“Booby Mom” was Both Shocking and Awesome: Can Provocative Content Improve Print’s Prospects?

Did I have a problem with now-infamous boobsucking TIME cover? Not at all, but I was somewhat surprised by the brouhaha that surrounded the image of the “booby Mom” whose 3-year old was photographed standing on a chair suckling her boobies.  Does that sound so pornographic or rude? You’d think so based on the throngs of readers (and media outlets) who commented on the controversial cover, considering it pornographic. Really people? I was a lot more troubled by what was going inside TIME Magazine and the article about attachment parenting than the cover. Truly troubled.

But back to the image… “Booby Mom” has spawned an avalanche of coverage and launched much discussion, not just about “attachment parenting,” the actual subject of the TIME cover story, but about the ways in which magazines (like all print media), have taken massive hard-copy readership hits can use thoughtful, provocative content and social-media relationships with readers to boost revenues. A TIME spokeswoman told the New York Times that the cover helped that issue become the magazine’s best-seller so far this year and doubled the subscription rates for that week. Says a lot about the so-called disgust about a breastfeeding mom on the cover, right?

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that since around 2003-2004 newspaper and magazine circulation numbers have plunged as a result of the internet revolution. This got me thinking, as someone who pitches stories to media outlets for a living, about how print media can use provocation and button-pushing to help bolster their other ongoing efforts to slow the slide. Of course, a lot of the time provocative content gets shelved on the recommendation of the bean-counters who are afraid of offending anyone who might possibly buy a copy of the paper, or better yet, a subscription.

Let’s Face it, Bare Skin Sells… Is That So Bad?

And yet it is the most controversial messages that generate the most visceral reaction. Let’s face it, they are the messages that lead to water-cooler talk, arguments and coveted mindshare of brands.  If you’re old enough you’ll probably remember Demi Moore’s naked and very pregnant Vanity Fair cover in 1991.  The “decency police” went berserk denouncing the cover as obscene and generally gross. But like TIME’s “Booby Mom” cover, the Demi Moore cover is one of Vanity Fair’s best-remembered  and most imitated ad nauseam by celebrity women with a bun in the oven.

And then there was the The New Yorker, whose editorial staff must have been sweating (and likely second-guessing themselves) on the eve of the publication’s 2008 cover lampooning Fox News’ take on Barack and Michelle Obama’s onstage “fist bump” as a “terrorist fist jab,” bracing for the storm of criticism that followed.  That happens in lots of industries:  fear of offense and of reduced revenue discouraging unconventional or “risky” views.

Fear is contagious and all too soon there is nobody left who is willing to voice an idea that could be seen as too “out there.”

I’ve seen this with numerous clients I’ve dealt with throughout my career. It’s understandable, especially in the tetchy economic climate we’ve been living in for the past several years. And, when necessary, it’s been my role to poke, prod and nudge a nervous client to take a risk that ends up paying off. As someone whose business is to improve clients’ business, I know it’s important to encourage “outside the box” ideas because that’s where innovation comes from. When we push ourselves beyond our comfort zones we often end up succeeding way beyond our own expectations.

So kudos to TIME Magazine. Kudos to the “booby Mom” Jamie Grumet. And kudos to the other half of TIME readers who could stomach a 3-year-old nursing from his mother’s breast.

Of course, if we didn’t have that brouhaha in the first place, maybe I wouldn’t have written this piece to begin with. And that’s exactly my point.

Why ‘Good’ Press Releases = ‘Bad’ Journalism

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 3/15/12. 

When writing news stories, editors advise young reporters to do the following: stick to facts, don’t opine, place important/newest information high, answer the five Ws, have a solid lead and conclusion, spell names correctly, use conversational language, meet deadlines and hit the word count.

It’s a formula for success that reporters of all ages rely on. More than that, however, the tips speak to the professional evolution of storytelling found to be most effective at getting points across, with a 150+year history.

Seems like a simple formula, right?

Then why do so many press releases I read —  and some I am required to write — fail to meet these standards? What’s changed in the communications industry that allows for the writing and distribution of such abysmal drivel? And why don’t the rules governing quality storytelling apply to many of today’s releases?

