We recently conducted a series of polls on LinkedIn to determine how professionals read news.  You can download the full report here.  The key findings showed that while news sites continued to dominate, search engines and aggregators were a major source of news.  On the mobile side, news specific mobile applications (such as the WSJ app on the iPhone) were even more important than a mobile web browser.    Our bottom line finding, based on these polls and third part research such as Hitwise’s list of top news web sites (which found both news sites and search engines in the top ten), is that major news sites along with search engines and aggregators still need to lead the way in distributing information.  Social media then provides a measurement of how well the news was received as well as an amplification effect.  Key findings included the following:

There were engineers in almost every country, and way too many product people. We had one product management person for every three engineers,We had a lot of people telling engineers what to do but nobody fucking doing anything. Excuse me. I knew that would slip out one of these times. (click here for the audio)

Her honest approach to communications (talking the way she talks, not the way someone trained her to talk) seems to simply reflect her approach to business – no one doubts her sincerity and seriousness because she’s honest to a f***ing fault about getting things done.  Here’s a good outline of her style at GigaOm.

I’m one of the (few? many?) public relations professionals cheering on this style of communications.  While it’s often not appropriate, it is how people (including executives) talk in the real world and that needs to always be kept in mind.   When an executive doesn’t use their natural language style but instead gets caught up in PR speak (yes, I said it), audiences detect and that affects the trust factor.  People are more likely to believe someone they can relate to and people easily related to people who talk like they do.  

So have I actually told an executive it’s OK to curse?  Actually, yes (ping me as I’d rather not call out that executive…but they took my advice and it f***ing worked).   While executives should stay on message, they should also communicate messages in their natural, honest style.  And if that f***ing means dropping a lot of f***cking f-bombs, then f***cking do it.  You’re more likely to be believed.  And from what I’ve seen, no one doubts that Carol is seriously focused on fixing broken things f***cking fast.

You can find more examples of Bartz’s “real world communications” style at Alley Insider here.  

liking to physically own something (rather than an “abstract” mp3 file), having a physical collection that included the artwork, and being easier to port the music to other areas. For the majority, is there anything as simple as just grabbing a CD from the living room and taking it with you into the car? The industry has always had a tendency to over-estimate people’s technological familiarity and competency.

Of course, CDs are a different media from newspapers, but the themes of physicality, practicality, familiarity, and convenience for the masses are consistent themes. Digital can’t replace the traditional walk to get the morning papers, reading the Sunday papers in bed, or an impulse purchase of a newspaper for a train journey – not everyone has the desire or the access to a portable electronic device at every moment of the day.

Whether it’s habit, touch and feel, familiarity, techno-illiteracy or convenience, a significant chunk of the population will still require a physical version to hold in their hands.

There are a few other key points that I’d like to add to this argument.

1. Don’t look to college and immediate post-college demographics for the future of news reading habits.  I, and many of my contemporaries, didn’t get into regular print reading habits until at least a year or two after college if not longer. 
2. This is not to say there is not a radical change happening.  There is definitely a shift in the media ecosystem resulting in people no longer needing or wanting to rely new newspapers and moving online instead.   But the points made by Nielsen show how paper could survive with a part of the media pie focused on sitting an enjoying the print experience (I certainly do at least on weekends during my morning coffee and paper routine).
3. Online news tends to be more about focused discovery (you have some idea of what you are looking for).  Reading a print paper is often about scanning the whole paper both for the news you wanted as well as to discover an article you didn’t know you wanted.  Personally, I only find that type of discovery to be practical on large, easily flip able-, pages of newspaper (and magazines).

Of course, there’s the question of ereaders like the Kindle.  But the question may not turn out to be based on will people migrate to today’s ereaders, but can tomorrow’s electronic paper replicate the experience of flipping through the morning paper with a cup of coffee. 

Like print books, radio and broadcast television, print newspapers may lose some of their dominance, but will likely find a place a constantly evolving media ecosystem – one that tends not to kill off old mediums, but simply assign them more specific jobs.  At one point, families sat around and listened to the radio in the house.  Now, radio is often best known, and still has a strong place in the media ecosystem, for individuals listening in their cars.  So don’t count print newspapers out yet but do look at how their use and value, much like radio, change.

