Conversation Agent

To the Press Tribe: Your Content is a Product

Companies and businesses would do well by reading and understanding this post titled migration point for the press tribe by Jay Rosen [hat tip to Chuck Peters]. In it, Rosen describes how thanks to the rising of flourishing of people as content producers, expert sharers, and self-guided consumers, the professional news tribe finds itself in the midst of a great survival drama. He puts his finger on exactly what did not happen with the migration to the Internet.

The Web is not a way to re-purpose content from other platforms - it's a way to engage, a completely different way of understanding what people think about, what they want to say and do. One that moves to exponential results when the context is built with the community that wants to participate in mind.

It did not happen for mainstream media in exactly the same way as it's not happening for companies. Products and services are shared territory - experts and veterans can and must exercise their editorial voice. On the other hand, the grassroots peer groups who are good at participation, community formation, and locating intelligence anywhere in the network can contribute those strengths to the system.

The shared part is also where the customers' use makes the product either a success or an utter failure.

It's not a matter of having one system without the other - at this stage, it's necessary to have both. Strong and inspiring leaders and thriving communities - of employees, of customers. The balance in the conversation between them shall be reflected on the balance sheet. 

News was one-way traffic just like communications and information flows in organizations were only top-down. Business managers created it, compartmentalized it, had it aggregated, published and broadcast. Yes, water cooler conversations among employees have been going on for a while. Does this remind you of the carefully scripted brochures and marketing materials for customers?

Except for now we have better tools and knowledge to be distributors *and* creators. Imagine the power of having actual distribution and communication tools that allow those same people who used to be just on the receiving end to produce their own information and disseminate it through their informal networks. Peer networks tend to be stronger because dissent and questioning are (better) welcomed within a horizontal or open structure.  

In talking about why media gets community wrong, Adam Tinworth wrote - "Most media people don't realize that blogging is a community strategy. They think of it as a publishing process... They certainly don't think of it as a conversation."

If you have seen me draw those pyramids on white boards or notepads, you will recognize one of my biggest pet peeves about companies and their processes - they forget the people part. Companies are process-focused and not people-focused; traditional media is content-focused and not people-focused. Your content is a product. The true integration is between people - journalists and readers who are also publishers; in business overall it's all employees with customers.

Pat Sullivan, the creator of ACT! and SalesLogix said "last time I checked, there were no buyers at our corporate offices... so maybe we should figure out how to spend more time in the field with them, learning about what they need than we do here with us guessing!"

Community is an approach to better product and services. Tinworth concludes: "holding community apart from professional content only harms the professional content creators. It bars them from seeing and exploring the reaction from their customers to their work. It stops them developing relationships - friendships even - with those they ultimately work for."

A lesson for business if I ever so one so clear. Now can we stop talking about the tools and start thinking of community as a strategy?

Bonus link: the state of the news media 2008 - an annual report on American journalism.

[top online news sites ComScore, unique visitors]

PR 2.0 is Free

It really isn't, but it is freely distributed. That is the benefit of it when intended as communications to all stakeholders. Good PR comes at a cost - research, the experience of knowing what's important, the relationships we build to offer content that people want to make part of their lives. New media helps do the rest - it helps reinforce the publics' decision to pay attention to you and your business.

Will public relations continue to become more high profile in the year to come?

In its most basic definition, public relations is about helping organizations and individuals communicate with the people who are interested in them. Is this the new audience? It makes me uncomfortable to assume that audience means the people I want to talk with, unless I have done my part in attracting them by providing value and showing integrity of purpose.

The role of connectors used to be played chiefly by mainstream media journalists and editors. The reality today is that we have nearly enough time to execute our work. We find time and attention to read trusted sources - the new connectors - which are more and more fragmented. I think new media have changed the way we consume information - they are not just a new mode of transportation, so to speak.

Scoble and Israel wrote about three phases of the Web:

1. The age of Surf (e.g. Yahoo web directory)
2. The age of Search (e.g. Google)
3. The age of Syndication (e.g. RSS, Internet Explorer 7)

We are moving into the stage where syndication and aggregation are taking new forms. FriendFeed, for example, is being used as both, plus as a micro blogging tool. What we consume is still directly related to what we care about and value, but today we are less uniform mass, more individuals with preferred listening channels.