PR is NOT the Dark Side of Journalism – But Some Clients Might Work for the Death Star

Whoa. Three questions in one paragraph — and a possible clichéd Star Wars reference subhead. That, too, may violate a writing essential — that a story can be about one thing and should avoid clichés like the plague (cliché intended). Coming from a public relations angle, I can tell you that it’s not as simple as pitting agenda-pushing poor-writing PR professionals against reporters.

Too often the challenge lies with our clients and their expectations. Yes, as their communications team, it’s our job to direct conversation, to craft proper messages and distribute that message through the media in a concise, accurate and compelling manner. But like journalists, we too can’t always claim the moral high road. Clients pay our salaries, just as advertisers pay (or used to pay) journalists. Sometimes we just have to do what we’re told. Most times, we just have to “make it work.”

Press Release Dos and Don’ts

Of course, “making copy work” is not like making copy sing —  a nod to the lyrical and rhythmic flow of quality writing. An off pitch release (Not the PR pitch) “creates” news rather than telling something newsworthy. Ask yourself — if you didn’t work for company X, would you read it? If the answer is ‘no,’ then you’re already in trouble. The solution: clients need to be honest about their announcements. Writing a release about something that may happen in six months is not newsworthy. That’s about as useful as someone planning to be rich by summer.

At most, that’s the kind of company “news” that meets Twitter post standards or a short email blast to client investors. It does not require an 800-word release that causes journalists’ eyeballs to glaze over or public relations professionals to struggle through 17 drafts of a document that has failed to capture the “essence of the company story.” Sometimes what clients say just isn’t that important. Clients need to have the humility and presence of mind to know when to shut up — or at least respect when their PR staff tells them to.

Press releases also fail because of their language. If you’re writing a release in English, then write in English — not gibberish. Is some jargon necessary? Yes. But too much and a press release can bury its own newsworthiness.

Print This: PR Professionals and Journalists Play the Same Game on Different Teams

How’s that for a newsworthy press release? But even if we play on different teams — journalists dig for the news while PR professionals push what they’d like to be considered news — the rules of the writing game should not change.

Modern journalistic writing evolved from the rigors of changing technology – the telegraph. At a penny a character, brevity was far more important than expressive prose. Combined with the fear of technology failure, reporters were taught to write and report news as if readers only read the headlines and first paragraph. (Sound familiar?)

Today’s hyperactive news cycle and extreme mobile connectivity is the outgrowth of these technological realities. PR professionals, emerging some 50 years after Samuel Morse’s invention, really do know what good writing and storytelling is about.

If only we can teach clients that same lesson, perhaps the PR vs. journalism professional stalemate will be broken –- and great press releases will equal great journalism.

The following article by Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of ThinkInk, originally appeared on Marketing Daily on 3/15/12. 

Print’s Death March, Again

Here we go again. Another article predicting the end of print media, or to be more precise, referring to its now sunset years. A recent post called Editorial Exit on the Future of Media blog, joins a chorus of naysayers predicting the end of the traditional newsroom and dismantling of old school media.

But are we talking about a sunset or merely a solar eclipse?

Without question the last five years (and even 10 years) have not been kind to a host of traditional media. Web 2.0 (or are we nearly 3.0?), running lightening fast, interactive sites and “iWeb” – the Internet’s mobile revolution – is enjoying double-digit percentage growth. Certainly, traditional media’s influence has shrunk from a global superpower to a component of an increasingly diverse set of communications outlets, including web sites, mobile apps, blogs, Twitter feeds, and Facebook pages.

But referring to the present time period as traditional media’s sunset years is premature at best, and dead wrong at worst. In its annual report on American Journalism, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, highlights some quite positive news hinting that the worst of traditional media’s die off has ended. Newspapers, once a bulwark for the communications industry, saw its weekday circulation numbers contract by 5 percent in 2010. While not fantastic, the losses in 2009 were twice that. In revenue terms the picture looked even brighter at cable news, network television and local news outlets as all three saw growth.

The bottom line: Record stores still exist, vinyl can still be purchased, and the “paperless office” has yet to fully mature. Traditional media may no longer be king, but it’s still serving in the king’s court

Is Journalism As We Know It Becoming Obsolete?

Not yet. But a few prayers couldn’t hurt.

Last week Gigaom.com blogger Matthew Ingram resurrected the decade-old question: is journalism as we know it becoming obsolete? His answer – after a nearly 900-word build up:

No. “I would rather say it as evolving and expanding — and I happen to believe that’s a good thing,” he writes.

