Category: media relations

We May Have Voted for a New Media Landscape

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After every election there is a lot of punditry. We are not in short supply about why the winner won and the loser lost. Polls are taken, strategies are evaluated, and plans are set for the next campaign season. 

But there is something happening now in post-election 2024 that seems to a tipping point with significant change in the media landscape and public relations practice. It is on the order of FDR’s fireside chats on radio or the televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon. 

There have been many articles about the role of media and changing media platform preferences of campaigns and voters in the last election cycle. This article in the Wall Street Journal reports significant viewership declines on election night and during the campaigns compared to four years ago. The conclusion is that legacy media have lost viewership, relevance and their traditional gatekeeping function. Candidates have found new gates, or even simply broken down the fence and the gate along with it to extend that theoretical metaphor. 

This is a non-partisan phenomenon. You saw one or both candidates eschew debates, abandon press conferences, move toward appearances with entertainers, and most significantly in my view sit down for interviews with podcasters, most famously the “Call Her Daddy” podcast with Kamala Harris and the Joe Rogan Experience podcast interview with Donald Trump. These are the number 1 (Rogan) and 2 (Call Her Daddy) podcasts on Spotify in terms of views, and drew a large and specific audience that exceeded the numbers of Saturday Night Live, CNN, Fox or any of the networks.

Unlike political pundits, I am not going to make specific predictions. But I do have a list of questions that will be interesting to watch going forward. We may find in 2028 and beyond that 2024 was our generation’s Kennedy-Nixon debate in terms of change to media landscape and resulting communication strategy.

  1. Who is in WH briefing room? Will podcasters and independent journalists get passes to be part of the White House press pool, given their impact on public attention and opinion? Will there even be a press briefing given the avoidance of press conferences and PIOs avoidance of details? It may be the White House and other political agencies post statements to their web site. This has been happening on the White House Briefing Room websitefor several presidencies and may be enough. Interested citizens can use an RSS feed to read these directly and avoid the media filter. This could be the case in both campaign and governance mode.
  2. What is the role of the White House press secretary? Will there even be a press secretary if changes in number one happen. Maybe they will be engaging new media outlets one on one, or focused on writing internal tactics and worried less if at all about taking the podium.
  3. Will media availability shift to podcasters and independent journalists as the norm? As noted above, will interview availability of politicians and their staff follow the audience and we’ll see more on socials and podcasts and Substack outlets than traditional media? I anticipate we will see more of that, but it may be the case that traditional media are an afterthought to a podcast in a reversal from today.
  4. Will media relations continue to be less of a priority in exchange for paid media and in-house tactics? Early PR practitioners from Edward Bernard to Arthur Page started saying 100 years ago that the profession was far more than news releases. Some still perceive of and practice public relations as if the term PR stands for press release. That may finally erode as professionals are buying ads and sponsored articles and posts or generating their own digital assets from blogs to podcasts to socials. This is happening already and may increase exponentially.
  5. Will media targeting be increasingly ideological vs demographic? Media theorists always argue about whether the media affect public opinion or respond to it. Regardless, we have long had a partisan media (even back in the 1700s if you study your history). The question is, going forward will there be more targeting of media on ideology than geography or demographics? Some of this targeting could be to enter “hostile” territory to not just encourage a base of like-minded but attempt to do some old fashioned persuasion. 
  6. Will we see a return of long-form interviews? The Kamala Harris interview on “Call Her Daddy” was 44 minutes. Trump sat with Joe Rogan for three hours. Both are longer than typical network TV or national radio interviews. It leads to another question….
  7. Will content strategy favor authenticity vs spin? Some reports and polls indicate that people responded favorably to details and rationale based on policy as opposed to vague and emotional performative statements. Perhaps political communication professionals will craft speaking points that get into depth and making a case as opposed to creating an image and maintaining a narrative. It would be refreshing. 
  8. Will the changes in media and public relations strategy extend from just politics to the business and nonprofit sectors? My background before becoming a full-time professor was public relations in the non profit and higher education sector. Such organizations have always had a media mix, but the balance may tilt even more away from media relations to other tactics and strategies. This is due not just to public media habits but the sad reality of a shrinking news room for local media who do not have the capacity to do as many interviews or stories as in the past. 

