Category: media-general

By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Entrepreneurship, media-general, Publishing Tagged with , , , ,

He doesn’t just disagree; Warren Buffett just bought 63 newspapers, including 25 daily papers. In his letter to the publishers and editors of his new properties, he lays out a rosy future for papers that focus on local news, and notes his lifelong love of newspapering, which runs in his family. He even delivered papers in Washington, DC for four years.

Like me, he sees a free press as an essential cornerstone of democracy, and he promises editiorial independence from the bean-counters. I personally have my doubts if mainstream media can regain its credibility in a world where so many media properties convey the message of their corporate masters. It will be refreshing if the papers in the Buffett group can really show their independence.

Click the link above to read his letter.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, media-general, National Conference on Media Reform, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

By Shel Horowitz, GreenAndProfitable.com

Are bloggers really journalists or are they simply ranting without regard for such concepts as “journalistic objectivity”?

Are traditional journalists still able to tap into the pulse of their community beat, or have they been pushed aside by bloggers who are part of the stories they report?

In an age when radio and print journalists go into the field with cameras and post stories online before they ever see a newspaper or a radio studio, does the instant news cycle of events reported on Twitter and other social media pressure traditional journalists to cut out the analysis, sifting, and curating role they’ve often played in the past?

Is the deprofessionalization of news a good thing because it furthers the democratic impulse, or a bad thing because newsroom budgets are being slashed and if we lose professional journalism, we lose one of the most important balances against runaway government and corporate power?

As AOL prepares to swallow Huffington Post, these questions were much discussed at the National Conference on Media Reform, held in Boston in April, 2011. And since I’ve been both a journalist and a blogger, I’m paying attention.

Traditional journalism platforms can convey legitimacy to bloggers who partner with them, and at the same time make the stodgy and distant institution of a mainstream newspaper much more accessible and contemporary.

The Seattle Times, for example, partners with 39 bloggers. Without promoting or even announcing the partnership at all, the paper surveyed its readers about these partnerships, and found that:

  • 84% valued the partnership
  • 78% valued the Times for the connection
  • 52% improved opinion of seattletimes.com

Perhaps most remarkable of all, out of more than 900 responses, 324 wrote long open-ended replies; being heard about these relationships mattered enough to them that they took significant time to sound off.

According to David Cohn of Spot.Us, a site that allows journalists to solicit funding for specific investigative reporting projects, tapping the community can provide resources that couldn’t exist without crowdsourcing. For example, the Guardian, a well-regarded British newspaper with a strong investigative history, divided up the analysis of a large and complex document to 1000 different volunteers, each taking on a single page.

This has obvious efficiencies in analyzing a document that’s too big for normal channels; most journalistic organizations can’t devote a single reporter to something so resource-intensive.

But what could get lost with this wonderful collaborative process is the big picture. I think of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein slogging through the evidence that eventually forced Richard Nixon from the presidency of the United States, fitting together the pieces of a complex puzzle. Who can put these pieces together in the crowdsourced model?

And what happens to the world of journalism when the journalists performing primary research see their funding wither away, and thus no longer provide the raw material that bloggers often depend on for their reportage?

One answer may be provided by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, https://necir-bu.org. Under the auspices of Boston University and fueled largely by free student labor, the center claims to be the only New England news organization with an ongoing commitment to investigative reporting outside of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team. The institute promises its paid subscribers at least one new investigative news story every month, and also raises revenue with a certificate program in investigative journalism, aimed largely at training bloggers.

But not every journalism resource has the luxury of an unpaid labor force. When newsrooms cut back on both salaries and investigative resources in favor of cheaper infotainment like reality TV, how will we get our news?

 

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, General Commentary, media-general, People Helping People Tagged with , ,

Re-examining the “Media Ecosystem”: Reflections on the National Conference on Media Reform #NCMR11

By Shel Horowitz, GreenAndProfitable.com

 

At the fifth National Conference on Media Reform (NCMR) since 2003, the media landscape was repeatedly described as a rapidly evolving ecosystem—a metaphor I don’t remember at the two previous conferences I attended, in 2005 and 2008.

Looking at the mainstream media, the ecosystem is in tough shape. Massive cutbacks to news resources, a crippling of expensive investigative reporting at the expense of infotainment, rapid dropoffs in newspaper subscribership and ad revenues, and a lot of journalists working for free or almost free are some of the outcomes of massive consolidation and deregulation over the past 30 years or so—combined by a major rightward shift in the politics of media owners that is reflected in the way stories are covered, or if they’re covered at all.

Yes, the Internet is partly responsible. Many people seek out alternative news channels from their local bloggers on up to international outlets like the UK Guardian and Al Jazeera. And people under 30, growing up with computers in the home, never got into the habit of curling up with the morning paper over breakfast. And yes, Craigslist has hurt newspaper classified sections, hard.