When Campbell Brown of CNN asked McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds about Palin’s experience, Mr. Bounds did what he was trained to do – he answered the question he wanted to answer and not the question asked.  But instead of doing what political media often (sadly) do and moving on to the next question, Ms. Brown pressed Mr. Tucker to answer the question he was asked.   Mr. Tucker was woefully unprepared and looked like he was avoiding the question (Watch the video and judge for yourself – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxMCp1vydEI).

Now, the McCain campaign has canceled a Larry King interview supposedly as punishment.    The result is risking a reputation for looking like they can’t or won’t answer the tough questions which opens up another “just like Bush” line of attack.

The problem was that Mr. Tucker, like most people in politics, was only trained to answer the question he wanted to answer.  While this is a well established and practiced media relations practice, it shows an incomplete media relations training.   Mr. Tucker was obviously not trained on what to do if a journalist presses on a tough question. 

We work most often with business and trade media.  While we do train our clients to get their message out by redirecting to answers they want to give, we also train and prepare them to make sure they answer the question asked in the most direct way possible.  It’s not simply to avoid a Tucker Bounds situation but to show transparency and create goodwill both with the audience and the journalist.  Whether it is a politician or business executive and regardless of whether a journalist pushes or not, people see when the person being interviewed is avoiding the question.   For audiences, avoiding the question reinforces the lack of transparency and truthfulness in politics.  Just imaging if a CEO avoided answering a question on explaining why the company missed earnings and simply talked about their vision?  One word – skewered. 

Beyond the PR lessons, my main hope for this political season is that, regardless of who wins, more journalists take note of Campbell Brown and realize that when they ask a question they should get an answer to that question.  And when they don’t, it should be noted publicly.  If this was standard practice, we would start seeing the transparency and truthfulness from politicians we all seek.

Today’s Carl Bialik column in the Wall Street Journal (read it here and in his blog- subscription required until Rupert Murdoch says otherwise) shows how candidates need to pay more attention as well (incidentially, the political consultants/pr pros in politics are, I believe, the biggest over-spinners).   Sites such Factcheck.org and Politicfact.com are now checking the accuracy of candidates statements.  

Reading this reminded me of the key difference between business and political reporting (my subjective view as a reader).  Political reporters seem to focus on reporting a candidate’s position and key messages so that audiences can decide for themselves.  Business reporters focus on what a company says, and then research the facts and reports that research so readers can decide the future of a company’s market position.

Imagine if political reporters were more like business reporters.  They would report not only on what candidate says but how also research its factual basis.  Like business reporters, they would note on an ongoing basis how accurate the facts out of a campaign were and the full context of those facts (e.g., Romney implied that military spending was cut under Clinton…how many reporters noted the spending level cut took place under Regan?…and no, I have not fact checked this fact check).  Or, as many have asked, what if the news media had focused not only reporting but qualifying the facts the Bush administration put forward to justify the Iraq war just as business reporters research the facts put foward in a company’s earnings reports. 

This comparison also reminds me of one of the great ironies of the non-political public relations industry – that PR gets the blame for turning fact into fiction.  In fact, while a few bad apples certainly help shape this reputation, I often find that it’s non-PR executives pushing the fact-based envelope and it’s the PR professional or agency providing warnings on how messages that can’t be backed with facts can backfire.  However, like lawyers, counsel is what we provide and, even more than lawyers, our counsel is often ignored (probably due to the punishment not including jail time…usually).

The latest example is the Times opposing Leslie Southwick for a judicial nomination.  They use a few case examples to highlight Southwick as a homophobic racisct (yes, that’s my little spin) which make the judge unfit for the nomination.

Wall Street Journal’s editorial on Judge Southwick uses the same examples, introduces different support facgts, and comes to the opposite conclusion that the judge is a fair minded person.

So read the pieces and enjoy perfect spin, brought to you by national media.