Pardon the bluntness, but to me that doesn’t read like a satisfying conclusion. The cells in my stomach are evolving, dividing one by one, millisecond by millisecond, year by year. My stomach expands with each new meal I consume. But without a little help from digestion and peristalsis to keep that expansion in check or DNA coding to prevent runaway “cell evolution,” my body would grow sick and unable to function.

If left unchecked I’d land in the Morgue – the place where humans – and newspapers ultimately retire.

To conclude that today’s twitter-centric and blog-frenzied journalism is “evolving and expanding” isn’t good enough. Chalking the process up to the cyclical “rise and fall” of newspapers and bloggers doesn’t cut it either. A more nuanced question is: how is journalism expanding and evolving and what safeguards, if any, are working to ensure its healthy growth?

Ingram rightly points out that journalism is about: “a spirit of inquiry, of curiosity, of wanting to make sense of things.” He’s also correct when he references programming scholar Dave Winter’s suggestion that in today’s world, with often zero mass publishing barriers, anyone can do it.

But the fact that “anyone can do it” doesn’t mean that everyone can do it equally well. Possessing a spirit of enquiry, of curiosity, and of wanting to make sense of things are platitudes that can be applied to almost any profession.

Eighteenth and 19^th century journalism, wrought with hyper opinion, political party dominance, and a healthy dose of sensationalism effectively blurred the lines of hard news, soft news, and what today would be called “infotainment.” Not until the middle and latter 20^th century did a more separation of church and state-like thinking transform journalism into today’s polished and professional product.

It’s not that today’s citizen journalists, CNN’s iReporters or Arab Spring bloggers are bad. It’s just that too often their skills are unrefined.

To be sure, gathering facts, observing breaking news, and collecting what else has been written on a topic – termed aggregating on the web – is the first step toward quality journalism. But placing that information into a compelling and concise narrative with context and fact-checked sources is where the professional differences lie. A world where citizen journalists, bloggers, and traditional reporters remember they’re playing on the same team, in equal numbers would be the best way to ensure that the hard fought professional standards achievements of the 20^th century and the internet mass publishing miracles of the 21^st work in concert, not in chaos.

In the last decade, as newspapers and other print formats struggle to engineer the magic bullet of profitable web publishing, thousands of professional journalists have left the profession entirely, jumping ship for the perceived safer and often better-paying waters of public relations, corporate communications and government outreach.

An industry losing its institutional knowledge is an industry in danger of losing itself.

Is journalism as we know it becoming obsolete?

Only if we let it.

The Rise Of Opinion ‘News’

by Vanessa Horwell

“Is traditional news dead and gone?” I’m hearing that question more frequently. During the past 12 months, AOL bought the Huffington Post, “unbiased” Fox topped CNN and MSNBC’s profits, and Twitter continued to grow — boosted by worldwide coverage and the toppling of insidious regimes. With the downsizing of print media and the rise of the blog, we’ve gotten used to reacting to opinion pieces instead of forming our opinions at the source. A lot like what we’re doing right now.

Backtracking just a little bit, you might remember a time when you would read a piece online — not on a blog, but on a breaking news site — and wondered where the headlining story came from. A PR resource, perhaps? But ease of access to trending topics and Twitter hashtags can lead to and has led to rampant rumors, from death hoaxes (#ripnickiminaj, 2011) to merger news (AOL-Yahoo merger, 2010) and plain old rubbish. There’s just so much stuff to filter that it’s really no surprise that traditional news sources can pick up on a trending tag, locate an “insider” to comment, and report on something — mistakenly — that happened only in a fantasy cocktail of viral news and online pranksters.

That’s the case with conjecture and the odd off-base source, but what about news sites that survive on a daily dose of drama? It’s hard enough to follow the online trail of “who reported it first,” and if there’s a team dedicated to opinion-making and finger-pointing? The original truth is obscured with clever turns of phrase and selective linking.

Since everyone and their dog appear to be blogging, it’s particularly difficult to ascertain what is what — and from where. Editors, guest bloggers, staff members, and “experts” have blogs or online columns hosted by their publishers, and that adds to the fact-opinion blurring of boundaries. Let’s call it the “Foxification of News,” cheap and quick journalism, or the negative side of citizen blogging: the muddling of opinion and fact-only reporting is killing “news news.”

