Tag: journalism

Tech Media Now Must Take Role of Journalists

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As the media shake-up continues, it seems that the role and responsibility of “journalism’ is shifting from conventional news organizations to the modern digital companies responsible for the changes.

Consider the confluence of recent headlines.

Today I read that the Detroit News is offering buyouts to all journalists on staff, no matter the role or length of service, in order to meet new budget guidelines as the economic model of traditional journalism continues to struggle. This is just the latest in a long list of news outlets reducing reporting  and editing staff.

The shrinking of conventional journalism means an erosion of the role journalists should play in our society in several ways.

One is the role of providing a public forum. For years the letters to the editor and op-ed pages were what the taverns and coffee shops were modern communication–a place for what German scholar Jurgen Habermas called the “public sphere”, where citizens discussed and informed themselves about politics and other news of the day.

But these days, people don’t need the op-ed pages and letters forum to engage in public debate. Even the online comments sections on mainstream news organizations’ apps and websites are losing traction, so much so that some news sites are eliminating comments. People talk about news on social media. Traditional media don’t host the conversations, they participate.

Another journalistic function being taken away from journalists is the editing and verification role. Sure, the digital revolution made communication more of a democracy, but it also made it more of a cacophony. Tech companies like Facebook and Google–where much of the control of society’s information has shifted–are being asked to vet content they allow into the public realm after reports of fake news appearing along side legitimate information. Facebook and Google don’t want to take on this function. It means moving from what the law would call providing access to providing content. Essentially, it means they are being asked to move from being a technology company to being news organizations, going from algorithm to journalism.

In a similar way, Facebook has recently been embroiled in controversy over targeting ethnic groups in Facebook advertising. Micro-targeting is a huge advantage in digital advertising, particularly on Facebook, as a speaker to the GVSU Advertising Club recently shared. This is largely an ethical issue, since in some cases–such as housing ads–certain ethnic groups have been excluded. It raises the old question of do we mainstream all minorities in our communication? Is targeting them a positive way of reaching out to them or is it a negative way of marginalizing them? A lot depends on intent, and requires human oversight.

So even as our technology changes, the issues in our society–and our need for a professional class that can report, monitor, verify, curate and edit content–will be needed.

Advertising and public relations professionals who understand ethics and have integrity can and should fill some of this social role.

But I also wonder if certain former employees of the Detroit News and other “old media” will be snapped up by tech companies like Google, Facebook and other companies who realize the formulas of technology can’t fully replace the art and wisdom of actual human agents.

Government News Service for Residents: Offensive to News Media?

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The Ottawa County (Michigan) government recently announced a new subscription news service to residents of the county. Being a resident, and  PR professor, I subscribed to receive by email a variety of county news releases across categories. I already have received several, and find them to be objective and informative, as government information should be.

But it didn’t take long for one paper in the county, the Grand Haven Tribune, (self disclosure: I write a monthly column for the paper as a community columnist), to take issue with the county’s new public service. The July 29, 2015 editorial (not online yet as I blog so this link is to the opinion page vs the specific editorial) cautions that the county’s news service is a “slippery slope” and the put the word ‘news’ in quotes in the headline and throughout the opinion. Their concerns are that the county may be circumventing professional media, or that in time it will be like Pravda, the Russian state media. They wonder aloud if residents feel the county will give unbiased reports of County Commission meetings and other public information.

I take issue with the Tribune taking issue with all of this.

I have a degree in journalism and practiced it for a time and still respect the role of objective journalism in democratic society. But I also have studied, practiced and now teach public relations, as well as PR ethics and law, and I commend Ottawa County for this new service. I disagree that it conflicts with the role of traditional newspaper and other news outlets, and I would assert that there are many positives to a subscription news service for residents.

Let me first address the Tribune’s complaints.

First, the Tribune needs to reconsider the arrogant posture that only it and other journalistic organizations have a corner on ‘news.’ News comes from newspapers and broadcast media, sure, but it also comes directly from organizations, institutions and individuals. Newspapers report news, they don’t create it, invent it, or own it. The Constitution guarantees “freedom of the press” to any individual to print and disseminate information, not just “journalists.” The residents or any other audience are the ones who should determine what is newsworthy.

On a related point, the communications professionals at Ottawa County are professionals. The Tribune expressed concern about the County circumventing “professional” media. But public relations professionals–whether in the government, nonprofit, or business sector–also have professional degrees and standards of practice.

What Ottawa County is doing is not new. It is good PR practice. PR practitioners have long communicated with a mix of forms of media, characterized by the acronym PESO–paid, earned, shared, and owned. Paid media is advertising or anything that must be paid for. Earned media is conventional media relations, sending news releases to journalists with the hope that the editors and reporters who receive it will do a story as a result. Owned media includes the newsletters, annual reports, brochures, web sites and anything else an organization owns and controls as a form of communication. And recently shared media is the digital forum where tweets and posts are passed along by individual users in their respective networks. If you go to the news page on the Ottawa County web site you can sign up for these news releases as well as newsletters, annual reports and other forms of information.