Research to be released by Edelman’s sounds like it will start to address these issues.  In this recent post, In his recent post, Richard Edelman starts to outline the specifics of who blogs/bloggers influence and how they fit into the flow of information from source to the broader media ecosystem to the general population.  Some of the key points he made are as follows:

• Mainstream media reporters regularly use blogs as information sources and quotable material;
• Blogs are breaking more stories (a good example cited is the YouTube/Google deal being broken by Techcrunch;
• Influencers - defined as people who active attempt to “impact the public discourse” - are more likely to read blogs;
• These influencers and blog readers are more likely to take action (another good example cited is 78% of German blog readers attending a public meeting on issues covered in a blog); and
• Multinational companies draw more attention from local bloggers than companies headquartered in a market.

With more similar information, this study looks like it will provide the specific information communications professionals need to understand how blogs impact communications and where they should fall into a communications strategy.   That’s a big step in moving past the hype and into a practical reality.

(disclosure – I used to work at Edelman)

As Linda Zimmer of Second Life Business Communicators notes, the Gartner Hype cycle follows media patterns, at least initially (actual broad adoption can take off well after the hype).  I did a little trend research with the media and blogosphere discussion.  As you can see, there is a clear downward trend in media (methodology at the bottom).

Methodology: We did a little research starting in June (a little after the Business Week cover story – a good hype launch point) up until December (search was for Second Life in the headline or first paragraph of all media.  For December, we searched the first have then doubled month everyone was gone.  We also did a blog search using Google as it allows us to get specific posts by date.  The number of posts were divided by 100 to create a line closer to media.  The two numbers added up for each month provided a score.  As you can see, the blogosphere is more or less flat while media has a clear trend drop.  Based on this simple finding, Gartner’s Hype Cycle forecast is just in time.

Note: Thanks to Zoho againfor their easy spreadsheet application and charting feature (read the short review here).

 

 

These days there are two crowded camps screaming at each other over what is referred to as Web 2.0  or social media .  The first camp is made up of fans social media platforms such as blogs, Second Life, MySpace and others.  They see these platforms as being so large as to threaten so called mainstream media (though, as I’ve argued, if they are that large, aren’t they mainstream?).  The other camp argues the numbers and reach of these new platforms are simply not that big.  Second Life? Not even a million active users.  MySpace? Only one part of the young demographic and, again, ongoing usage of most of the registrants is questionable.  Blogosphere?  Many blogs but even the most popular have very niche audiences. 

Well, you’re both right.

Areas like SL and various blogs do have large enough audiences to make a significant impact in how segments of the population communicate.  But, as the second camp notes, not necessarily the whole audience.  The key workd is *segments*.     Consider trade publications or niche conusmer publications like video game magazines.   They are not displacing the Wall Street Journal but, for specific segments, they all can have enormous value over publications like the WSJ.  It’s all about the media pie getting larger and more complimentary.  So how does the blogosphere, Second Life and other new types of communications media sit alongside so called mainstream media such as the WSJ, Forbes and others?  In a few ways:

- Use them to target specific audiences.  A sport fishing blog of 50,0000 retail store readers can be the most valuable media if you happen to manufactuer sport fishing gear.  That’s the beauty of blogs.  There are tons of them and most target very specific audiences. 

- New platforms can provide new ways to interact with specific demographics.  Second Life is probably filled with early adopters.  If you are targeting early adopters, why not do messaging workshops testing through Second Life with this demographic.

- Companies can get often get directly involved in the publication of information by participating in blogs, SL, putting up MySpace pages, videos on YouTube and more. Just do it carefully.  Those that don’t follow socially acceptable rules will get burned – there have already been problems with Second Life and blogging/PR.

Remember, mainstream media is, well, mainstream. That means it has the broadest and most socially acceptable reach.  Nothing casts a wider net then something called mainstream.  If blogs ever have the same reach and influence on this country as the top print publications and broadcast TV, then they too will probably being referred to as mainstream media.  Of course, then some other type of media will probably come along and start knocking them around.