Yet, I do not think this conversation is about technology at all. Not for the recipients on this end of the conversation, not in the least. However, I still think that PR practitioners have a little way to go on making their end of the attention/time commitment work for them and their customers.

From where I sit, many still do not know how to use email effectively - never mind FriendFeed, or Twitter. How can the pitch become more an invitation for a deeper conversation instead of a shotgun approach? Could PR professionals begin to leverage technology to their advantage? For example by building efficient data bases and mining them efficiently?

Today's press coverage may be more about Google search ranking than media placements; success comes when we discuss issues and trends more than product placements. It was never about the analysis of press clippings; good public relations has always been about attitudinal research.

More conversation, less persuasion. PR 2.0 may move freely through media, it most certainly requires thoughtful preparation and consideration for it to be a benefit to both its creators and its intended recipients. Agree/disagree? What am I missing?

The Break up: PR and Media on News Embargoes

A news embargo is a request by a source that the information or news provided by that source not be published until a certain date or certain conditions have been met.

If the embargo is broken by reporting before then, the source retaliates by restricting access to further information to that journalist and publication, putting them at a disadvantage compared to other outlets.

Brian Solis has a very detailed post about the recent announcement by TechCrunch that it will no longer honor embargoes. In it, he states:

The problems are two-fold:

a) Unethical or opportunistic bloggers or reporters looking for an edge will break a story ahead of the agreed-upon embargo, even if only by one minute, in order to appear as if they got the scoop.

b) PR, continuing to use a broadcast methodology to pitch and place news, freely and foolishly wield embargoes as if they're simply "scheduled" times for a press release to cross a wire.

We talked about the importance of trust one short week ago. I would rather forgo links and the popularity contest to be deserving of your trust. That is my position.

Media on the Right

It would actually be nice if media got in touch with its feminine side.

Since I started publishing here, I have had the opportunity to honor a couple of news embargoes. I knew I could not possibly be the only site that would publish the news and respected the reasons why. In each case, I was given the opportunity to ask additional questions ahead of time, which allowed me to publish from a different point of view or angle. My consideration in formulating the questions is whether the information would be useful to my readers.

So here's a big tip to all those who send me press releases by email - your pitches are by and large not targeted to my audience. Sorry, but saying that what you've got would benefit my readers and then not backing up that statement with facts really does make you look unprofessional. And please do not tell me you're a long time reader of my blog or I will be tempted to test you and unmask you publicly.

If you want me to agree to holding a briefing with someone (maybe a CEO) without having background information in advance, you are dreaming. This is pure passion here at this blog. Nobody pays me to write and I invest that extra time I don't really have to provide value (readers will be judge of that).

Got it?

To go back to the announcement by Arrington at TechCrunch, he is saying that "The PR firm gets upset but they don’t stop working with the offending publication or writer." Well, that takes the wind out of the accountability sails, doesn't it? Then he continues by saying that "We will honor embargoes from trusted companies and PR firms who give us the news exclusively."

I think exclusivity is not the point anymore. I think the point is reaching specific readers and listeners in specific ways. There is a time for every purpose in new media, including balancing immediacy with relevance, and a respectable PR strategist would know that.

PR on the Left

As in what's left to say that is news these days? For good public relations professionals plenty. To me it's an issue of quality over quantity. In case you are wondering, this will be the theme for the week at Conversation Agent.

In my day job part of my work is public relations and part of that is media relations. I am part of the source. My philosophy on embargoes is handle with care - make sure that they are truly valuable to the readers/listeners/customers of the journalist or reporter with whom we have built a relationship.

However, Steve Rubel wrote about it this summer, many who report the news like to uncover their stories unaided these days. That is the same expression we use in brand studies. Unaided awareness is your best form of recognition in the marketplace. It's pull in its purest form. Relationships matter again. This is not a trend, we're just remembering what we've always known.

The press release or announcement is the tip of the iceberg. It is merely the calling card to begin a conversation. Something new, hopefully. Something interesting - a story that has not been told.

Doug Firebough wrote about the 7 psychological A's of social media in a recent post - acknowledgment, attention,  being approved of, being appreciated, being acclaimed, feeling assured and being a part of. There are many lessons in there for PR professionals. I suspect that many of the pros are that way because they handle the conversation in such manner.