A third point is the fact that not all news is covered. Even though journalists call themselves the watchdogs of government, they have limits in what they can cover. There is a volume of information available from Ottawa County and I doubt the Tribune has the capacity to cover all of it. They have to make decisions as to what is of must value to their readers and the community at large. The county subscription service doesn’t compete with newspapers, it complements them and allows small groups of individuals to subscribe to very specific information of particular interest to them which may not get any attention in mainstream media.

Finally, the Tribune should acknowledge that Ottawa County exists in the same media environment that conventional newspapers do. Just as the Tribune has expanded online and into the social media landscape, so must all institutions. Digital media enables interaction, individually tailored information across multiple platforms and formats. If newspapers do this, why not the government? The county will likely garner an assortment of small audiences for various forms of information. The Tribune will still be needed to bring the most relevant and important information to broad audiences who would not otherwise seek it. And if the county does fall into the temptation to control information like Pravda, that’s where the watchdog role comes in. I’m sure that the Tribune staff will still be sitting in on open county meetings and reporting on them, going beyond what the news releases say.

Meanwhile, there are many positives for the county’s information subscription service. They do not pass over the conventional media, they merely offer specific and direct delivery of information to their constituents–a laudable goal. They are providing more transparency and accountability. They are staying up to date with technology. They are serving their constituents. Sounds to me like good “news.”

In fact, the county did make the news recently for winning another award for its website. I’m not concerned, I’m grateful. In time I think the Tribune will be also.

Brian Williams, Journalists Lying, and The Moral Superiority of Public Relations

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OK. The headline of this blog was a bit sensational and an obvious attempt at click bait. But a poor blogger has to do something to keep up with the big boys at Rock Center to grab some eyeballs. Do me a solid and read on.

Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News has taken himself off the air voluntarily for a few days because of his unfortunate episode of, to quote him directly, “misremembering” some facts related to report he did on the Iraq War.

Apparently he said he was in a helicopter in Iraq that was hit by enemy fire, and military veterans called him out on that. His statements when covering Hurricane Katrina are now also called into question, according to an article in USA Today, one of many national media stories on the subject.

Leave aside the fact that reporting should not be done from memory. Does not a journalist take notes or record when “reporting”? One wonders what else Mr. Williams may have fabricated in his recently celebrated 10 years in the anchor chair at NBC. Were he not an employee of this fabled (pun most definitely intended) network, Dateline NBC would be putting the finishing touches on a graphic for an expose called “Brian Williams: Decade of Deception.”

But let’s ease up on Brian Williams a little. After all, he’s not the only national journalist to lie. Dan Rather over at CBS has his own wikipedia entry for his famous fabrication about George Bush’s military background. Stephen Glass at the New Republic, Jayson Blair at the New York Times, and others are recounted in this Yahoo new media round up of old media journalism liars.

I have practiced both journalism and public relations. Now I teach public relations. And what I hear a lot is how public relations lacks ethics, and implied is how righteous journalists are by comparison.

So let’s pause and reflect on this “teachable moment,” shall we?

Any profession has good and bad practitioners. In PR, there are some who are intentionally deceptive or do other unethical deeds. But it would be unethical and intellectually dishonest to indict the entire profession. That is especially the case when a lot of research shows that unethical PR deeds are usually committed by non-PR professionals–lawyers, marketers, CEOs–or by people with no bonafide training or degree in PR. In fact, some of the largest whoppers of unethical PR are committed by former journalists (eg. Burson-Marsteller’s smear campaign of Google for client Facebook). 

A lot of the criticism of PR is co-mingled with a phobic anti-corporate sentiment. But, we must keep in mind that NBC, CBS and other major national journalistic enterprises are also corporations. Big corporations. They shamelessly promote their various interests on their own programs. And they compete with each other relentlessly. They need attention, to have an audience to sell to advertisers, whom they want to charge ever more money.

There are a variety of reasons journalists may lie. Business competitive pressure. An ideological worldview contrary to the person or party they cover. Or simple ego to succeed.

The point is, they lie. We don’t even know about all the times they lie. To insinuate that the institution of journalism has any moral high ground over the profession of public relations is just another lie.

Professions are neutral. It’s the professionals who vary in their ethics. Brian Williams is the latest evidence of this. It’s probably only a matter of time before we have more.

In the meantime, we all get to watch NBC and Mr. Williams engage in some public relations, as they seek to manage this crisis, work on image restoration and re-build the NBC brand. Now THAT should be good television.

There’s a Reason They Call It Earned Media–Why Proposal to Pay Journalists is Wrong

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I got a tweet today from Mark Sanchez (@masanche),  Senior Writer for MiBiz, asking me for comments on a PR man offering to provide articles to a journalist, who could then apply his own byline. This dandy was reported in Jim Romenesko’s blog.