Shortly after the founding of our republic, the First Amendment was passed, granting a set of special freedoms to citizens. The most famous of them was “freedom of the press.” But this was never about journalism. It was a response to censorship via the Stamp Act, and afforded freedom to produce and distribute information to anyone who happened to own a literal printing press. They happened to be printers, who in addition to handbills and other documents printed a new form of media called a newspaper.

Today the means of production for information is ubiquitous. That freedom is embraced by many. And the public has freedom as well in terms of to what they will attend to. The public relations professionals guiding politicians, not to mention businesses and nonprofit organizations, are smart. They will respond to changes afoot. I am excited to watch how. 

The business of journalism and the future of PR

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An annual report from a news outlet says a lot about the business of journalism. For one thing, journalism is a business.

It may also be a nonprofit mission. 

One thing journalism is not is an institution with a unique claim to the first amendment and role in democracy. Oh it certainly has “a” role, but it is not unique to journalism. When “freedom of the press” was inscribed into our First Amendment it was a reference not to an institution or an as-yet unformed profession. It was about people who owned and operated a printing press. 

In other words, business men.

These people were printers, and they printed leaflets, advertisements and many things, including newspapers. All of the above had been restricted under the British Stamp Act, requiring a literal stamp of approval by the government before anything could be published. This was one of many grievances our founders had against King George. 

In our modern era, the “press” includes all forms of means to produce and distribute information. So-called “mainstream” media are part of that. But so are an increasing number of other voices contributing information and perspective to the public sphere.

So, our democracy has become also a cacophony. It is the beautiful mess of freedom. But in this mess traditional journalism has had to adapt, to pivot, just like any other businesses adjusting to technology, market demand and other changes.

My thinking on this was prompted by two publications recently. One was an article in Crain’s Grand Rapids Business about the creative ways journalism is handling it’s current business crisis. Incidentally,  Crains just recently added a paywall, so subscription is required to read this article. Crain’s also has gone from free publication of those personnel and brief company updates to a paid model. Both are signs of the business reality of needing revenue from multiple sources now that the old model of subscriptions and large advertising income alone is not sustainable.

Another item that caught my eye was the Bridge Michigan and Bridge Detroit annual report. It is an interesting read, showcasing their values, coverage areas, awards won, and the annual report requisite numbers about readership and revenue. I found it interesting and well done, as a subscriber and a PR professional. It meets the goal of annual reports of transparency, loyalty building, brand promotion and solicitation. 

Both the article and annual report from media outlets I subscribe to are a reminder to me not to take good reporting for granted. They also are evident that journalism is not taking readers for granted. Nor should they. The competitive landscape has changed:

  • So much of the media marketplace is online, where news is shared not in a branded publication or outlet but a single story at a time, aggregated by third parties like Apple News, Flipboard and others or users’ own forms of curation;
  • News links have been banned in some countries on social media because publishers need to make the profit, not the social platforms. But this also limits distribution;
  • Many other businesses are doing brand journalism that extends beyond their product or service lines and simple brings more content into the overall media mix. Examples include Coke‘s studio and UPS stories. 
  • Traditional media organizations are increasingly seeing competition from independent journalists who start their solo brand on platforms like Substack. Examples include Christopher Rufo, Matt Taibi, and Bari Weiss, all of whom left jobs at prominent media to be journalism entrepreneurs.
  • Then there is the host of alternative media platforms ranging from the Daily Wire and Blaze Media on the Right to Slate and Huffington Post on the left. 
  • To round out the landscape there is a growing number of think-tanks and other similar institutions that put out daily articles. These include the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, the Cato Institute, and the Brookings Institute.