What is left for PR professionals is their willingness and passion to lead. There is not shortage of opportunities to do so with new media.

When you come to a fork in the road, take it

We really don't have to pick a side.

Louis Gray says that the best solution for embargo angst is to write something else. I couldn't agree more. As well, Ruth Seeley points us to Todd Sieling's slow blog manifesto. In her comment to Brian's post, she writes "personally, as a consumer, the allegiances I feel are to those outlets that can consistently be trusted to answer all the questions I have and provide background and perspective."

We can all look and feel smarter when we take the time to be thoughtful.

On the long tail of Chris Anderson's known piece on blocking PR people, Gina Trapani has put together a wiki of PR companies that spam bloggers. I think the important part, the one that the term embargo does not cover but implies, is one of personal ethics and standards. It is from that place that, with respect and professionalism, we can begin to have a true conversation about the future of PR and media.

They are two sides of the same coin.

Are You Preparing for the Future?

Steve Rubel points out an article by Mike Elgan on how media companies have only themselves to blame. I found this statement in Mike's article to be especially relevant to the current business discussion:

Newspapers hawked their future in order to invest in the past. Those acquisitions were all about buying up antiquated companies who viewed their industry as a machine that converted trees into money, rather than as creator of content.

Every company that has been in business for a while is being dragged kicking and screaming into this new digital age. Digital is a new way of thinking about business, not just a delivery mechanism.

This is not a conversation about content, although your content matters. Nor it is about digitalization of business, you may be in an industry that does not lend itself to being digital - I cannot think of digital food, for example, or homes.

It's about the future, your future, which you may have seen coming for several years now without doing much to prepare for it. Newspapers thought they were in the print business, they focused on the medium business when they are in fact in the content business. Content is portable and relevant now more than ever.

Managing Risk is to Relationship Building

When I was in risk management consulting we stated that our product was a relationship - that was the focus of our business, and we did a number of things to honor that. Many of those things involved risk mapping, captive insurance management, reinsurance treaties, and they involved introductions to other companies that were a better fit for what clients were looking for.

The tools at our disposal were many, the model was to respect and grow relationships. That was one of the winning propositions (we've been talking about value propositions lately) that allowed us to peer around corners and win clients over the Goliaths of the day. Our model was portable and scalable and adaptable to newer media and tools.

Like Context is to Telecom Companies

Take telecoms as another example. If they think they are in the phone service and connectivity business, building and maintaining pipes and networks, they have lost to many free or near free tools like Skype, for example. So if they do not wish to be a commodity, these companies need to realize that they are in the context building business.

The iPhone was the true eye-opener in that respect. Not just a smart phone, but a delivery mechanism that created context for content, communications, services and yes, commercial transactions (iTunes) to be performed.

Preparing for the Future

Print media is learning this lesson the hard way - enormous losses, layoffs, and bankruptcy filings.

The financial industry is learning its lesson as well from the laws of probability - according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, small probability events carry large impacts, and (at the same time) these small probability events are more difficult to compute from past data itself [...] past Black Swans do not predict future Black Swans in socio-economic life.

We may not be able to predict the future. Yet, we need to prepare for it. Preparation starts with a solid grounding in the understanding of what business we're really in.

What does this mean to you?

1. Peel back the medium and figure out the "what" you deliver and where the digital opportunity for that resides. Then figure out how to make the what an experience that nobody else provides.
2. Be ready to challenge your assumptions when it comes to inferring the future from the past. The laws of probability are in favor of taking the leap onto a new model when extrapolating from current observable trends.

Preparing for the future needs to take into consideration how your products and services are being used by your customers and what that means for your business model. What business are you in?

Citizens Reporting News

It was September 11, 2001, I was sitting at my computer in the office when someone said there was a freak accident in New York. We logged online to see the second plane hit the tower in the World Trade Center. Smoke and debris against a clean blue sky. Surely, we were not seeing what was happening. We had people on the ground that day. We lost contact with some staff for one whole day. Later, their reports were horrifying in their concreteness.