But the Internet also made possible the incredible renaissance of alternate media. Anyone can be a publisher or a journalist now, and hundreds of thousands have done so. Many have built strong communities across geographical or interest-group commonalities.

And the collapse of mainstream news was predicted decades ago by George Orwell and Ray Bradbury, among others. The infotainment focus of broadcasters bringing technology to bear in order to dumb down popular culture was clearly laid out in their books, 1984 (published in the 1940s) and Fahrenheit 451 (1950s). The Internet was not even a dream yet.

Although I didn’t go with a press pass this time, I did take extensive notes. Over the next few weeks, I’ll try to pull out some highlights and share them

Shel Horowitz’s latest book is Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. He writes the Green And Profitable and Green And Practical monthly columns, https://greenandprofitable.com. Permission granted to reprint this post as long as this bio is included and any edits are approved by the author.

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By Posted on Posted in Entrepreneurship, Green Business, media-general, Shel's Personal Life

Shortly after starting my blogging career, I switched from Blogger to WordPress and began hosting the blog on one of my own sites, Principled Profit. Since the blog was called “Principled Profit: The Good Business Blog,” this made sense. I also had a radio show called “Principled Profit: The Good Business Radio Show” from 2005-09, and of course, my award-winning book at the time was Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

But from now on, my blog’s primary home will be on GreenAndProfitable.com, and the blog will be known as the Green And Profitable blog

So after all this time, why change? I still feel a lot of empathy for the brand, after all.

First of all, as a condition of publishing my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet, John Wiley & Sons required me to take Principled Profit off the market; they didn’t want my self-published book competing with theirs.

#2: Yes, I have a website at https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com—but that didn’t seem the right place to put the blog. I’m in a thinking-big mood lately, and I wanted something that would encompass the whole world of successful green business, not just the marketing slice.

And finally, I’ve had a long-held dream (at least 25 years, maybe longer) of being a syndicated columnist, kind of like George Will but with progressive, earth-centered viewpoints. I want to use the “bully pulpit” to make a difference on the environment, move the world toward ending hunger, poverty, and war, and reach a lot of people who haven’t read my books or e-zines. I’ve sent out column queries a number of times over the years, but so far, no luck. (I have served as a non-syndicated columnist for various publications over the years, most recently Business Ethics for over two years, until the magazine rebranded.)

With some good coaching from my Mastermind group, I’ve decided to move forward and begin at least by self-syndicating a column called—want to guess?—”Green And Profitable.”

I’ve long been a believer in speaking, writing, and consulting reinforcing each other and moving forward both a business success profile and a social agenda. If I can begin to find newspapers and magazines to take a monthly column (and pay at least a little something for it), I’m hoping my ideas will reach enough people to make a difference in the world. And as the climate crisis worsens, I feel like I can not only be an antidote to all the doom and gloom, but a conduit for ideas that people can incorporate into their own lives…ideas that make a real difference in the world and in my readers’ personal success.

Wish me luck!

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, media-general, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , ,

Rarely do I open up my morning paper and see even one positive story among the day’s major news. Today—though I already knew about two of them from other sources—there were three:

1. The Wall Street Reform Bill has passed both houses of Congress. Is it everything I want? Of course not. Is it more than I expected from this stalemated Congress? You betcha.

2. BP finally seems to have capped the torrent of oil from Deepwater Horizon. A lot of wait-and-see before claiming victory, but at least for the moment, no oil is pouring out.

3. Overwhelmingly Catholic Argentina passed same-sex marriage rights legislation, striking a major blow for equality and human rights. The bill, according to NPR’s All Things Considered last night, has the support of an astonishing 70 percent of the population. Major demonstrations helped sway the legislators.

A very good news day, all in all.

Footnote: My local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, ran all these stories in today’s first section. But its news pages are only open to paid subscribers, so I’ve linked to other sources.

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By Posted on Posted in Media Ethics, media-general, propaganda, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with ,

My friend Peter Shankman solicited comments from PR practitioners about Tiger Woods’ apology scheduled for later today, and the fact that reporters will not have access to him during the event; they’ll actually be in another building.

This drew lots of comments on Tiger but basically none other than Peter about how the media will play this. The media, by accepting the unacceptable terms of Tiger’s event-scripting, becomes complicit. If they said, “Hey, Tiger, it’s great that you want to apologize—and if you want us to cover the apology, you have to take questions, or else we’ll sit this one out,” you might have some real give-and-take. But the media has been awed by celebrities and cowed by the access question for too long (look at the unquestioning coverage of GW Bush and the run-up to the Iraq war as another example)—and they’ve forgotten that their mandate is not to unquestioningly amplify PR flacks’ scripts, but to dig deep and find the real story.

I’ve written two books on business ethics and blog frequently on media ethics, and I think that if the media is going to play the role of enabler of bad behavior, the media must share the blame that the real story doesn’t get told. It is the media that certified Tiger as someone worth paying attention to, rather than, say, someone who’s curing cancer or solving the energy crisis (like the amazing Amory Lovins).