All of this relates to public relations in several ways. Obviously, the media relations aspect of public relations is affected—if people don’t read or believe the media en masse, it has less credibility and reach and is therefore less useful as a public relations channel. Secondly, public relations professionals have increasing outlets to reach, and can also be very successful representing organizations with branded journalism and other channels they can control as part of a growing mix of tactical options.

One of the key questions going forward has to be if journalism in competition will see objectivity as a unique selling proposition or a competitive liability. Will news outlets brand themselves by ideology or neutrality. This will also affect the decisions of which media PR professionals pitch and where media planners buy advertising. 

There are examples of both with new online outlets in Michigan. Bridge, which I mentioned earlier, promotes objectivity and bi-partisan reporting in its annual report. Meanwhile, the Michigan Advance sells its “top notch progressive commentary”.

While each journalism outlet will make its own editorial policy and market-driven decisions, there is also an issue of journalism damaging its “institutional brand.’ For example, public relations professionals hate the expression “just PR” which takes a single episode of bad practice and smears the whole profession. I wrote about the notion of “just journalism” previously due to the growing lack of objectivity in reporting, with even some editors speaking of it with disdain as something old-fashioned. 

Since writing that I have seen more examples of waning objectivity not just at the national level but in local media. My local paper refused to cover a story about a teacher quitting over mandated critical race theory lessons because the editor’s wife was a teacher and became the managing editor is “against book banning,’ even though that was not the issue in this case. It was news, regardless of editors’ personal opinions. A local TV station refused to cover people who were concerned about the appropriateness of public drag queen performances because they “did not want to give platform to hate.” Again, that is a pre-judgment and subjective value decision, not one of objective journalism to tell the story and represent all views.

I don’t know if the market—i.e. readers, listeners, viewers and in turn advertisers—will restore journalism to a sustainable business with a unique identity as professional purveyors of objective truth. It could be we have enjoyed a period of time in which news media was central to communication and a revered societal institution that will one day be seen as quaint, as different groups settle into their partisan echo chambers to be fed red herrings and propaganda. But, change happened before in the media.

A little less than 80 years ago, in 1947, prominent media formed the Hutchins Commission, chaired by Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, in an impressive act of professional self regulation. They asserted a need for freedom of the press but also a need for journalists to resist sensationalism and give society what it needs.

And so, once again perhaps journalism may need a business retreat. As a profession, it needs to consider what it offers of unique value to society. It is not enough to assert its “importance to democracy” when readers are tired of its flaws and many others as I mentioned above are doing their own reporting, ranging from objective to perspective. 

Could AI assist nonprofit news models?

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I had mixed emotions when I first heard about AI news releases. On the one hand, I had the typical professor’s worry about plagiarism and enabling laziness in students. On the other hand, I teach according to what is happening in the industry. So I had to balance educating students about this tool but also working to ensure they learned how to write news style as opposed just typing in some keywords and waiting for a result.   

It reminds me of going from banning laptops in class to requiring them for use in an active learning pedagogy. 

My rule on AI news release tools became a compromise—students can use the MuckRack AI news release generator (we use MuckRack for contact lists and other things in class so they can learn a media relations software for internships and jobs), but they must edit and show me the changes they made in their submitted assignment, using track changes of comments in a PDF.

One student so far took me up on this. She did not do the edit part. AI got a poor grade. It may be hard to do particular assignments as well, such as audio news releases, video news releases, feature release style or a pitch to a particular journalist.

I also discussed AI and the quality of its output in class. Here is an example of AI output for an actual client in class. I entered the organization’s name and what they do. I shared the output—which came in 10 seconds—with students and had students them critique it based on AP style and standards for a good news release they had learned in class. 

Here is the AI news release that resulted:

The Flourish Society Launches Intergenerational Women Mentoring Program

The Flourish Society, a leading organization dedicated to empowering women, is thrilled to announce the launch of their new Intergenerational Women Mentoring Program. This program aims to bridge the gap between different generations of women by fostering mentorship relationships and providing valuable support and guidance for personal and professional development.

