higher plane than so-called citizen journalists and bloggers.

What they write and say has to be structured in a way that oozes professionalism and integrity, relevance and credibility....