We were not removed from the scene anymore. We could see a sea of shoes at the foot of the towers. I could imagine the silliness of wanting to stay in control by going back inside the towers to get some work done for a client. Those who did, were lost forever. We could not get our arms around the scope of what was happening, but because we knew where to go to talk with each other, we could do something immediately.

At the time we had a very active network as part of Fast Company, Company of Friends. When all planes were grounded, people were left stranded in foreign cities for days. We got online and on the listserv started offering help, telling the stories of people who had driven to their local airport to offer support, a place to go. Clothing and food collections were started. In a manner of hours, from sharing and learning what others were doing, people self-organized. Everyone was reporting what they were seeing and doing. 

Our network was global, we were able to communicate with coordinators and groups across time zones and distance. I remember when bombings took place in Istanbul and I immediately checked with our community correspondent who was living there. We had access - and, most importantly, we had the connections, the network to support each other. That was probably the first time I felt my contribution was important to hold the connections together, to make things happen on a larger scale than self.

Citizens were the eyes and ears for the London underground bombings. We discussed how the crisis developed and how normal people were a vital part of the reporting - using their camera phones to shoot footage from the places near the blasts - at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) event in Vancouver, Canada. The head of public affairs for the London Underground at the time offered the inside story.

What they learned was that their own staff was battling on two fronts - personal and professional.

It happened again recently with the attacks in Mumbai. The victims are no longer just names, but members of a community. Within minutes of the events unfolding, bloggers and citizens with access to technology and learning from the earthquake and Tsunami of 2004, mobilized. Emily Gertz reports on the efforts and the great strides made by the community. Many known names from my own network are active in the direct reporting - Dina Mehta,Gaurav Mishra, Rohit Bhargava among them.

Some mentioned that their first knowledge of the attacks came not from TV, but from Global Voices online, then they followed the events via Twitter updates. The South Asian Journalists Association is hosting live discussions with journalists and experts (hat tip Amy Gahran), Sonia Faleiro gives a first hand account (hat tip Gavin Heaton). I could go on. Can you see the connections? 

I was watching the video recording of a recent talk by Robin Hamman, formerly of the BBC and now with consultancy Headshift, about how mainstream media can leverage the content produced by citizens in their reporting just a couple of days ago. Citizens are not watching paralyzed anymore - they are actively engaged in making things happen.

Although there have been discussions of rumors being passed on as news, and confusion on the ground as a result of citizens inexperienced in news reporting being involved, the images and reports spread from the scene made an impression.

When I posed the question on FriendFeed to my Italian network, one of the responses captured the sentiment of many "Terribili, dirette, vere. La maggior parte degli italiani non e' abituata a ricevere le informazioni in questa maniera, ci sono troppi filtri,"  wrote Gareth. Terrifying, direct, real. Italians are not used to this kind of information delivery, there are too many filters - there still are.

We all fight our individual battles - at work, with the economy, helping our families through an illness, etc. By virtue of knowing each other online, of developing relationships that span the globe, we are also one big community - reporting the news to each other, but also spreading useful information on how to get help through our networks.

We have a constant desire to stay connected. We are learning about the tremendous responsibility that sharing information and accounts entails. The reality is that we are already all connected in one very important way - our humanity. When one of us loses, we all lose. We report the news and we *are* the news. We're experiencing how things are interconnected with the financial crisis, we experience it more and more as what happens around the world affects what we are in our own backyard.

How can we continue to translate access into support? Turning seeing and reporting what is happening to taking positive steps to help each other through it?

[screenshots from Mahalo page tagged Mumbai Terrorist Attacks and from Twitter traffic]

NPR Reinvents Community Experience Through New Media

"We're going to get our stories and our storytelling and our journalism out to people wherever they are and in whatever form they want to experience it." [Ellen Weiss, VP for News, NPR]

In order to do that, it needs not only to learn how to think differently about the assignment, it also needs to become comfortable with those who do think bigger.

As I was reading this story by Jennifer Dorroh on the Transformation of NPR, I could not help but draw parallels between what NPR is facing and what every organizations is trying to keep at bay - change in the way customers use your products (who, how, where, when, and why). Information is a product - what you sell and what you get as a result of the relationship.

Who is Listening?