In today’s fast-paced world, it is essential for women to support each other and learn from the experiences of those who came before them. The Intergenerational Women Mentoring Program by The Flourish Society is designed to create a platform for women of all ages to connect, share knowledge, and build meaningful relationships that will contribute to their growth and success.

The program offers a unique opportunity for mentees to be paired with experienced mentors who can provide guidance and advice based on their own professional journeys. Mentees will have the chance to learn from the wisdom and expertise of their mentors, gaining insights on various aspects of their careers and personal lives. By connecting women from different generations, this program aims to foster a sense of community and create a supportive network that will inspire and empower women to flourish in their chosen paths.

The Flourish Society’s Intergenerational Women Mentoring Program caters to women from diverse backgrounds, professions, and age groups. It recognizes the value of intergenerational cooperation and the positive impact it can have on personal and professional growth. By encouraging women to learn from one another, the program aims to break down barriers and stereotypes, and create a more inclusive and supportive environment for women in all walks of life.

Through this mentoring program, The Flourish Society hopes to inspire women to reach their full potential and develop the confidence necessary to overcome challenges and achieve their goals. By connecting women from different generations, the program aims to foster a sense of collaboration and empowerment among women, creating a ripple effect that will benefit not only the mentees but also the mentors.

To learn more about The Flourish Society’s Intergenerational Women Mentoring Program and to get involved, visit their website and follow them on social media. Let’s celebrate the power of mentorship and support women in their journey towards personal and professional success.

Students critiqued the output pretty well. Here is a summary of their comments:

  • No format, such as a dateline, boilerplate, etc.
  • Missing key info
  • Saying “thrilled to announce”
  • No quotes
  • Not AP style
  • Repetitive, redundant
  • Cliches and platitudes
  • No news value stressed

The bottom line I told students is what I’m hearing from professionals: AI for news releases, as well as other applications, can be a first draft and get you past a blank page. But humans with news judgment and public relations skills will still be needed to make a usable final version that journalists will find acceptable and may also draw visits to an online newsroom. 

AI illustrates an old problem with technology—efficiency for the user does not necessarily mean quality for the recipient. Journalists already complain of the overwhelming quantity and poor quality of news releases and pitches they receive. They have had their own tools to write, edit, and assess the quality of news. For example, the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) maintains a list of tools for journalists, as does the Poynter Institute. Journalists also can simply delete or block news releases that continue to come from bad actors.

Speaking of journalists, the advent of AI for news comes as media companies continue to consider the best business model. Ad support has declined. Readership has been divided with so much available online content. People read individual articles, not complete packages in the form of newspapers or magazines or broadcast outlets. There is also increasing concern by news organizations of AI deepfakes, literal fake news and images, as discussed in a recent Axios article. 

A philanthropy center at the university where I work recently had an article about three non-profit news models. Whether it’s nonprofit status, nonprofit ownership, or some form of foundation support, the media industry may be turning from seeing news as a loss leader for advertising revenue to seeing news as a public good supported as a charity. 

One can only wonder if AI will contribute more news to make a donor-funded model for news more sustainable. In other words, would a non-profit model for news employ the efficiencies of AI to generate news? But then, would people pay for news generated by a machine if they can use the same machine themselves to generate and aggregate news of their interest? 

I am hopeful that the future will be news written by people, for people, and supported by people. AI may have a place, but as of now I doubt it will be primary. 

I also hope that PR professionals who know how to write, understand news, and have a desire and obligation to inform people will be assisting their journalistic counterparts in the news ecosystem. As with all professions, a benefit to society should be the primary driver for practice as opposed to efficiency for an organization. 

Two Sides to PR Pros and Facilitating Interviews

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Earlier this week I received an email from a faculty colleague in another field. He was seeking my advice dealing with public relations people.

He hosts a podcast on issues in his field, and had recently reached out directly to an expert researcher on a specific topic who worked at another university. He was inviting her to be on his podcast as an expert guest to discuss that topic.

