Greentarget

Lisa Seidenberg

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Keeping a watchful eye on the changes in the media landscape is part of our jobs in the PR business. Our clients depend on it, and we can’t do our jobs well if we don’t understand what’s happening at the publications we work with. But it’s also in our DNA — most of us are news junkies at heart.

So we’re all well aware of what those publications are up against, especially in local media, where viable business models and paths to monetization have been all but impossible to come by. The results are mostly discouraging, with news deserts popping up all around the country.

But there are some rays of hope. Speaking to our staff over lunch, ProPublica Illinois investigative reporter Jodi Cohen recently told us that “the public is yearning for reporting that exposes wrongdoing.” She pointed to the creation of her organization and Block Club Chicago in the last year as positive signs.

Cohen isn’t the only one who sees hope for local journalism. We recently spoke with Douglas K. Smith, co-founder and architect of the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative. Launched in 2015 as the Knight-Temple Table Stakes project, the initiative was developed to strengthen local media in the face of disruption by accelerating the transition to audience-first and digitally skilled news enterprises, improving their practices and helping them grow audiences and audience-related revenues.

Smith, who coauthored Table Stakes: A Manual for Getting in the Game of News, told me that participating organizations have made good progress. Four major metros participated in the first year of the initiative in 2016. Since then, more than six dozen local journalism organizations have participated in what are now five different Table Stakes programs.

The initiative calls for participating journalists to share current challenges and opportunities and discuss strategies. That collaboration has revealed that most news organizations face similar challenges. They include juggling two monumental undertakings. “Journalistic efforts in today’s digitally disrupted world all work hard to put audiences first, create and monetize as many sources of value as possible,” while at the same time newsroom leaders must “retool skills, work and technology in ways that are sustainable going forward,” Smith said.

Early results are encouraging. “Participating enterprises have made significant progress toward success at the challenges selected,” Smith said. That progress includes revenue gains from a variety of sources, ranging from digital subscriptions to native advertising to local digital marketing services to fundraising to events and more.

Some of the success stories were recently detailed at Poynter.org:

  • The Houston Chronicle revamped its newsletter and expects that by the end of this year, it will have more readers coming to its subscriber website through newsletter click-throughs than through homepage visits. The morning report newsletter has grown dramatically, from 1,000 subscribers in January to 20,000 in August.
  • The Philadelphia Media Network, one year after focusing on the performance management models taught in the Table Stakes program, has more than 25,000 digital-only paid subscribers, 25 percent above the goal they had established for the newsroom.
  • The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel grew page views 20 percent year-over-year since 2017, unique visitors by 29 percent and digital-only subscriptions from 13,000 to 30,000.

Three years into the newsroom initiative, Smith hopes that all local news organizations embrace the core tables stakes needed to be in the game:

  1. Serve targeted audiences with targeted content
  2. Publish on the platforms used by your targeted audiences
  3. Produce and publish continuously to match your audiences’ lives
  4. Funnel occasional users into habitual, valuable and paying loyalists
  5. Diversify and grow the ways you earn revenue from the audiences you build
  6. Partner to expand your capacity and capabilities at lower and more flexible cost
  7. Drive audience growth and profitability from a “mini-publisher” perspective

“Healthy and sustainable local journalism is a linchpin to healthy and sustainable local democracy,” Smith said. “We cannot have one without the other. We must reverse the now decade-plus slide in the quality and sustainability of local journalism.”

Smith, who is also the author of On Value and Values, a book of moral philosophy for the 21st century, added, “When local journalism gets stripped down to the bare minimum, democracy’s light dims. Citizens, consumers, employees, families and friends all depend on local journalism shining democracy’s required light — not only by shining light on abuses of power, regardless of origin, but also on how local audiences can solve the necessities of their lives and work together to make the places where they live better.”