Becomes who is watching online. The story wants to pop out of audio into visuals, narrated slides, images that are connected with the sentiments of the community where the story came to life. NPR piloted its "Tell me More" show online in 2006 before offering it to member stations and today the organization is experimenting with communities.

Radio listeners are not a public in the strict sense of the word, they are single people, each listening alone. I am reprising a conversation we had here two years ago almost to the day. Because of the intimacy that can be achieved in the individual nature of single listeners, radio has the potential to function as aggregator of those voices, and to talk with listeners and build a sense of relationship.

If you take that out of the radio metaphor and think about your business, who is listening is the first question you are asking yourself. Who is your audience and who is listening from your organization?

How Are You Engaging in the Conversation?

Then it's about how you are building those relationships. In many organizations this requires a culture shift - from leading and producing to collaborating. NPR is putting its money where its mouth is. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation earmarked 1.5M to train the editorial staff in digital storytelling skills. 

If you're familiar with Car Talk, you will know that those guys are very competent and a lot of fun - on the air and online. Radio already has all the ingredients it needs to move into new media successfully - the community being the most notable.

You're probably not running a radio station. Chances are you could be borrowing many of the formats that were invented with radio for your own digital storytelling. Part of that is how people can find the information they seek on your site.

Are You Where Your Customers Are?

"What we really want to do first is to build a culture that is respectful of the modern news consumer, knowing that the modern news consumer wants news on demand, wants it to be timely, wants it to be authentic and wants it to be noncommercial from us," says Dick Meyer, NPR Digital Media's editorial director.

Are you putting this same kind of thinking into where you are available for customers?

Is When 24/7/365?

The expectation that a business would support and participate in the conversation non stop is very high. However, customers will engage with you whenever it is convenient to them. The difficulty is that this means something different for each individual.

This fragmentation impacts who your customers are, where they choose to engage with you, as well as when they decide to do so. However, you do not need to be in all conversations - that's why it's useful to provide a place where your customers can talk with each other at any time.

And why having a robust online presence makes sense for a radio network - it can take the conversation well beyond the fixed programming.

Why?

Why would people create yet another profile for the community on your site? I understand the reasoning behind providing the option for engaged listeners and fans to create a personal profile on your multimedia site. That action alone may make the site stickier. Many may be joining an online community for the first time. 

The why of a new media strategy for NPR means learning to think differently about their product - how people consume it, who is engaged, where do they find it easier to connect, and when. It also means figuring out new ways of telling stories and going from broadcasting to creating bidirectional multimedia touch points.

On the radio, it is still possible to find words offered to the listener with tact. The addition of a multimedia experience creates a community from individuals - the radio is literally the host, the rest can be a collaboration with the publics. Listening then comes full circle back to the very creators of the first experience.

"We're going to get our stories and our storytelling and our journalism out to people wherever they are and in whatever form they want to experience it." [Ellen Weiss, VP for News, NPR]

What's your take? Is this a sustainable model? Do you listen to NPR? I confess that my media consumption is mostly online, so I'm thrilled that they are working on making their Web site more user friendly.

Cartoons as New Media Renaissance

Cartoons reflect back to us our societal costumes. They allow us to express our sense of humor and irreverent nature. We grew up watching and reading cartoons, and now the cartoons themselves are all grown up business. Iron Man, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Hulk, X-Men, Cat Woman, the Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, etc. I might be one day or two too late after Halloween with this post.

[this is me, supposedly, in Manga. Face your Manga here.]

Japan just appointed the first cartoon ambassador. Japanese “manga” comics are all the rage - see Dan Pink's new book - as are "anime", another very popular form of cartoons in quasi animated style. Maki, who blogs at Dosh Dosh, lists anime as an interest. My first publication in my pre-school years consisted of stories narrated visually through cartoons. I used stamps for the images.

I was thinking that from Dr. Seuss to Topolino (Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse genius in Italian) and Speedy Gonzales (the fastest mouse in Mexico), cartoons have been entertaining us and teaching us through stories for decades. 

The word cartoon originally meant portrait. A cartoon is a drawing in which features of the subject are exaggerated and stylized, usually in a humorous way. An animated movie, composed of many drawings, is also sometimes called a cartoon.