He was put off that he got a response not from the professor, but a public relations person. That person asked for a more refined description of the topic of discussion, a list of questions, and the names of anyone else who would be on the segment. 

So my colleague complied with all he had been asked for. More than a month transpired with not a word. That’s when he reached out to me.

Coincidentally, the next day I randomly encountered a thread on Twitter in which a journalist complained about the difficulties of setting up an interview with a public official. Her series of tweets laid out her frustrations:

“Hello twitter, I want to talk today about the state of the press relations in the United States. You may or may not know, but it is increasingly rare for your local journalist to be able to simply call an official to ask questions.

Instead, we are made to go through a spokesperson who often will not answer the phone when called. This person often asks for written questions and provides written responses. These responses, as you can imagine, often inspire further follow up questions.

This back and forth, which often takes weeks (and leaves both parties exasperated), could alternately be handled by a one hour or so interview with an actual official, which would be so much easier and produce way better results for everyone.“

These similar complaints from a professor with a podcast and a professional journalist illustrate one point I told my friend. He is acting as a de facto journalist. The media landscape has changed with professional journalists now supplemented by “citizen journalists” or content providers who have their own blogs, podcasts, newsletters and more.

At first PR or public affairs people ignored them, but in the past 10 years the conventional wisdom has been to treat bloggers and podcasters as journalists. That’s because, whether professional or not, such people have an audience. It may be a large audience, or a small one with a niche demographic or topical interest. 

So let me say a few things from the perspective of a public relations professional today when it comes to interview requests. 

First, any given journalist may not be the only interview request a person has received. I remember in my previous career doing media relations for the university where I now teach being overwhelmed with the number of requests for interviews from journalists. I often would encourage a journalist to contact directly the source for a story if I had pitched it or sent a news release. But otherwise I had to try to find and convince someone to respond to the request if a journalist was doing an enterprise story.

There are now more than 2 million podcasts in the United States, according to EarthWeb. Meanwhile, Oberlo reports there are more than 600 million blogs today. Granted, not every blogger or podcaster interviews people. But there is a greater potential to receive requests for interviews and information. 

Most likely interview subjects have a high level of responsibility and/or expertise, and are therefore busy. True, an interview could be an opportunity to reach people with an important message. But they also can be seen as interruptions or less urgent than other tasks at hand. They have public relations people to help determine if opportunities are good in terms of the topic and the potential audience. Yes publicity is important but it is only one consideration in public relations.

I’ve been burned myself as an expert when media interviews were not what I was told by a reporter or producer they would be. I have found out in a TV station green room that I was one of several subjects and they really wanted us to argue on the air (because it would be good for ratings). I’ve also been asked questions that were considerably uninformed such that they were off topic entirely. 

By the way, public relations people are also busy. Media relations is only one aspect of their work. Public relations people are producing their own tactics—ads, internal publications, websites, social media and more. They also spend much of their day counseling CEOs and other managers on not just communications but management. 

That being said, public relations people spend considerable time and effort training executives and others to do quality interviews for print, broadcast or online. This helps journalists tremendously to get good, honest, meaningful commentary and avoid awkward “deer-in-the-headlights” moments. I know I personally had to spend lots of time persuading someone to do an interview when they otherwise would have ignored a journalist.

But the journalists—both professional and otherwise—also have some valid perspective. And I worked as a journalist before I was in public relations practice and education, so I know this well.

First, some journalists are open to sending questions or at least specifying the topic. I think it can be a win-win because subjects do come more prepared. I also have received questions in an email and arranged for a client to respond. They have time to think and craft answers this way. Plus, with email being asynchronous, there is no need to arrange a common time for an interview to happen. On the other hand, some journalists want a conversation and not canned answers that people merely read.  Also, the expectation is that if someone is an expert they should be able to discuss off the cuff. 