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Despite the relentless challenges facing both traditional and emerging news outlets, the media remains a powerful and credible communications vehicle – particularly among the stakeholders that business-to-business organizations seek to influence. At Greentarget we see it every day, and it’s borne out in our latest research. So we were disheartened to read a recent report in the Washington Post. Reporter Stephen Pearlstein theorizes that corporate media relations is broken and that the business community no longer relies on traditional media as a credible resource. Spurred by the C-suite’s mistrust in traditional media, Pearlstein notes “even the prospect of a positive story can’t crack open the door to the executive suite.” More from Pearlstein: “The prevailing attitude is now that everything is about data and social media and identifying the people they can reach by going over the heads of the established media,” one top public relations executive told me. Traditional Media Still Matters But our data tells a very different story. Greentarget’s 2018 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey shows that 54 percent of in-house counsel surveyed go to traditional media (e.g., The Wall Street Journal) each day for legal, business and industry news and information, and 45 percent find such sources very valuable – far above any other source. And Greentarget’s new survey of C-suite executives, the State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey – Professional Services found that more than half of those executives get their content from traditional media every day, and 75 percent find it very valuable content for business and industry news and information. In addition, CMO respondents to Nielsen’s 2018 Chief Marketing Officer Report see traditional media as an important channel for building brand awareness. The report found that marketers still believe traditional media remains critical to brand building and its associated top-of-funnel marketing metrics, including brand awareness, recall and favorability. Fifty-five percent of respondents plan to allocate at least 40 percent of their ad budget to traditional media (TV, print, radio, etc.), according to the report. Why Engaging With the News Media Is Worth the Risk We, of course, understand why some companies would be cautious about speaking to the media and that they have the right to decline to be interviewed if it’s truly in their best interest. But we wholeheartedly disagree that a risk-avoidance strategy is an answer. Much of Pearlstein’s article focuses on consumer brands. But for professional services organizations, we encourage a proactive – not a reactive – approach to engaging with the news media, even given the current news environment. Here’s why:
  • You snooze, you lose: There will come a time when the C-level executive who shuts down a reporter will need that same reporter to tell their story, and perhaps be more understanding of a company’s business and context throughout the reporting process.
  • You have control of a negative or positive story outcome: This is something many executives forget and likely the reason so many run the opposite direction when a reporter reaches out. Preparation is key, and ahead of any interview, it’s important that executives be completely comfortable and have multiple tools and techniques to make sure an interview goes in their favor.
  • You miss out on the benefits of thought leadership: In 2017, Edelman and LinkedIn released a joint research study of more than 1,300 business decision-makers and C-suite executives that explored how thought leadership influences their behaviors throughout the B2B purchase process. Among the study’s key findings was that 45 percent of decision-makers and 48 percent of C-suite executives said a company’s thought leadership directly led them to award business to that firm. If an executive makes a choice not to participate in a story, they are likely missing out on an under-leveraged business development resource.
  • You have a responsibility: We believe true thought leaders have an obligation to participate skillfully in the conversations that matter to their clients. This is especially true as they seek to increase market share, attract leading talent and achieve a higher purpose. There is a missed opportunity every time they choose not to respond to a reporter’s request.
We’ve written previously about the possibility of recent attacks on the press intimidating reporters and news organizations from telling the stories they feel the public has a right – and likely a need – to know. What would be worse is if these important stories aren’t told because leaders in corporate America choose not to pick up the phone. By adopting what amounts to a siege mentality when it comes to the news media, they’re passing up opportunities for thought leadership. And in the professional services realm – given the content preferences of those making buying decisions – they’re making an unequivocal mistake.

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When Collins American Dictionary announced that “fake news” was its word of 2017, it defined the seemingly ubiquitous term as “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting.” Collins also noted that usage of the term increased 365 percent since 2016.

Fake news has also been described as a threat to democracy, and experts worry about the negative influence it might have on the next generation of Americans who struggle to understand the difference between fact and fiction.

While the trend is something that should concern just about everyone, it’s especially important for public relations professionals to avoid shrugging fake news off as just the latest buzzword driven by political rhetoric. At Greentarget, we’re paying close attention to the topic – and we’re passionate about doing all we can to firm up faith in the media as legitimate sources of information.

Whether legitimate sources will be once again be embraced as credible is an open question – one on which experts are essentially split, according to a Pew Research study. The pessimists worry that “manipulative actors will use new digital tools to take advantage of humans’ inbred preference for comfort and convenience and their craving for the answers they find in reinforcing echo chambers.” The optimists believe that “the speed, reach and efficiencies of the internet, apps and platforms will be harnessed to rein in fake news and misinformation campaigns.”

