Category: media

The State of the News Media, 2007: 7 trends

Last week, the Project for Excellence in Journalism released its annual State of the News Media report, which notes seven major trends to watch. Here’s a summary of them:

  • News organizations need to do more to think through the implications of this new era of shrinking ambitions. The move toward building audience around “franchise” areas of coverage or other traits is a logical response to fragmentation and can, managed creatively, have journalistic value. To a degree, journalism’s problems are oversupply. … But something gained means something lost, especially as newsrooms get smaller.
  • The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model. The signs are clearer that advertising works differently online than in older media. Finding out about goods and services on the Web is an activity unto itself, like using the yellow pages, and less a byproduct of getting news, such as seeing a car ad during a newscast.
  • The key question is whether the investment community sees the news business as a declining industry or an emerging one in transition. … If news companies do not assert their own vision here, including making a case and taking risks, their future will be defined by those less invested in and passionate about news.
  • There are growing questions about whether the dominant ownership model of the last generation, the public corporation, is suited to the transition newsrooms must now make.
  • The Argument Culture is giving way to something new, the Answer Culture. [Applause! – ed] … A growing pattern has news outlets, programs and journalists offering up solutions, crusades, certainty and the impression of putting all the blur of information in clear order for people.
  • Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics.
  • While journalists are becoming more serious about the Web, no clear models of how to do journalism online really exist yet, and some qualities are still only marginally explored. A content study of more than three dozen news sites offers more details.

    • Online video and the future of PR

    Jeremy Peppers of POP! PR fame nicely summarizes online video’s impact on communication in the social mediasphere. It’s a breathless, optimistic view of the future, with links galore. But Peppers cautions marketers about using video wisely.

    Rule No. 1: keep it away from the ad people.

    How should video be used? First, most importantly, it should be used when appropriate. In this social media rush, firms and corporations rush out to put everything together in one campaign. It does not make sense, though. Video is a great way to get your message across, but companies need to remember to have an honest voice, not messaging [emphasis mine]. It’s one of my lines about social media – hand it over to PR rather than advertising, because PR is used to talking TO people, not like advertising that just talks AT people.

    Well put. Also this: “[O]nly use video if it makes sense. New demo to showcase? Video it and post it in the newsroom and on YouTube. Just don’t try too hard, and it should be fine.”