We are visual creatures and cartoons capture concepts that would take many a sentence to convey. They are also part of the fabric of society. My favorite Italian cartoon was Eva Kant, fictional companion of Diabolik and a master of disguises. 

Cartoons can express in a few strokes what takes us many sentences to express in symbols - from the adventures and heroes of the Marvel empire, to the dry representation of Cox & Forkum editorial cartoons and those of the New York Times, the narrative of Calvin and Hobbes, to Charles M. Schulz creation - Charlie Brown and Peanuts, Tom & Jerry, and the all to real Dilbert stories. I'm sure you have more.

Tom Fishburne of Brand Camp just published a collection of cheeky marketing cartoons and Hugh MacLeod, the creative marketing strategist who draws cartoons on the back of business cards, is trying his hand at lithographs and publishing his first book on how to be creative. I think I gave you enough material to consider the following questions:

• What do modern cartoons say about us? Think pop culture.
• Why are cartoons like brands? Think metaphors.
• Can modern cartoons help us think a little harder? Think issues.
• Are cartoons social objects? Think container of message underlying a cause.

Cartoons in new media today may well come from those drawings on the back of napkins - those attempts at describing and sharing what we're trying to do and where we're going from here.

Media Models and the End of Broadcast Spend

In a comment to my last post, Barry Martin of communications design company Hypenotic, outlined a couple of issues that publications like AdAge are facing as members of the advertising establishment. In Barry's words:

1. You just gave strategic advice away for free.

2. You're basically suggesting they join the conversation, and thereby become part of what's going on. That's not their model, and the establishment doesn't want to admit the old model is crumbling until they have a clear strategy to monetize the next one.

3. One also gets the sense from your comprehensive post that anyone and everyone can do this new stuff. Where's the caché in that?

Agencies have believed themselves the keepers of the strategic communications grail since the beginning of advertising. Media companies their meal ticket. And big business has been locked into a large broadcast spending dance with them that all three have grown comfortable with.

Corollaries like AdAge are hanging on like a parasite with a demented host.

Though for a series of reasons push marketing is working less and less, it's hard for an industry that has consolidated to a few colossal dinosaurs to suddenly shift to a value model. 

By value model I mean that social media enables modern marketing in 2 ways that offer value to consumers:

1. People will only share/evangelize/discuss/etc actually useful products/services -- so agencies will be in the uncomfortable position of having to tell their clients when their products suck.

When your bread and butter clients are multi-nationals who sell over-packaged, low nutrition non-essentials shipped all over the world, you're talking about getting some of the biggest companies in the world to change how they do business.

2. The second way to offer value is to engage us. 

Good agencies have always know there are two ways to sell parity products–negative tactics like irritating repetition or fear, and entertaining us. The former is working less than ever because there's no way to keep up with our media consumption patterns or the proliferation of credible media options.

Barry's company uses an experience design approach. To me social media allows companies to design conversations that could pave the path to engagement with customers and partners. But before they can do that, they might have to redesign their business - create products and services that are worth talking about in the first place. This is valid for media companies as well.

New media potentially enables companies to reach the right people in ways that traditional media could not offer. I can hear Steve Rubel scold me here about making this difference between new and traditional. I'm talking about media models, bear with me.

What happens to media companies in the modern marketing scenario Barry outlines? What happens when syndicated programming wins the favor of consumers over broadcast models? This is valid for TV as it is for online publications.

Consumer preferences on pay-per-view programming and TiVO have affected TV spend - the justification is less strong. The trend towards local and cable is already there. With online ad spend gaining in marketing budgets to $24.9 billion in 2008, a figure revised down by one billion after the grim economic news, there's opportunity to spread ad buys over more sites and media. 

Is this the end of broadcast spends in favor of niche spends? What do you think?

Can Public Relations Save the News (New) Media?

I know, this is quite a concept. Yet, if public relations professionals inside organizations and in a consulting capacity can specialize in some core competencies, everyone wins.

Why? Because when a connected company, as Kami Huyse writes, is

(1) in the loop - it listens and responds;

(2) nimble - and understands the value of incremental releases;

(3) responsive - as in accelerating solutions for customers;

(4) organized - as in aligned internally, in rhythm with the marketplace externally;

(5) accountable;

then what the public relations function is doing is valuable to the news new media.