We can’t predict the future, but we agree with the optimists in the Pew study. And we have the following predictions about how the fake news pandemic will diminish in the coming years:

2018: The Year of the Source

A recent assertion from some PR industry leaders that media relations is dead is something we wholeheartedly disagree with — and we’ll go a step further. In the fake news era, media relations is more important than ever. Forbes’ contributor Jade Faugno summed up our thoughts on this topic perfectly:

The stigma of “fake news” may cling to the popular consciousness for several years to come, but sophisticated audiences will continue to hold fast to reliable sources, which will only further demonstrate their value in a growing sea of misinformation.

Although the relationship between journalism and media relations is often cast as adversarial, our experiences with reporters show that they are dedicated – even desperate – when it comes to publishing stories that are factual and have reputable spokespeople who add value. We also believe executives will continue to view the news media as valuable and credible. In Greentarget’s 2017 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey, 95 percent of respondents said traditional sources like The Wall Street Journal and The Economist were the most credible sources of news – despite the fake news trend.

When it Comes to the News, Education Matters

“Young people’s ability to reason about the information can be summed up in one word: bleak.” That’s according to the authors of the Stanford University study that looked at whether middle school, high school and college students could decipher legitimate news from fake news. Lead author Sam Wineburg told NPR that “educational programs are the only way we can deal with these kinds of issues.” In a hopeful sign, some universities are now building news literacy classes into their curriculum.

At Greentarget, we also believe it’s crucial to educate the next generation of Americans about how to differentiate fact from fiction. That’s why we’re offering financial support to the News Literacy Project (NLP), a nonprofit dedicated to teaching middle and high school students how to use the standards of journalism to determine what information they should trust, share and act on. Count us as strong supporters of NLP’s focus to enlighten young Americans about the role of honest media in our democracy.

Technology and Innovation Can Help

As noted above, the evolution of technology was the top reason for optimism among respondents to the Pew study. We agree – but we also acknowledge that much work needs to be done amid rays of hope.

Late last year, it was reported that a group of college students designed a plug-in called Open Mind, designed to prevent false news. Created during a hackathon competition at Yale University, the plug-in works as a Chrome extension that uses sentiment analysis technology to analyze articles for bias – and steers users to alternative sources. The app’s creators will meet with members of Congress this spring, and Facebook, which was one of the sponsors of the competition, is interested in talking to the students as part of its ongoing work to address fake news.

One way leading technology companies, including Facebook and Google, are working to address fake news is through partnerships with fact-checking organizations. While it’s too early to evaluate how Google’s partnership is going, the efficacy of Facebook’s partnerships has been met with some criticism. Aaron Sharockman, executive editor of Politifact, a member of the coalition of fact-checkers who agreed to work with Facebook, addressed some speed bumps. “The reality is, there is too much content for us to check, and we imagine there is plenty more material in need of fact-checking that we aren’t seeing,” said Sharockman in an analysis that captures how complicated the fake news problem is.

At Greentarget, it’s in our DNA to direct smarter conversations and to support the core principles of journalism. We’re hopeful that through our ability to deliver credible sources to journalists, support efforts to help the younger generation tell the difference between fact and fiction, and advocate for innovation taking place to curb fake news, we can do our part in finding a solution to this complicated issue.

We wouldn’t hesitate to call fake news a pandemic – one that needs to be combatted to ensure the health of our democracy. Here’s hoping the top word of 2018 will be “legitimate news source.”