Complaints about opinion-infused reporting often mention Fox. Its representatives claim that it is unbiased, but if it were, would Bill Shine, head of programming, say that Fox can “offer opinions not seen anywhere else”? As is the case with any successful business model, Fox’s unique blend of fact and opinion inspired other news sources. Fox’s revenue for 2010 is said to have reached profits of $800 million on revenue of $1.5 billion, more than MSNBC and CNN combined. When we noticed MSNBC getting more political, we knew why.

News is morphing, slowly but noticeably. Networks incorporate viral video and social media responses about anything from major sports games to natural disasters. While networks are highlighting YouTube videos and Twitter feeds more frequently, newspapers are continuing to fight for some share of the market. But is it really that much of a change, or simply a return to our roots?

Some suggest that opinion news might not be such a modern move after all. It’s different, but the switch could be likened to 19th-century journalism described as “discursive” by The Economist. Back then, news was spread through personal connection and networking. The only problem? The social side of media used by average citizens to share news is now used as a marketing tool for huge networks. It’s not the 19th century anymore, and the speed and sheer reach of the Internet, coupled with the ability to put anything live almost instantly, changes the way we access news, react to it, and, from a PR company’s perspective, spread any kind of rumors, half-truths, or leading questions we want, at any time, and from anywhere.

PR support for businesses and professionals in the spotlight is more important with the domination of opinion news (and worldwide self-publishing, done gratis). And now that aggregated content is a constant online presence and even networks are spicing up their coverage with an opinionated edge, it takes an eagle eye to find skewed news and quiet a storm. Twitter hashtags can skyrocket in an hour; blog posts can be published in seconds. Navigating online PR minefields is challenging enough without dissecting nuances on formerly trusted sites.

We’re looking at the possibility of heavily slanted news passed person-to-person — a relic of the 19th century — combined with the speed of a new era.

Is opinion news really “news,” and should we mourn the death of unbiased reporting?

Via MediaPost: Marketing Daily

What Went Right for PR and Media Outreach in Norway’s Aftermath

By: Vanessa Horwell

No matter how gut-wrenching or shocking the news, PR professionals will always look back and see who handled crises best. It’s not just work-related curiosity. By knowing who had an admirable crisis plan in place (and who didn’t) and how it worked, we can fine-tune our own. Over the past few weeks, Norway’s tragedy has remained lodged in our minds (along with the debt ceiling crisis and News of The World scandals), and it stuck with the easily-distracted press, too. We watched reporters handle interviews admirably in the aftermath, but it feels like much of the media has taken a step back from delving too deeply into the 93 deaths (at last count). Invasive family interviews, harsh criticisms: they simply didn’t have a place here.

Take, for instance, Helen Pidd’s piece in The Guardian. She’s covered tragedy, heartbreak, and murder the world over, but while in Norway she had an overwhelming sense of guilt for simply being there at all. Pidd traveled to Bardu to speak with the survivors, but when she arrived and was told to keep her distance, that was it pretty much it.

“If I am specifically told to leave the families alone, I won’t go near them,” Pidd  said in HowShouldJournalistsTalktoSurvivorsoftheAttacksinNorway? “If the police liaison officer hasn’t issued a warning, I will take a deep breath and knock on the parents’ door once, telling myself that sometimes people want to talk about those they have lost. It doesn’t feel good. If they say they don’t want to talk, I won’t return.”

Pidd saw one of the survivors, and she didn’t approach her for an interview. A nurse in Bardu asked her not to attempt contact. Instead, Pidd drove towards the Ice Peak mountains, thinking about all the other times she had pursued survivors for the perfect interview. This time, however, she felt torn between going after her story and leaving the survivors alone – and ended up choosing the latter.

I’d like to think that crisis management in Norway set the tone for coverage, beginning with PM Jens Stoltenberg’s response to the attacks. He showed emotion openly, and with obvious sadness, coupled with the skills of a true orator: “right words at the right time.”

Could it be the time of year, as we edge closer towards the tenth anniversary of 9/11, or the fact that Norway’s reputation as peacekeeper and record-setting giver of foreign aid made the attacks even more shocking, pushing us towards a “softer” stance in media response? I think it may be so.