Basically, a PR guy points out that with media contraction it is hard to get good content. So why doesn’t he offer prepared articles to the journalist that could be used edited or not with the journalist’s byline on them. PR guy gets publicity, journalist gets content, everyone’s happy. So he says.

Here are my thoughts:

  • History always informs modern public relations. Ivy Lee is considered to be one of the fathers of modern public relations and the inventor of the first press release. He wrote articles and even laid them out in newspaper columns so journalists in the early 1900s could literally “cut and paste” his handouts verbatim for use in their newspapers. I have an example from a PR history book I show my classes. A bit of foreshadowing is that the title on top of these handouts was “public relations.” Here’s an account of one of the first verbatim articles supplied to media, and it’s actually in a crisis situation.
  • The notion of PR people providing content which journalists use is called “information subsidy” since a 1982 book by Oscar Gandy. It has been debatable whether this is a bad thing or not. On the one hand, journalists being spoonfed is poor journalism, if not unethical. But on the other hand, many news reports would not see the light of day were it not for a PR person alerting journalists to the idea or helping facilitate interviews and other information for stories. It’s not to uncommon for media to occasionally use news releases verbatim. In fact, I wrote a blog post on this before.
  • There is no doubt that economic pressure has journalists today doing more “aggregating” and “curating” of other people’s content and less original reporting. This comes in the form of newswire, shared content from other journalists, and inviting content from non-journalist sources. Locally in West Michigan, one example would be the Sunday Grand Rapids Press health section, where representatives from local hospitals are given space to hold forth on health issues. Another example is me blogging for free about PR and media issues for the Grand Rapids Business Journal. In both cases, the publication gets free  content and the guest writers get name recognition, brand building, and the opportunity to establish themselves as a thought leader or community servant on a relevant subject.
  • Ethics is always debated. In Nigeria and some other countries it is expected that a PR person will pay a journalist to run a story, in the same way a waitress here expects a tip for serving food. The situation in the Romenesko blog does not involve paying a journalist, but it is unethical because the public is not fully or honestly informed of authorship. It’s not about the money, it’s about the ability to make informed decisions. If readers read an article with a well-known journalist’s byline, there is an expectancy that the journalist investigated, verified, examined alternative views, and finally wrote an article that was fair and representative of multiple perspectives. If that article was supplied by someone with their own interest in mind–or even if you argue that the content is in the public service–denying the public the ability to know the actual authorship is deceptive and therefore unethical.
  • If I remember correctly, bylines were first used by TIME Magazine in the era of tabloid and sensationalistic journalism, in an effort to give their articles more credibility, legitimacy, and accountability. It is ironic that nearly 100 years later someone is trying to use the byline for opposite purposes.
  • Bad ethics ultimately hurts everyone. The reader is misinformed, as I noted above. Journalists will in time only corrode their own brand and the value they provide readers. And PR people will only be seen to be sneaky manipulators, as opposed  to honest professionals who balance the interests of their clients with the public interest and seek to work in an honest, transparent fashion. That’s what Lee stressed in his “Declaration of Principles” way back at the time of the first press release. That’s a theme of the PRSA Code of Ethics. It’s what I teach my students. Its the way the West Michigan PR pros I know practice. 
  • The reader does  decide. In time people will know that articles are supplied and not original and legitimate news. The articles will then lose value and be seen with the same consumer skepticism as ads. The whole point of publicity, and why it’s called “earned media,” is that skeptical journalists and editors weigh information carefully and then decide whether and how it should be published. The value is the third party credibility when information is presented, not merely getting it out there at any cost.
I’m disappointed to read about this “indecent proposal” from a PR person. But I’m glad Romenesko exposed him, to prevent other unsavory idiots from trying the same to the ruin of us all.

GRBJ Preps for Digital Launch

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The Grand Rapids Business Journal is reaching out to attract an online editor and reporters for the October launch of its  GRBJ.com.

I first learned about the digital hires and new online emphasis appropriately on Facebook.

Not only does this provide opportunity for good business journalists with online skills, it changes the local media landscape in several ways. For one, the GRBJ.com site currently is proprietary, requiring a subscriber log-in to read full text of articles. Secondly, the current online content largely mirrors that of the weekly print product. The new site looks to have real-time reporting and presumably more open access.

For PR pros, this broadens the audience and shortens the deadlines. It means seeing the GRBJ as not just a long-lead business publication with an influential albeit limited audience. From now on, the weekly can be considered  for both long-form print articles and added to the mix with TV, radio, MLive and others for breaking news and rapid-pace social media shares.

Come October, there will be more urgency and diversity in local business coverage. That will force both journalists and PR pros to be more on their toes, as well as their laptops and smart phones. It will also give me one more thing to talk about in my media relations class this fall:-)