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Stephen Joyce, a Bloomberg BNA staff correspondent, covers regulatory, statutory and enforcement developments involving energy and environment, health care, privacy and the business of law in four Midwestern states. As such, he’s no stranger to getting pitched by PR professionals. But in a recent conversation with the Greentarget team, Joyce said just 25 percent of the pitches he receives are useful – and he provided some guidance on how he thinks media relations professionals can improve. “Ask yourself: Do you have something to say?” Joyce said. “Who do you want to say it to? From there, figure out what news organization or product or whatever reaches those people, and then figure out who the journalists are in that space.” In a wide-ranging conversation, Joyce spoke to the Greentarget team about how the media environment has evolved over the past 20 years, and his mantra as a reporter with Bloomberg: Factual, Fastest, Final, First and Future. What follows is a summary of his remarks, edited for length and clarity. What excites you most about being a journalist? It can be exciting, but it’s also dull. For example, one day I’m writing about an explosion at a Wisconsin grains mill, another day it’s just a new law, new rule, etc. Being a journalist isn’t always running around chasing a big story. How has your work as a reporter evolved over the last 20 years? One word: technology. I learned news writing on a typewriter in college, and now everything is on phones and computers. That’s changed everything – research, how I interview people, etc. What have been some of the most exciting stories you’ve covered? What have been some of the most difficult? The financial crisis in New York was the most exciting. I was based in New York from 2007-2016, so I started out there right when the housing bubble burst. My job was to cover the financial crisis. The most difficult stories we write are related to federal and state rulemakings. Bloomberg BNA covers statutory and regulatory developments in mini briefs (usually a couple paragraphs), but the events themselves are 150-page documents. In short, it’s a lot to digest. “Yesterday wasn’t fast enough” is very accurate in my world, and we have to go through the entire thing fast. But fast sometimes isn’t your friend. How do you keep up with the latest happenings in the areas you cover? Shameless plug, the primary source of my information comes from Bloomberg products – I have a terminal and set up a ton of alerts and key terms. I also search for new dockets on Bloomberg Law. On Twitter, I follow relevant sources, competitors and government agencies. I scan through these threads a few times a day. I also have regular source calls where I ask relevant experts, “What should I be writing about?” These are terrific as I get original ideas. Does Bloomberg BNA incorporate artificial intelligence in its day-to-day reporting? If not, do you anticipate it will happen in the future? Yes – they’re very tech heavy. There are tools that I have that I don’t know how to use entirely yet. About a year ago they created a data-driven journalism unit – I work with them to pull metrics, and because the group has a line into graphics, I can use them as a one-stop shop for data and graphics. The terminal is very tech-focused, so there’s a lot of data-driven journalism.

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At Greentarget we work hard to keep up with the evolving media landscape, given the work we do for clients. Sara Fischer, media reporter at Axios, has been an important resource for us – and probably is for anyone trying to understand the future of news. So we were excited when Fischer agreed to discuss the latest industry trends with us and provide her thoughts on the role Axios is playing in the current media environment. Axios was established as a media company delivering vital, trustworthy news and analysis in the most efficient, illuminating and shareable ways possible. Fischer joined when the publication launched in January 2017. She told us why her role as a media reporter made sense – she came in as “an expert on both sides.” “I had sold advertising on behalf of a number of high-profile outlets, and also had the opportunity to be a reporter,” she said. “When the heads of Axios were looking for a new reporter to cover the media environment, we all agreed it was a good fit.” A focus of Fischer’s writing has been to better understand user behavior and media consumption. She’s dug into user experience’s impact on how people get news, and her takeaways have shaped the direction of Axios’ news coverage. “Readers don’t always like long-form content when reading hard, breaking news. However, as it relates to softer news, longer-form is more acceptable,” she said. “User experience is also paramount. Design and technology need to go hand-in-hand. If a site has too many ads, the user won’t stay with the publication. A website must be clean and fast, or a user won’t want to go there.” Fischer and Axios have extensively researched user behavior and whether people will pay for news – a matter that has bedeviled news organizations for more than two decades. Of particular interest is social media, with fewer than 10 percent of respondents to a new Adobe study saying they are very likely to pay for news through social media channels. For Fischer, this wasn’t at all surprising. “There is a news and information gap in the U.S. between highly educated people and low-income people,” she said. “Highly educated people are more likely to pay for news, and they are starting to do so more frequently. However, lower-income people will continue to turn to social media as a way to access news and information, because it’s free. The challenge, however, is that they are still looking for sources of news they believe in and trust, and on social media, it’s not always easy to decipher.” Fischer analyzed these challenges in an article on a study from the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It found that just 25 percent of people have a “great deal” of trust for social media as a news source, with trust in Facebook being much lower at 12 percent. Fischer explained in her article why this is such a huge problem. “Sixty-two percent of U.S. adults get news on social media, and according to Pew, 68 percent of people don’t trust the news they see or read, which is the highest distrust rate the U.S. has ever seen.” Fischer also writes about how reporters continue to adapt in the evolving media landscape. Last month, she wrote about how Google is launching new features in its free Cloud Natural Language API to help newsrooms and other businesses sort out information, making it easier to search later. Artificial intelligence’s impact on journalism is an important topic these days, and Fischer believes AI will continue to affect the stories journalists write and become instrumental in helping reporters market content to reach new readers. “Reporters will be able to use the machine learnings to better manage reader relationships,” she said. “Some newsrooms are using AI to translate pieces for international markets.” Following up on our recent conversation with Courtney Radsch, advocacy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, we asked Fischer about how the current political environment has impacted the media environment, both for better and worse. She noted how media outlets (even publications like Vanity Fair) are creating political verticals to keep up with the public interest and a newfound aggressive fact-checking culture. “Fact-checking has really become the center of the news landscape, and we continue to see services for fact-checking and verification to counter fake news in social media increase,” she said. “Some journalists are struggling amid the 24-hour news cycle, longing for the day when they could be done at the end of the day,” Fischer said. “But the chaotic environment has enticed more readers to pay for news.” “More and more people are looking for ways to distill the truths around them, and a number of publications have definitely witnessed bumps in subscriptions,” Fischer said. Fischer moderated Axios’ first Future of the Media event last month and wrote about some of the key takeaways from the heavy hitters who participated (it’s definitely worth a read). To close our conversation, we asked Fischer what she finds most fascinating in the evolving news environment. Her answer: There is no regulatory body that is completely responsible for oversight of the internet. There are three bodies that are responsible for parts of internet regulation. The Federal Communications Commission is responsible for illegal content, like child pornography. The Federal Trade Commission is responsible for false commercialization, like diet pill scams. And the DOJ is responsible for anti-trust. “With what technology is capable of doing, I’m not sure how people are shocked about Russia using Facebook’s tools to target specific ads,” she said, echoing a recent Mashable story. “Anyone who has worked on the sales side of media knows that there’s nothing crazy about the functionality of this, and how easy it is to do.”