Need PR and Marketing Help? Ask Away! Q & A with Jennifer Rodrigues of TravelInk’d

By Jennifer Rodrigues

Reprinted from www.ehotelier.com

Q: I’ve been doing my own PR campaign for the last three months and I haven’t gotten any responses from the media.  What am I doing wrong?

A: Without knowing all of the details of your campaign, most likely the stories that you are pitching aren’t considered “newsworthy” by the media.  PR is about storytelling and storytelling is only effective when people are listening.  Before sending out your next press release or before picking up the phone and calling a journalist, ask yourself this – is this really newsworthy to everyone?  If I was a consumer, would I truly care about this news?  Be objective. If the answer is no, then it’s a safe bet that journalists won’t care either.

So what makes a story newsworthy?  Here are the key aspects of what makes a story newsworthy to a journalist:

Timeliness - The story has to be current, to have happened recently or at least be related to something happening currently.

Prominence – By linking your property to someone who has a degree of prominence in public society, you’ll increase your chance of being covered by the media. For example, if a big-time celebrity or well-known figure stays at your hotel, perhaps that could be tied into your next pitch. And to make your story even stronger, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Proximity – Your story must have a local angle.  If you’re pitching a story to regional media, tell them why the story would be of interest to people who live in the area.  When you’re pitching a national newspaper or magazine, your story must relate directly to the people who read the publication.  Show the journalist that you’ve thought about their readers and show them how your story will affect their readership and they are much more likely to write about your story.

Significance - To be significant, a story must affect more than just a few people.  Show the media how your story affects many people in the particular region that the publication reaches.

Unusualness - If you’re doing something different, the media will be more interested in your story.  So if all your competitors are rashly discounting to bring in guests, tell the media how you’re using a different tactic (and how it isn’t cutting into your bottom line) and you’ll have a great story to pitch to the media.

Human Interest – People are interested in hearing about other people, not about corporations and businesses.  So instead of telling the media a story about how profitable your hotel is, try telling them about how people’s lives have been changed by your hotel.  (NOTE: If you are pitching a business publication, you will need to focus on the numbers rather than the people but for most other types of media outlets, this rule holds true.)

Conflict - Conflict creates news. Try standing up against the majority opinion and offering a different way of thinking about a situation or problem.  It will make the media sit up and take notice.

Newness – If you have a new product, new service, new idea, tell the media about it.  Being the first is a great way to catch media’s attention.

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Q: I’m redoing my marketing materials now – website, making new sales brochures, etc. – and I keep hearing about photo resolution and image size and I have no idea what it means. Can you explain to me the difference between low- and high-res images and what type of photo is best for each type of marketing material?

A photo’s resolution refers to how many dots or pixels make up the image.  It is measured by the number of pixels that appear in an inch (ppi).  In general, the more pixels in the image, the more crisp it will look.

A photo online will look as good at 72ppi (low-res) as it will at 300 ppi (high-res), so for your website re-design you can use low-res images.  They take up less memory and will work perfectly for the online medium.

When you’re printing images, however, if you don’t use a high enough resolution photo, it will look grainy or blurry.  For a good quality printed photo, you’ll need a high-res photo with at least 300 ppi so be sure that any photos included in your brochures, on signs, on printed marketing materials are of high enough resolution.

If you don’t have photos that are high-enough resolution, it is better to spend the money on having a professional take the photos for you at the proper resolution, rather than just use low-res images.  A grainy or blurry photo on your property’s marketing materials makes your property look cheap and unprofessional, an image that you certainly don’t want to portray when you’re trying to bring in new clients.

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Did this information help you?  If you have other questions, I’d love to hear from you – please don’t be shy!  Send an email to jlr@travelinkd.com.

And don’t forget to check back twice a month for more PR and Marketing Q&As.

About Jennifer Rodrigues

Jennifer Rodrigues, Visibility Specialist with ThinkInk and TravelInk’d, is a seasoned public relations professional with a passion for the hospitality industry, which is expressed in her role at ThinkInk’s travel division, TravelInk’d.  At TravelInk’d, she is responsible for developing cost-effective and creative public relations and marketing strategies for clients in the travel and tourism, airline, lodging, cruise and meeting/event sectors.  For more information on TravelInk’d, please visit www.travelinkd.com or contact Jennifer at jlr@travelinkd.com.