There is a difference between long-lead publications and outlets on general interest topics and watchdog journalism on a tight deadline covering city hall or corrupt corporations. In the former, providing more context may be reasonable. But in the latter, dropping everything to avoid the dreaded “unavailable for comment” would be the public relations professional’s best strategy in terms of ongoing reputation and in fact an obligation to be responsive to stakeholders through the media. 

In the end, as in any relationship, there are two perspectives. In this case, the perspectives are both professional. Sometimes they align in terms of a desire to address the same topic and audience. And sometimes, alas, they do not.

If We Had a ‘Meet the PR Pro’ Panel for Journalists

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Local chapters of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) frequently have “meet the media” panels as a feature of monthly programming. In these informative sessions, local journalists representing print, TV, radio and online media outlets share the type of news they cover, how they cover it, the best way to reach and pitch them, and more.

These are helpful sessions, especially for younger public relations professionals.

But I have often wondered why we can’t reciprocate—why can’t we invite an audience of journalists to hear a panel of PR professionals? Because there are a lot of misperceptions among journalists about what PR is and how PR professionals do their jobs. 

 Here are some points that could be made to an assembly of reporters:

  • Media relations and pitching stories to journalists is a small part of what PR people do. While some PR people may  focus on that role, such as media relations managers or public information officers (PIOs), some PR people do very little or no media relations. 
  • News releases and pitches are just one tactic PR people use. PR is about building mutual relationships with multiple publics, and all forms of communication are used by professionals. These can include paid advertising, organizational media such as newsletters, annual reports, brochures and more, or the vast array of digital media including email campaigns and social media and wed sites. Most PR people have a number of ways to directly and effectively reach internal and external publics. Journalists come into play occasionally.
  • Where journalists sometimes feel outnumbered by PR professionals pitching them far more stories than they could ever do, PR people feel outnumbered by journalists asking for comments, interviews and information for stories the PR person may not have initiated. A news conference can help add efficiency in such cases, but with breaking news a PR pro may have to make multiple callbacks to journalists even as they are dealing with questions from a client or CEO, planning an investor conference call, working a community relations meeting, attempting to meet a deadline for internal communication and more.
  • While journalists sometimes complain of PR people pitching things that are not even newsworthy, PR people complain of some journalists doing stories that are more market-driven (ie good for ratings) than newsworthy, or they cover stories in a way that is sensationalistic as opposed to objective reporting. 
  • Journalists may feel annoyed by PR people interrupting them with pitches, but should keep in mind that it is often only through a PR person that a journalist is aware of some news or gets access to an interview with a well-informed source. Often such high-profile individuals have to be convinced to even do an interview since they feel too busy for journalists. PR people also offer media training so that executives give clear, concise, factual and compelling interviews that provide key information as well as those all important quotes, SOTs and actualities. 
  • Journalists should be careful who they call PR people. Just as not every rogue blogger is an actual journalist, there are numerous people out there who pitch stories who have no degree in PR, much less accreditation (APR) or even a job title that is public relations. Don’t judge a whole profession by a few imposters or bad actors. In fact, in the history of White House press secretaries, only one or two was actually a PR person. Most come from politics. The same lack of PR pedigrees is common in corporate and nonprofit settings as well.
  • Legitimate PR people are inherently ethical. They bristle at the notion of “spin” and deception. College PR programs stress the big picture and ethical practice of PR. Advocacy for an organization and persuasion if done honestly is not “spin” or “putting an organization in a positive light.” It is professional representation of a voice and perspective that has a legitimate right to be heard in the “marketplace of ideas.”
  • Finally, the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of the “press” is not actually about journalism. It is about all citizens being able to print (ie on a printing press) and distribute information, and today that applies to other communication technologies. PR and advertising professionals are afforded the same rights as journalists in this regard.

These are just a few comments that could come up at a panel for journalists to understand public relations and those who practice it, as well as how it should be practiced professionally. There are many productive journalist-PR pro relationships, and they usually involve a healthy mutual understanding of each other’s job.