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By Posted on Posted in media-general, Politics, Web 2.0/Social Media

I read a very interesting article called “How to Weather a Twitterstorm“–and one of the most interesting parts was the comments, which included a whole lot of people who basically said that Twitter, Facebook and other social media are a marginal part of the overall audience, and kowtowing to them is a mistake.

I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Twitter, et al. They have influence beyond their numbers, and there’s certainly precedent for stories leaping out of niche social media into the mainstream, with major consequences. Just ask Dan Rather about the fake memo about Bush’s military service that cost several key staffers their jobs and forced Rather into premature retirement. I have been a deep critic of Bush (and a fan of Rather), but when I saw the memo reproduced online, I knew there was no way it could be authentic. It was done on a modern word processor.

In my view, the article’s author, Abbey Klaassen, is more on target. she offers strategies to evaluate, contain, and appropriately respond to online criticism.

The point is critical that you want to acknowledge and contain the problem, and do so rapidly. And Twitter can be a great tool for this. Smart companies are finding ways to build their brand on Twitter, and one of the best is to be open to criticism while finding effective ways to defuse it. The Twitter page for Comcastcares is a great example of this. It’s all about customer service for cable TV customers with technical problems.

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By Posted on Posted in media-general, Publishing Tagged with , , , , , ,

Interesting piece in the Washington Spectator, noting that the Anniston (Alabama) Star seems to be doing reasonably well, even as big-city papers around the country move to Internet-only or shut their doors entirely. Even the Boston Globe is teetering.

In my own area, I read the Daily Hampshire Gazette, published in Northampton, Massachusetts for over 200 years. Northampton is a town of about 30,000; the whole county had only 152,251 in the 2000 census.

Yet, despite a proliferation of local online advertising channels and a tough economy, the Gazette seems to be doing well also. The parent company has even acquired several newspapers recently, and the Gazette also publishes a growing number niche magazines.

Early on, the paper decided it would not cannibalize print with its web edition; many of the stories (especially the local news stuff that would be hard to get elsewhere) are behind a firewall, available only to paid subscribers. Oddly enough, I notice that the link to the Spectator story is also subscriber-only. Hmmm–can this model work? The Wall Street Journal abandoned it, but clearly traditional print journalism is not doing well in a world of free content from professional journalists.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, media-general, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

Four years FedEx took over the Kinko’s copy and office services company, the Kinko brand was dropped entirely in 2008; those services are now grouped under FedEx Office.

When Marketing Sherpa interviewed FedEx’s Director of Global Brand Management, Gayle Christensen, she outlined eight steps the company took to smooth the transition in the public eye and retain/acquire market share. (Note: Sherpa’s content goes behind a barrier, for purchase, after a few days. “Norman,” referred to in the quote, is Eric Norman, of the marketing strategy firm Sametz Blackstone Associates,)

What caught my eye was “Step #6. Set up interviews with bloggers”:

High-profile people (e.g., new chief executives) should do interviews with bloggers, trade publications, and other media outlets to address weak speculations and preclude skepticism, says Norman. “You have to engage folks who are writing about you,” he says. “If you are not engaged, you concede the control of the message to them.”

Find out who’s talking about the merger on social media outlets, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or niche online forums and blogs. Search for the merging companies’ names or set up an email alert, such as Google Alerts, for the company and brand names.

Make a point to comment on blogs or social media sites talking about the merger, especially if something is false.

I’m fascinated that setting up interviews with bloggers warrants a main headline, while traditional media is mentioned but glossed over in the paragraph. It shows how far we’ve come that bloggers are considered opinion molders, while traditional journalists are barely noticed. This is a growing trend, I think, and it has many implications for how we (as a society) deliver and digest news.

I’m a big believer in citizen journalism, including the blogosphere (I’ve blogged since 2004, after all), and participate actively in social media.

Still, I question the decision to pretty much ignore the mainstream press. There’s also a place for the trained and skilled journalist, who knows how to ask deep questions, has a really strong BS detector, and understands the importance of telling a story that encompasses multiple points of view. I, for one, am not ready to give that up just yet.

But I also note that for many years, some “mainstream” journalism outlets have had a very clear point of view, and have thrown objectivity out the window. While in recent years we’ve seen this very dramatically with, for instance, the strong right-wing bias of Fox News or the somewhat less strong liberal tilt of NBC, even during the golden news decade of the 1970s, there were news outlets such as New Hampshire’s Manchester Union-Leader that were unabashedly partisan and sharply opinionated.

With huge budget cutbacks, bean counters making policy decisions, and corporate ownership sometimes casting a pall over the selection of stories and the decisions about how much resources to use in pursuing them, the future of professional news gathering looks a bit shaky from here. I hope it pulls out in the clutch. It’s an important perspective, despite its flaws, and we’d be poorer for losing it.

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