If you are performing tradition news distribution and out reach are you missing the mark on current media trends and reaching your target audiences for more effective results. Are you reaching your public facing audiences?
Is sending out a traditional press release your only distribtution strategy? Read more on some of current trends I copied below. Is there anything that is eye opening? Or an Ahh, haaa moment for your organization or agency?
The newspaper industry has lost 25.6% in daily circulation since 2000. Those declines, however, pale by comparison to the loss in revenues, and this is a huge problem. Media industry continues to morph and adapt. Are government agencies doing the same for their outreach to hit the mark, or better yet thier target audiences.
Old media are trying to imagine the new smaller newsroom of the future in the relic of their old ones. New media are imagining the new newsroom from a blank slate.
Among the critical questions all this poses: Is there some collaborative model that would allow citizens and journalists to have the best of both worlds and add more capacity here? What ethical values about news will settle in at these sites? Will legacy and new media continue to cooperate more, sharing stories and pooling resources, and if they do, how can one operation vouch for the fairness and accuracy of something they did not produce?
The year ahead will not settle any of these. But the urgency of these questions will become more pronounced.
And ultimately the players may be quite different. Are you a new media player or traditional media wonk?
“I think the answer may come from places staffed by young people who understand the new technology and its potential and who have a passion for journalism,” said Larry Jinks, the highly regarded former editor and publisher who transformed the San Jose Mercury News a generation ago and who still sits on the board of the McClatchy Company.
If you are short on time, then I would suggest reading some of the following from Pew’s 2010 State of the Media report:
The Executive Summary, Key Findings, Major Trends and list of who owns the top media companies
These could provide the top line insights your agency or organization needs to create better results and
new strategies for 2011 and beyond.
For the third consecutive year, only digital and cable news saw audiences grow among the key sectors that deliver news. In cable in 2009, those gains were largely captured by one network, Fox, though during the day, a breaking-news time, CNN also gained viewers.
What’s more, the data continue to suggest a clear pattern in how Americans gravitate for news: people are increasingly “on demand” consumers, seeking platforms where they can get the news they want when they want it from a variety of sources rather than have to come at appointed times and to one news organization.
(the following information will make my colleaque Rita happy) <insert grin>
Audio audiences are more stable. Fully 236 million Americans listened to at least some radio in an average week in the fall of 2009, a number that has been basically static for the past five years, and news/talk/information remains among the most popular formats. NPR’s audience in 2009 rose slightly, up 0.1%, from 2008. But new technology is encroaching on the amount of traditional radio use. More than 4 –in 10 Americans now say they listen to less terrestrial radio due to iPod/MP3 use, and nearly 1in 3 now say they listen to online radio.
What are your thoughts on the media industry’s changing trends?
How have the changes and economy impacted your media relations, crisis communications, journalism career?
How have you adapted with the changes within your organization?
There needs to be a combination of traditional media styles and new media styles. A lot of people are joining new media strategies such as Facebook and Twitter, but there are some issues with using only the number of people who join each social network as your backing for getting rid of traditional media. Most people who use Facebook, Twitter and blogs only check to see what is happening with their personal profile. There needs to be a way for us to find out how many of those billion Facebook users are participating in discussions and blogs.
When I joined GovLoop, I did not comment in many blogs; I only focused on my profile. It was not until I received a welcome email that I looked further into what GovLoop could provide. Traditional media outlets allow for those discussions to take place because the information is being put in front of you such as in a newspaper or on a television. Online, you have to search for specific information in order to find what you are looking for.
Traditional media allows a user to see the most information about a specific area such as their home town or city, but new media allows a user to see more smaller bits of information from a variety of places. There needs to be a mix of both, and we need to find a way to gain the most attention from those who only use one medium to get their news.
I agree, we need to embrace both but we need to be careful about sources and accuracy too. I love city councils that tweet their agendas as they are meeting and I love that this provides more immediate and participatory access to their work. But, I also love my small town/city newspaper so I hope that we can keep tyhe best of both even if it becomes all digital to survive.
In a way, I think that digital radio will help to save a local respective because I do listen to my iPhone NPR app so I can stream my Charlotte news wherever I am. I also enjoy tuning into VT NPR and ME NPR because I used to live there and I like to hear the local flavor.
I think that the key is to embrace and evolve, not be stubborn and fight it and take the best of both and build the web presence because I believe that we are a decade away from losing all paper newspapers. I would prefer that we use that time to recreate our local newspapers online so they survive this change.
Thanks for the feedback Terri and Alan embracing a dead horse might prove challenging when the mainstream pubic does not ride horses anymore. And, that could prove detrimental to morning commutes on I 270 <insert humor>
But, with that there indeed are a great deal more media channels to choose from. And, as a result, I am providing you all some third party analysis of the current state of our media with an executive summary of the 2010 State of the Media Report, which is research based.
Having a broad overview on how media, and current understanding of the publics use of media channels may be useful for future outreach and planning. The full report and trends by media channel are located directly http://www.stateofthemedia.org/2010
If you have time, might I also suggest browsing through: