Superman, Journalism, & Next Generation Media
Check out this panel from an old comic book. It’s a great reminder of the how society’s view of the media has changed over the years…and how that has helped fuel online news growth.
Superman debuted in 1938. The creators clearly wanted him to be a paragon of American virtue. He was, of course, the ultimate illegal alien. But like many foreigners of the time, Superman wrapped himself in the flag and declared himself a proud American.
Since they were creating an icon, the comic book creators made Superman’s alter ego a newspaper reporter. At the time it made sense, since newspapers were symbols of truth. Papers required balanced, honest reporting from ethical journalists.
There was a time in recent history when Walter Cronkite — the CBS News television anchor — was named “the most trusted figure” in the American public.
Flash forward to today, and Jon Stewart of the Daily Show was named the most trusted newsman. What does that say about the state of news in America?
If Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegal were creating Superman today, it’s unlikely that they’d make Clark Kent a reporter or any part of the mainstream media. The news has become so editorialized…and polarizing…it’s hard to imagine people looking at the profession as trustworthy or ethical. These days, journalists are considered among the least trustworthy of all professionals.
There are honest and trustworthy news professionals. Yet, it’s the public perception of the media that matters in this case. It’s perception and how customers interpret the product.
Let’s cut to the heart of the issue. Namely, journalists have an image problem. It’s a marketing and branding challenge. This is particularly ironic, since they (theoretically) control the media.
This poorly regarded public perception of the media may have even helped fuel the demise of print.
- Print folks were dreadfully late to the Internet. As the Web was developing, many news organizations tried to pretend it didn’t exist. Few created decent brand footprints online, which allowed upstarts like the Huffington Post to grab a foothold on news reporting.
- Traditional media failed to recognize the power of citizen journalism. Instant broadcast platforms made it possible for anyone with a keyboard, a digital camera, or a mini camcorder to play reporter. They failed to leverage the cheap, easy news right in their own backyards.
- Many stories are simply a headline and two paragraphs, which satisfies the basic need to know what’s happening. Depth and breadth of reporting comes later. Newspapers made a terrible mistake when they moved to bite-size news stories in print. Suddenly, the print newspaper was reporting the same stuff that was online the day before. For free. And that depth and breadth stuff? That was cut out of the paper.
- Newspapers drifted away from being impartial journals that worked to get both sides of the story, no matter how difficult. They replaced it with lazy advocacy journalism that was barely better than the basic blog.
People aren’t stupid. They know when something doesn’t smell right. If the paper was going to offer opinions and recycled stories, it was destined to lose value in the eyes of the community. Why pay for lazy reporting and opinions…when you can get it online for free?
In marketing terms, newspapers lost their unique selling proposition. They lost their mojo.
What was left was the tattered remains of the mainstream media. But don’t get me wrong, it has been a long, long time since journalists were considered trustworthy. This is not a recent problem.
Newspapers today are a mere shadow of their former glory. Many of them now just reprint news stories from the Associated Press or Reuters or some third-rate wire service. A few hang on, but it’s just a matter of time before they simply fizzle out.
That’s the bad news. There is, however, a glimmer of hope.
From the ashes of this pyre, it’s likely that some ember will spark a new journalistic flame. It’s possible that the old guard reporters will team with next generation journalists to build a new style of news reporting. Perhaps they will redefine what content, news, and balanced reporting is in today’s modern society.
It could be something that reports news of global significance, offering a view of the world beyond our neighborhood. At the same time, this new media can help us stay in touch with the local issues that affect us directly.
With newspapers dying, someone is going to have to pay for genuine news content. Perhaps one day, we’ll actually find a way to fund good journalism. You know, pay for stuff that has value. Remember when we used to do that?
And, if we’re all lucky, the next generation of inventive minds will create another archetype Superman character who represents rock-solid ethics and legendary strength.
If we give them the next generation of journalism, young idealists may again view journalists as a benefit to society. Guardians of truth who get both sides of the story, and allow us to formulate our own opinions. A friend to the community they serve.
And symbol of truth, justice, and the American way.
McCloud Talks Tech on TED
Scott McCloud is a comic book creator who wrote a brilliant book called “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
A few years back, McCloud gave a talk at TED (Technology Entertainment Design), which is an annual conference in California. Not only is McCloud a smart guy who knows a lot about comics, technology, and science…he’s a terrific presenter.
Check out this video as he discusses how comic books and computers are evolving to leverage new technology. Good stuff. It’s especially compelling considering the implosion of traditional print publishing.
I Want to Hear Your Ads…Please
Each week, I listen to approximately four to ten individual podcasts per week. If you’re not familiar with the term, a podcast is a mash up of the words “iPods” and “broadcast.”
In a previous post, I blogged about Podcasting Your Brand Message. Check it out. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Basically, podcasts are highly specialized radio shows that people subscribe to on their computers. You can listen to podcasts on an iPod, burn it to a CD for the car, or just listen on the computer. Many podcasts are highly specialized, serving a niche audience. Check out the massive variety of shows at Podcast Alley.
And yet, I am amazed at how few podcasts include any advertising. Believe it or not, I want to hear ads for products that are relevant and important to me. I actually want to know more about…
New Technology Podcast
My favorite tech podcast is CNet’s Buzz Out Loud. Although the “podcast of indeterminate length” runs a little long, it is always interesting, always educational, and…always about new technology. The people who are listening to a one hour plus podcast about cutting-edge tech are probably receptive to…I dunno…an ad for a website that sells new technology at a great price.
Screenwriting Podcast
The absolute best podcast on screenwriting is called “On the Page.” Each week, Pilar Alessandra offers smart, actionable advice to aspiring screenwriters. As a writer, I am also an avid reader, so I would like to know if an interesting new writing book becomes available. Yes, it would be very smart to advertise a the right book on a targeted podcast, especially if the show discusses topics relevant to writers.
These are just two examples of podcasts perfect for highly targeted advertising. It’s a lot like speciality magazine advertising.
That is, when I subscribe to Popular Photography magazine, I expect to see ads for photo equipment, services, and other cool photo stuff. I spend as much time drooling at the ads as I do on the reviews. Sometimes more.
Podcasts offer you an opportunity to connect your product with people who are passionate about the category.
With tough times ahead, advertisers want unique opportunities to connect with their customers. Many niche podcasts have a small staff, but a large, dedicated following.
This means a podcaster probably doesn’t have a sales force to come and woo your ad dollars. The Internet is reversing that model, and now you are going to have to find them.
The payoff could be huge for your brand. Instead of an apathetic audience, you could be tapping into passionate, motivated audience eager to buy your product or service.
In the meantime, I’ll just be listening to ad-free podcasts…and hearing nothing about your brand.
Newspapers: Throw a Lifeline to Your Newsroom
It’s not just the Internet that is killing newspapers. Newspapers are killing themselves. As the newspaper dies, it struggles to remain profitable…causing an inevitable death spiral.
Right now, newspapers could hold on longer if they could throw a lifeline to their local news reporters. Instead, to save money, newspapers are buying content from news wires. Unfortunately most people can get the same articles for free online. Making me pay for something that I can get for free isn’t really a sustainable business model.
Let me give you an example with my own daily newspaper The Record. The Record has always been part of my life, and I do not want to see it go out of business.
But here’s how the content from today’s (March 23. 2009) newspaper breaks down. I counted each homegrown article and each wire story article on every page. The newspaper was very thin today (46 pages), so it was pretty easy.
My apologies for the lame graphic. I input all the data into a Zoho.com spreadsheet. It may give advanced chart design features, but I just couldn’t figure it out. I felt it was more important to share the data, which is embedded in this graph. Feel free to utilize the info in the Zoho chart or spreadsheet.
This is a visual representation of how much homegrown content (56 articles) versus news-wire content (57 articles) is featured in today’s paper. That’s a 50-50 split of original content versus syndicated content.
It’s pretty obvious from the graph that the A section is mostly pulled from sources that I can get for free…and in real time. That’s just not a good way to keep readers. The A section is all available instantly on Google News.
Moving to the B section, things start to change. In the Local section, MOST of the news is relevant to me, based on region. The paper uses some syndicated sources to enhance the local news.
Over in section C, we see more wire content popping up. This is the Entertainment section, so we have a mix of regional stories and bunch of syndicated stuff that I can get just about anywhere.
Finally over in section D, we’re in Sports and Classifieds. All of the Classifieds are local, but none of it requires a reporter.
This isn’t exclusive to my local newspaper. As you read your daily newspaper, take notice of who is writing it. If it says “staff writer” it’s written in house. But if it says “Associated Press” then you can get that article (or one just like it) from Internet news sources.
Ironically, I was planning to write this post, and in today’s Record they printed a letter from a reader who wants more local news reporting.
Saving newspapers will require more than recycling wire stories. It’s about covering local events that matter to readers. And that means throwing a lifeline to the newsroom and paying reporters to create a product that people want to buy.
Twitter’s Magical 140
According to Wired magazine, blogging is dead. Sad that the venerable blog post…which broke down barriers of publishing…may be on the way out.
In some ways, it’s true. Blogging was amazingly democratic. Anyone could be a published author, just by posting a blog. For a little while, media giants reacted to the voices of regular people, some of whom became self-appointed experts.
Over the last two years, though, the media caught up. Many top blogs are part of the established media network. Professional journalists and media channels are using blogs to attract, well, us. Now, that democratic blog landscape is being claimed by mainstream media, decreasing the ability of regular people to become key opinion leaders.
Part of the problem is that the blog post…usually pretty short…is just too long. Our attention span is waning to the point that a few paragraphs is too much mental lifting. See Me Read Book.
The predicted replacement? Twitter.
So, if I seem a little long winded to you, check out my Twitter account at http://twitter.com/BuddyWeb
Twitter posts (called Tweets) are limited to 140 characters. That’s about the length of one long sentence. For me, that’s usually two punchy, short sentences.
So, if you like someone’s writing, you can subscribe to their Twitter. Their random thoughts can be posted to Twitter. In best cases, Twitter posts are sharp, interesting, or funny observations. In worst, it’s agonizingly dull people sharing their banal lives.
And, as marketers see this shift, they are discovering new and interesting ways of leveraging the Twitter channel. Or at least as much marketing as you can do in 140 characters.
All hail the short attention span. Just do it quickly because we tend to bore easily!
Why Newspapers Are Doomed
Newspapers aren’t dead yet. Despite the steady declines in circulation and ad sales, many newspapers continue to hang on. And yet, they are inevitably doomed.
Here’s a few reasons why:
1. Local reporting. Many news websites focus on national stories. Big stuff. But the local newspaper give us useful reporting on local issue. Small stuff, like flooding, taxes, and school events.
CNN doesn’t cover your neighborhood unless it’s a major news event, like a catastrophe or a tragedy. Either way, you don’t want to be in the news at that time.
2. Pictures. If you compared today’s paper with one from 10 years ago, you’d notice something important. That is, there are a lot of news wire photos. Lots of celebrities. Lots of people you dont actually know.
Wanna know why? Photographers cost money.
As newspapers rely more on news wire photos — stuff you can see anywhere — they lose a connection with the local community.
3. In Depth Reporting. Like Local Reporting, in depth reporting was the cornerstone of newspaper journalism. TV gave you the headlines, but newspapers gave you the full story. A good newspaper might offer sidebars, editorials, and illustrations.
My local newspaper has won many prestigious awards for investigative journalism. Big exposes about local corruption and news events. Information on a local level. You cant get that from a journalist-blogger conducting an interviews over email.
And yet, local newspapers cede control to online journalists and bloggers every time they run a canned story from the news wire.
About the News Wire. Take a look at your local newspaper again. Check to see who wrote that story. If it says Associated Press or another service, it means your newspaper bought that story (probably through a subscription).
Newswire stories are a cheap way to fill space. But they also cheapen the true value of the newspaper.
A canned story satisfies a short-term goal of making a profit, since it’s cheaper to buy a story than to create one in house. But these are temporary solutions further weaken newspapers.
If newspapers continue along this path, they are surely doomed.
Here’s a Related Story: Why Comic Book Publishing is Doomed
Techronyms for Search
In the technology business, there’s a new acronym for every new product, idea, or process. They call these “techronyms.”
Anyway, I find that mnemonic tricks sometimes help me remember techronyms and people’s names.
I wanted to share a quick one that comes up all the time when I talk with people about Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Here’s one to help you remember the difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
Remember that the “M” in SEM stands for “money.” The “O” in SEO is for “zero-dollars.” That’s because SEO is free.
As I think of more techronyms, I’ll post ‘em. If you’ve got any, post ‘em.
Verticals within Verticals
We were at a team meeting with several people I hadn’t really worked with yet. It was a typical white-board brainstorm meeting about how we could provide digital tactics against traditional-media channels.
If you’re in digital, you know how these meetings can be. Sometimes it’s great, especially if the traditional team is new-media savvy. In this case, we were lucky, since most of the team was somehow personally involved in social or new media. We had a couple of bloggers, several people who listened to podcasts, and just about everyone was on Facebook or MySpace. In short, they all got it. Perfect.
We talked websites, mobile media, interactive video, downloadables, mashups, social media, user generated content. Good stuff.
That’s what made it especially strange when one of the account leaders said something to the effect of “we want a really big tactic, something that will hit a really big, broad audience.”
Huh? Weren’t we just all on the same whiteboard here with new media?
New media is all about narrow audience. The idea that you can get a big demographic on a brand message is sort of an old media concept. Essentially a hold over from traditional broadcast television and commercial spots.
Aside from major television events like the Superbowl, the Sopranos, or a major news event, even television is fragmented into much more narrower audiences. (Note: The one big exception…bad news travels fast on all mediums.)
Yes, there are still several broad-based communication platforms online, most notably portals and central news sites. Destinations. But those are hard to control and not typically easily or cheaply influenced by brand marketers. Then again, if you have a large marketing budget or a really cool brand, you can get prettymuch anywhere. For the rest of us, we have to find alternate channels.
Alternate channels basically mean verticals. And in most cases, verticals within verticals.
If you’re promoting a specific brand, you just want to talk to your target audience. (Except around the holidays, if the brand is something that can be gifted.)
Why talk to teenage boys if your product is for middle-age moms? It makes more sense to spend your dollars to hit the mom market. If you can narrow it to the income, race, regional, or other demographic, you can target your message to make it relevant to their personal experiences.
So you may be looking at women (v1), middle age (v2), moms (v3), high income (v4), living near a major city (v5)…and that’s just for one campaign. Your second campaign may change to target women of middle or low income, which will change the positioning of your value proposition.
The best part of the verticals within verticals is the way you can time and manipulate your out of pocket expenditures and messaging. There’s flexibility in all mediums from magazines to television to radio, but nothing that gives you the hypertargeting that you can get in new media.
Which brings me back to that brainstorm meeting.
After an hour of brainstorming, it was deflating to hear someone start talking about broad-based marketing on new media channels. We finally have the kind of communications structure that marketers dream about, and some of us are trying to get it to act like an old media channel.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen new media struggle in obscurity, stumble toward credibility, and now stagger to mass media acceptance. But for those of us who remember 1200 baud dial ups, this is an exciting time. The promise of new media communications has finally reached a level of maturity that allows us to truly share a brand message….one that gets people motivated to action.
The ability to create targeted, deep-vertical messages is the biggest, broadest appeal of new media marketing. Let’s use it to create messages that are relevant, motivating, and exciting to the deepest verticals that we can identify.
It’s a vertical world created by users…and perfect for marketers.
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