Blurring the lines of Journalism

A big UUUM moment – looks like I’ve caused a furor over an opinion piece that appeared in Ragan.com today about the blurring lines of journalism. The central focus of my opinion piece was David Pogue, tech columnist for the New York Times, and some recent comments he made about him not being a journalist. Apparently, I took his statement out of context and applied it incorrectly.

Notwithstanding, I read Pogue’s posts religiously and I value his comments – as do thousand/millions of others. He knows what he’s talking about. That’s why he’s an expert and that’s why tech companies will continue to court him and fawn over him – as they do other influential columnists, technology-focused or otherwise.

Do I think any less of him? No.

Will I stop reading or respecting what he says? No.

Am I trying to make enemies? Absolultely not.

Can I voice my opinion? Yes.

Here’s a link to the entire piece in Ragan.com

Times’ David Pogue blurs journalism lines By Vanessa Horwell

A PR pro shares her take on the impact The New York Times’ tech columnist has on the paper’s reputation During the last 48 hours (a lifetime in today’s news cycle), there’s been a lot of chatter on blogs and the twitterverse about New York Times’ tech columnist David Pogue’s apparent conflicts of interest—the bulk of which smacks of schadenfreude—but some of which raises questions about the nature of journalism.Without rehashing all the details, it goes like this: a highly visible, well-respected writer with a weekly space in the paper of record being raked over scorching coals for penning positive reviews of products for which he also writes third-party how-to manuals. His defense? “I’m not a reporter.”Tech bloggers—a notoriously vociferous and at times a moody bunch (any PR pro who’s dealt with tech and/or mobile bloggers can comment on this)—seem to be leading the mob, with virtual pitchforks in hand. But the real question is will this affect Pogue and the Times, and what does this controversy say about the ever-blurring line between journalism and unvarnished opinion?The source of this recent controversy is his glowing review of the new Apple OS Snow Leopard and his upcoming Missing Manual for the system. (As a PC user, I don’t see myself running to Barnes & Noble for a copy anytime soon). I’ve always felt that Pogue was up front about potential conflicts arising from this dual-medium practice, at least in as much as he endeavored to make his audience (me, in this case) aware of it. David Pogue responds Pogue tells Ragan.com that his “I’m not a reporter” statement was taken from an interview with popular technology podcaster Leo LaPorte, who asked Pogue why he wasn’t more aggresive in his questioning of Apple head Steve Jobs in a recent news article in The New York Times That statement had nothing to do with another controversy—whether Pogue should be reviewing products in The Times while writing how-to manuals on those products for another publisher. Finally, Pogue states that he is “100 percent accountable to The New York Times ethics standards.” Read Pogue’s entire response in our comments section below. Pogue may technically be right;  he’s not a reporter in the classical sense. Rather than a beat, he has a field of expertise. His job is not to cover the news emerging from the technology sector, but to opine about products and services. In this sense, he must abide by a different set of ethical standards than, say, a reporter in the White House press pool—the rigorous adherence to objectivity being chief among these differences. We expect reviewers to pass judgment and to have favorites—that’s why we read them—and The New York Times pays him.So how will this impact Pogue? I don’t think he’ll be unduly affected by this controversy. At most, his apparent indignation at the attack on his integrity will paint him in an unflattering light, but his expertise will continue to make him valuable to the Times’ readership.  You may be able to take the indignity from a man, but not his learned expertise. The Times, however, may be a different story. The Grey Lady has always been held to a higher standard, and its position as the premier national newspaper is largely predicated on its reputation for evenhandedness and rigid ethical practices. Like any national publication, it has had its challenges in this area, but the Pogue controversy hints at a larger problem.  The differences between opinion and journalism have been blurring for some time—our industry is acutely aware of this fact. The rise of the blogosphere as an information source (and a trusted one) for readers and the fading fortunes of the newspaper industry have combined to create an environment where expert opinion is often substituted for reported news. We are confronted, and confounded by it hundreds of times a day. The immense power of the online channel represents a loss of control by institutions like The New York Times over the stories they present. From a PR perspective, the organic dispersal of stories and opinions through blogs and channels like Twitter is mostly a good thing; for the old gatekeepers like the Times, it creates dilemmas like the one we’ve seen here with David Pogue. These dilemmas, in my opinion, will become more commonplace. The New York Times has acknowledged, through The Public Editor, that conflicts of interests do arise, and that they try to contain them when they do. But the way the paper might have dealt with such conflicts in the past—by forbidding the columnist to review products he’s reviewed—is unrealistic in today’s world of journalism. I agree. But that’s just my opinion. What’s yours?

