Australian Media Five Years On

Malcolm Farr from News Limited

Question three respected Australian journalists about the future of Australian media and you'd be surprised how similar their views are.

IABC Canberra recently hosted a discussion with News Limited's Malcolm Farr, Karen Middleton from SBS and ABC Political Editor Greg Jennet.   The three Canberra Press Gallery veterans shared predictions about the media in the next five years, with communicators at the National Press Club.

The media landscape may be changing but all agreed newspapers will remain important and be influencing opinion well into the medium term.  Viewers will have less appetite for traditionally scheduled news bulletins and will press TV networks to deliver a great variety of news formats via their digital channels. And new technologies will allow Australians to self select information and build their own news pipelines.

ABC TV's Greg Jennett and SBS' Karen Middleton

Which means fresh challenges for PR professionals.  How do we reach our audiences when the media landscape is so fragmented and how do we judge success?

Farr, Middleton and Jennet were unanimous that tomorrow's reporters may use different technologies, yet their journalistic instinct to seek out information and hold institutions accountable will be as strong as ever.  

Social Media in Campaign Communications

Are political campaigns living up to the promise of digital technology?  

Professor Jenny Stromer-Galley, Associate Professor at Syracuse University, explores this in her book 'Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age'.  She concludes digital is pushing politicians to reconsider how they reach and involve people yet there is still a long way to go.

Jenny Stromer-Galley

Obama's presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2014 showed the technical infrastructure to shrink the distance between candidate and community is with us now. The social media platforms we use every day offer the chance for electors to be more involved in the political process.  Never before have voters had access to so much information to share, re-interpret, re-purpose and organise.  So has digital delivered a new era of political emancipation?

The theory is good, right?  Digital should spell a rebirth in political conversations, yet Stromer-Galley thinks the promise is still to be met.

Perhaps because digital is about sharing, interaction, connection while politics is about control.  Control the numbers, control the cash, control the message.  And of all places in the political realm control is central in campaigns.   

I must win ... so craft me the right message, target the right group, bring in the cash and round up the vote. 

This makes most candidates reluctant to relinquish control preferring to use social media as a one way channel. We need to be into this stuff, but we don't really believe it.

Which of course runs counter to the two way world many of us live in, with friends, business and not for profits. It seems politics is slow to innovate when it comes to connecting.

To be fair, engaging in the digital age involves willingness plus patience, energy and time.  Consider how much time many of us devote to staying close to Facebook friends. But those resources are in short supply when the next election looms closer each day. And, many of the senior staff behind political campaigns are still old school intent on using traditional methods and media.

Campaigning like other forms of communications is at the cross roads.  Politicians need to innovate and experiment with the new technologies or risk coming across as old, outdated and one dimensional.  The ballot box prize in future may well go to the clever campaigns unafraid to experiment and really connect.

Managers and Millenials: Communications In The Workplace

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Via: Communicating in the Modern Workplace

Will Media Use Your Photo?

Last week the Central Connecticut Valley Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America hosted a luncheon with top media executives who shared ideas on the shifting role of imagery in media.

Provide media with newsworthy images

For starters they all agreed social media has drastically altered how journalists operate. Outlets are under continual pressure to get out the news first and fast.  Which means accuracy of information often suffers.  We know Twitter can break news at lightning speed but spare a thought for the editors and producers who need to monitor and react to tweets and simultaneously check their accuracy in a breaking news story. 

Today devices abound.  Anyone with a smart phone now sees themselves as a photographer.  Which makes the job of traditional newspaper photographers and TV crews more difficult as they compete at media conferences and other events with amateurs jostling for the perfect pic snapped from their Androids or Iphones.  

Of course many outlets, especially smaller ones, capitalise on the smart phone trend and invite readers and viewers to share their imagery. After all it is just more grist to the continuing content mill. But only a foolish editor or producer would use something without due diligence.

In recent times most media outlets have evolved guidelines for absorbing user generated content into their coverage simply to keep up with the new wild, wild West where citizen reporters can scoop  news faster than gumshoe journalists.  

So the typical questions media outlets ask when offered content include: 

• Firstly and most importantly: is it breaking news or otherwise newsworthy?
• Can we verify where the information or imagery comes from? Who owns it?
• Quality-wise can we use it?
• Does the image 'have a verb'.  In other words does it tell a story, show something happening or someone reacting to something happening?
• Can we use it freely or are there limitations?
• Does it show children or other groups for whom explicit permissions are needed?

Content marketers want to see their imagery widely spread online and in traditional forums.  But before offering up something consider the media filters an editor or producer will apply before deciding to use it.

 

American Conference Scores Content Points

Sometimes you can easily overlook how serious you must be to succeed at content marketing. 

Once you begin a conversation with clients, customers, citizens or fans it takes time, effort and energy to maintain the connection, keep things fresh, build audience and generate loyalty.

For example take the newly established American Athletics Conference which is staging its inaugural Women Basketball Tournament this weekend.  A dedicated digital team is communicating the match-ups between 12 teams who have traveled across the US to compete.  Located court side and venturing into locker rooms, the digital team opens up the tournament to fans beyond the arena through scores, updates, images, video and interviews.  And all done at sizzling pace.

Pre-game the Conference provides mountains of player, game and season stats that would satisfy the most passionate fans of women's basketball. 

During each of the tournament's nine games fans can follow the action live on social media through scores, video and images.  

Following each contest they can either commiserate or celebrate their team's performance with post game notes, video highlights or after action quotes from players and coaches. 

The digital team runs the Conference's 10 dedicated or personal work-related social media accounts supported court-side by a video cameraman with backpack technology and a  photographer.  Which means as fans in the stadium sip beer and enjoy the game, the team is splitting eyeballs between hoops and laptops to create a treasure trove for fans over the next four days.

Of course small business, not for profits and most government agencies will never be expected to work at such intensity.   But the American Conference offers up a content marketing lesson for each.  Get serious about engaging because you need skills, firm focus and an awful lot of stamina to succeed with the people who are most important to your organisation.

For the record the digital team at the American Conference  is @TaraPetrolino, @jamieleecorun and  @Mark_Hodgkin. They synchronize efforts with other PR and marketing staff managing traditional media arrangements including live TV coverage of each game.