Journalism Moves From Product To Service
The Editor and a Reporter. Photograph by Vin Crosbie.
During most of the 20th century, public relations and communications professionals built relationships with journalists with the goal of placing a story in a newspaper, magazine, or on television or radio. Early in the 21st century, there’s much less courting.
Media relations remains important for PR and communications professionals. But with fewer journalists, shrinking newspapers and dwindling audiences, how journalists do their job is changing.
“Journalism, in the broadest sense, has changed today from being a product to being a service,” said Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. ”It has changed from a product that I’m going to give you — here’s what we’ve produced, take it for what it’s worth — to being a service, to serving many more roles that just reporting the news.”
Mitchell spoke at the annual joint meeting of the Community Service Public Relations Council, the International Association of Business Communicators and the Public Relations Society of America on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011, in Frontenac, Mo.
Reporting the news is a “critical role, a crucial role,” Mitchell said. “The journalism of today must do more. Journalists today must understand their different audiences — the audiences that are going to find them through search, the audiences that turn to them every day, the audiences that are going to help contribute to their reporting.
“They need to understand different platforms to so their content is not platform-agnostic. Many people were talking about this three or four years ago and said your content could flow freely and seamlessly from one platform to another without really having it matter if it’s on your iPhone, website or in a print product. But that’s not what you want to do. You need to make your information platform-specific. Consumers understand the difference and the different values that each platform brings. As news providers, we need to understand that difference and put information out that is built to work in that particular platform. And, yes, that means more work.”
Journalists interviewing people. Photo by Kewei Shang.
Instead of producing content for consumption by the masses, journalists must now spend more time on analyzing the value of the information they are gathering. Mitchell’s research found that the vast majority of news that’s consumed is coming from traditional news outlets.
“We’ve done a lot of different research projects that look at how news is being created and how it is getting out to people,” she said. “We tried to examine a news ecosystem and picked one city to study.”
They chose Baltimore and examined more than 60 media outlets covering the metropolitan area in some capacity. All content produced was studied during a period of a few weeks. They tracked stories to see where the content or information was first created.
“More than 90 percent of what was originally reported was coming from legacy outlets–local television, radio and newspapers,” Mitchell said. “There were a lot of other outlets that were involved in the conversation, discussion and analysis. But the actual reporting of information was coming from the legacy outlets. But those outlets are giving us information at greatly diminished capacity.”
Podcast Previews Jan. 19 Presentation By Deputy Director of Pew Research Center
Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director of the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, will be the speaker at the annual joint meeting of the Community Service Public Relations Council (CPSRC), Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011.
She took a few minutes from her schedule on Tuesday to talk about her presentation entitled, ““The New News Consumer and the Future of News: Trends for 2011 and Beyond.”
Click on the link below to listen to the MP3 file or right click on the link to download.
Amy Mitchell Interview.mp3
Research Might Give Glimpse Of Mass Media’s Future
Amy S. Mitchell, deputy director, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism
Communicating through mass media is essential to a nonprofit organization. But media is undergoing a tremendous transformation. Advertising revenues continue to decrease in the traditional channels. Newsrooms eliminated reporters and editors. It would be difficult to find a media outlet that is operating at a higher capacity than it was 10 years ago.
“The New News Consumer and the Future of News: Trends for 2011 and Beyond,” will be the topic for the annual joint meeting of the Community Service Public Relations Council (CSPRC), the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). Amy S. Mitchell, the deputy director for the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, will be our guest. Join us!
When: Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011; registration and networking will be 11:30 a.m. to noon; program will be from noon to 1:15 p.m.
Where: Hilton St. Louis Frontenac, 1335 South Lindbergh Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63131
Cost: $30 for members, $35 nonmembers and $20 for students
Click Here To Register Through CSPRC
Ms. Mitchell is involved in all aspects of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Her primary focus is on designing and managing in-depth research reports including the Annual Report on the State of the News Media. She speaks regularly with outside groups on the changing face of journalism and consumer news habits. One of the most telling sentences in the report: “Unless some system of financing the production of content is developed, it is difficult to see how reportorial journalism will not continue to shrink, regardless of the potential tools offered by technology.”
The event annually attracts more than 100 marketing, communications and public relations professionals from across the region. Sponsorships for this event are available. Contact me for information on sponsorship levels and benefits.
Becoming An Architect of Change
Communications and public relations executives need to be leaders and drive their organizations, not just report on what they’re doing.
That’s the message Maril McDonald, the Chief Executive Officer of Gagen McDonald, made on my debut podcast to promote her presentation, “The New Public Relations Agend and Becoming an Architect of Change.” It will be on Tuesday, Jan. 19, at the Sheraton Clayton Plaza Hotel during the joint meeting of the Community Service Public Relations Council (CSPRC) and the St. Louis chapters of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).
Maril is currently serving in her second term as president of the Arthur W. Page Society. In 2009, she was named to PRWeek’s Power List and was named one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Public Relations.
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