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At Greentarget, we value the work that reporters do every day, and appreciate the privilege to collaborate with writers and editors who impact society through their journalism. Our belief that the principles of journalism play a vital role in the proliferation of knowledge and ideas is part of our DNA. Lately we’ve grown increasingly concerned about journalists’ ability to keep covering the news with independence and integrity. In the last year or so we’ve seen high-profile attacks on the press from the highest levels of government and even threats to curb press freedoms. So we reached out to Courtney Radsch, advocacy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which promotes press freedoms around the world. Radsch says the news media is in the midst of a “galvanizing moment” that’s showing “how important journalism really is.” “The press is the Fourth Estate, the only independent check on power,” she says. “Given the lack of forthcoming information [from Washington], journalists have a more important role to play to make sure that the public is informed and that they are fulfilling their roles to its greatest potential.” Radsch has been heartened in recent months to see the press stand up for the core pillars of journalism, but noted an eye-opening tweet that said, “We’re in trouble when quoting the First Amendment starts to feel like an act of resistance.” Today’s media-government dynamic is a marked departure from the one that had been in place for decades. Despite the adversarial relationship between the media and the government, Washington has stepped up to support CPJ — and the profession — when it mattered. For instance, if a journalist was imprisoned overseas, media organizations could ask the State Department or Defense Department for assistance, and usually, they got it. Radsch isn’t sure that kind of relationship is possible in 2017, and the potential for declining press freedoms here has ramifications around the world because the U.S. sets the global tone on press protections. CPJ is working with similar organizations across the country to collaborate on a range of press freedom, media justice and open government issues at every level of government. Later this year, CPJ, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Knight First Amendment Center and the Index on Censorship will launch an as-yet unnamed news site to track press-freedom violations in the U.S. Still, the bitter anti-media rhetoric we saw during the election hasn’t softened or dissipated. “We saw the rise in attacks against journalists during the campaign season and hoped the verbal and physical abuse would taper off, but it has continued — and the attacks have increased,” Radsch says. “Women journalists are getting trolled online, and there has been a rise of attacks on Jewish journalists. We’d like to get ahead of these issues and be informed of the true challenges to press freedoms. It’s hard to advocate for change if you don’t know what the incidents are.” So will the recent attacks on press freedoms intimidate reporters and news organizations, or prevent them from telling the stories they feel the public has a right — and likely a need — to know? Radsch acknowledges that journalists aren’t naïve about the dangers facing them, but she hopes it won’t impact their reporting. “We hope this isn’t the way we’re heading,” she says.
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