Published in Ragan.com on Wednesday September 23, 2009

Thinkink’s Horwell: Print Media Still Important

Vanessa Horwell, who is chief visibility officer at PR firm Thinkink in Miami, gave us a very lively interview about the future of journalism. She’s worried about it.

“Without newspapers and the existence of quality journalism and print media, the PR industry and indeed the entire advertising industry will suffer in a very big way,” she told us.

She said many businesses and consumers “just don’t hold the same value for online content as they do for print.”

For example, “we had a client who complained that his company was being featured in Forbes.com, but not the print version. We argued that 15 million eyeballs seeing his story online would make far more impact than the 5.4 million print readers … but the client wasn’t convinced. He wanted the prestige of print. He also told us … ‘who wants to be online if it’s free?’ ”

http://ourblook.blogspot.com/2009/07/thinkinks-horwell-print-media-still.html

Journalism Rocks!!!

Hey, in case you missed my article in MediaPost last week – here it is.  Called Journalism Rocks, it discusses how unbiased news and free speech come with a price tag, and that is not a bad thing.

Here’s the link, or read on below:

Journalism Rocks, June 1, 2009

Talk is cheap, but good content, labor and product are not. In an era of thrift and the return to newfound values — where less of everything is the new world order — everyone is talking about what will happen to American newspapers. I think, more importantly, we should be asking what will happen to American journalism right now? I’ve been harping on about this topic for some time (like as far back as 2006), and my words have usually been met with equally strong worded opinions.

Opinions, coarse or otherwise, are good. In fact, they are to be encouraged — they stimulate critical thinking and discourse. Look, plain old-fashioned thinking is good — that’s why we live in a democratic society, right? But opinions are just that — a personal viewpoint like this very piece you are reading. And so, while I like to think of myself a good writer, a journalist I am not.

Journalism is a profession, ignited by a thirst for the facts and the truth, accompanied by deep passion for telling it how it is and in a way that will impact lives. These are skills which cannot be acquired via a webinar or a Bulldog Reporter Media Blitz one-day circus for $399.

While the business model for newspapers may be broken — and, yes, they’ve been irresponsible, unresponsive to changing needs — let’s not miss the point here. What happens to news, and in two words, our intelligence, if we don’t support journalism?

We will be force fed biased, paid-for-content. It will be like an election year, but without end. We will have to put up with more inane PR crap — and I say that confidently as a PR pro. We will stop having conversations with our colleagues about Daniel Politti’s remarks on Slate, or why Glenn Beck is getting ANY coverage at all.

Instead, we’ll be reduced to posting posts in response to posts, in response to posts, positing, posturing and basically learning a whole lot of nothing. And, while blogging may be good for our inner-journalistic soul, consumer journalism is an oxymoron. Frank Rich wrote an outstanding piece in The New York Times a few weeks back, echoing this very same sentiment.

Ultimately, we’ll have less choice to make informed choices and decisions. So while big biz ponders the future of the newspapers and how to fix them, we should be having discussions about quality content.

What makes good content, and why do we need it?

The Internet, amen, has given us access to just about anything and everything we need to know… and then some. At times, it’s overwhelming. Filtering through on what to spend precious time reading is a tough call because, right now, there is a lot of quality content and journalism available.

For now.

Let’s take this site, as an example. We contribute here because we’re passionate about this industry, because the content is always on the mark, and those who write and report here know their stuff. This is our bible, because the information we get here is unbiased, objective and of value to us.

The reporters need to get paid, the staff needs to get paid and the business needs to function as a business — otherwise we all lose the privilege of having access to this quality content and the conversations and intelligence that come with it. You only need to read the feedback loop comments, and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I’m not ready to let that go. Are you?

To borrow from Frank Rich again, in the end we pay for what we get, as is the case in almost every aspect of life. If we don’t support the development of intelligent and unbiased reporting, the sensible and objective gathering of news we can use and meaningful, knowledgeable discussions — what have we got to look forward to? Not only will my business and industry crumble away, but I suspect the support system for many of yours will, too.

So I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is and pay for content that I read and use. And I’m sure that a lot of you would as well.

The trick is getting the public to do same.