Sure, there are many media outlets who are on Twitter (hat tip to Laura Fitton) and journalists (on Twitter) who are involved in social media and blogs today. They can be on top of a story and research it personally in the stream. However, they may learn only about part of the story in the stream. If the company or topic they are covering is not represented there, they might be missing some critical information. To me journalism - and editorial imprint - remain some of the highest qualities that tell a "must read" publication apart.

Most of the new media versions of the publications we know and have read at some point or another in print, have blogs authored by journalists today. However, as new media properties shift their measurement and profitability to single RSS feeds, how is each niche going to find enough material to fill its stream with news-worthy stories that are not already circulating online?

Many organizations are still very good about holding the news until it's time to share it. There might be already a customers for that product, a success story for that service, an implementation that nobody knows about. Once you pull the trigger on your story, another publication may follow up with the in depth coverage you missed. All because they have a personal relationship with the PR team.

The point is that if the PR team is doing its job, the information is rich with detail, it is already formatted so it can be shared in microformats (such as the sound bytes of summaries and Twitter streams) and is augmented by rich analysis, images, quotes, and more. For time and resource-starved publications this is manna.

I think this would work only in the presence of the requirements above. It's a three-way conversation - it needs to remain meaningful not only for the two parties involved directly (media and PR), it also means to serve the public it was meant for all along. Can public relations save new media? What do you think?

Two Secrets to Good Writing

There are so many ways journalism could go today. New media is opening up many more opportunities.

We continue to need great editors. In a world where content is front and center and information is pouring in from every which way, it will become more apparent that editors are in charge of the meta conversation.

Will news organizations behave that way? It's a choice. There is at least one news organization that does. In an exchange with Andreas Kluth, the correspondent from The Economist who graciously agreed to have a conversation about new media here, he pointed me to this post in his new blog. In it, he details the first secret about good writing. Quoting from Clive Crook, who blogs for the Financial Times:

[...] In my experience, the editorial side of the enterprise spends little time worrying about what readers might want. In this insecure age, the larger part of the media industry thinks about little else but what readers, viewers, and advertisers might want—the better to serve them, or condescend to them, or pander. The Economist has always been much more interested in the world, and in what it thinks about the world, than in the tastes of its readers or anybody else.

[...] I suspect that if The Economist ever starts to worry very much about the new readers it would like to reach, in print and on the Internet, and to think about how it should tailor its content more deliberately with them in mind, then that will be the moment when its business starts to conform to industry averages.

"Don’t second-guess what others want, for that is the way to inauthenticity," writes Kluth. That seems to be something to remember with all writing, isn't it? When people read your material, they are looking to be transported into a story. Whether that be about current affairs, Hannibal (the subject of Kluth's book), a brand, a company, or a person.

Time and circumstance create a story. When individuals tell stories, they narrate a succession of events from their point of view - that is where the authenticity resides. Wasn't new media supposed to be about liberating the inner storyteller? Haven't we made strides into acknowledging that the point of view in journalism not only exists, but is needed and welcomed?

Before you throw your arms up in protest, the second post on the topic by Kluth comes full circle, completes the definition of what good writing is about. It's about empathy. "Empathy, properly used, means the ability to imagine what somebody else is feeling or thinking." A good writer puts himself in the readers' shoes. She imagines what the reader understands of the writing.

In this age of mobile communications the words themselves seem to be in transit - abbreviations, and harried sms are normal. Alas what happens when the meaning escapes?

The words you choose still matter a great deal. They harness the imagination, unleash emotion, and bring you down to earth ready for action. As Kluth explains, writers need to be mindful of an important question: "If I want to say this, what would somebody need to know first in order to understand it?"

If I begin a blog post with a quote or in mid-thought, what do I need to introduce shortly after my lead to help the reader navigate my meaning? Some of my favorite writers excel at this, and do so consistently. My most proud moment on words that matter was the post Upon Trajan's Column.

Clearly we all do have a style and a point of view. Yet the balance comes in when we empathize with our audience and open the door wide to the conversation with them. It's the difference between what readers want, concludes Kluth, and what readers might need. 

Think about who your favorite journalists are, and you'll probably find that they know about the two secrets to good writing. 

[image from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 2002]