my 2 cents

"The Times" could use some common sense

It's very disheartening to see The New York Times Company pull the same disgusting stunt that the company's flagship paper, in its editorials and op ed columns, has criticized other companies for doing.

As revenues are declining, as the company is threatening to shut down one of New England's most important news outlets -- The Boston Globe, as staff has been cut across the board including in the newsroom, and as the company forced a mandatory 5% pay cut on its non-union employees, its President and CEO, Janet Robinson, accepted a 35% pay raise, hiking her annual salary from $4.1 million to $5.5 million.  Other top execs got similar raises, as reported by Paul Tharp in The New York Post Thursday.

Yes, Ms. Robinson has brought many innovations during her 5-year tenure at the helm of the company, and she was rewarded with the top job after a strong job running various components of the NY Times Company. 

And yes, the poor performance of The Times can't be totally laid at her feet.  Newspaper and media companies everywhere are having a horrendous time, although in some cases (possibly including The Times -- I'm not sure), those media companies are struggling even more in this downturn because they took on excessively heavy debt to finance acquisitions.

So, as Ms. Robinson gets a pay raise of $1.5 million, other jobs are being cut, unions are being asked to make concessions, and other workers have to pull in their belts because they've just been handed a 5% pay cut, regardless of whether they've been doing a good job.

Meanwhile, from The New York Times Company's own website:
Apr. 21, 2009-- The New York Times Company announced today a first-quarter 2009 operating loss of  $61.6 million compared with operating profit of $6.2 million in the first quarter of 2008.

The website also has a lengthy section called "Ethics in Journalism," which details the company's focus on journalistic integrity.  But what about "Ethics in Business"?

And what about the public relations impact of this obnoxious move?  Where were the company's p.r. execs to tell management, "Hey guys, let's rethink that raise at this point in time."  Let's face it, Ms. Robinson and others in top management can get increases in other less visible ways, with various perks.  But an out-and-out increase that could have instead kept a dozen or more people on the job or saved $1.5 million from operating expenses is just a bad p.r. move and bad from so many other angles.

I am very disappointed in The New York Times.

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Will pay-as-you-go online access keep newspapers alive?

Three high-profile media executives, headed by Steven Brill, founder of Court TV and publisher of American Lawyer magazine, are planning a fall 2009 launch of a pay-as-you-go online publication that will include content from major newspapers and magazines.

Some reports are saying it will help bring much-needed revenue to newspapers by enabling them to charge readers for content.  Brill, quoted in Advertising Age, says, We believe Americans know that advertising alone can't support quality journalism -- and the truth is that it never has."

My response: Do most Americans really care that advertising alone can't support quality journalism?   And, remember, advertising is one of three key revenue streams for papers, along with subscriptions/newsstand sales and, to some degree, online revenues.

Journalism Online, the working name of the new venture, will aggregate content from a wide range and number of publications, much of it to be offered free.  Individual papers who make content available will have the option to charge for access to certain content, using a quick and easy way for readers to get it and make payment.  Or readers can get unlimited access for a monthly subscription, which Brill's team is estimating might be about $15/month.

They're working out the details of how revenues will be split.

Some papers, notably The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, have tried a pay-as-you-go or a monthly access fee concept, with less than encouraging results. But this idea differs in that it offers, in one place, content from many sources, which is what online users are used to getting.

It's an interesting idea that, if it works, could help keep newspapers alive by giving them bigger online readership and more income from online ads as well as from subscriptions and a share of online access fees.  This can, hopefully, offset the diminishing income papers get from home delivery and newsstand sales.

Fifteen dollars a month doesn't seem like a heavy cost when you consider how much you'd pay for a monthly subscription or how much it costs if you buy the paper every day at the newsstand.  If that's how you get your news now, would you subscribe for $15 a month?  Would the idea of unlimited access to a wide range of media sources appeal to you?

PR Educators Debate Compartmentalizing Social Media

Over at PR Conversations, a blog populated largely by public relations academics, there's a discussion led by Italian p.r. pro and visiting NYU professor Toni Muzi Falconi.

Signore Falconi, with whom I've had the pleasure of a delightful chat over breakfast, raises the question of whether social media belongs as a part of the overall curriculum for public relations or as a separate discipline.  Many educators and professionals already think of it as distinct, Toni writes.  (I disagree, at least from what I see and hear among professionals.)

While he states the pros and cons of separating the disciplines, in the end he favors full integration of social media into the teaching of mainstream public relations. (I wrote last summer about p.r. pros taking the lead in integrating social media in the marketing mix.)

To me, social media, while unique from all other forms of mass media, is still media.  Like newspapers, radio, TV and static websites, social media is a venue for dissemination and sharing of information and opinion.  It's instantly interactive and accessible to all, so it's definitely different from "traditional" media.  As such, it comes with more risks and hazards for companies or organizations looking to use it.

When TV was new, public relations people had to learn to adapt in order to best utilize the new medium for clients.  When the web was new, we also had to change with the times while still, hopefully, maintaining the basic ethical and journalistic standards.

So young people studying public relations, as well as we over-20 somethings already in the field, must learn how to work with social media.  Since it is evolving so rapidly, it may be too soon to establish hard & fast rules.  But, again, the basics of ethics, journalism and common courtesy should still prevail in all we do, whether via social media or the so-called "traditional" dinosaurs.

The media relations aspect of public relations, whether it's generating product or brand exposure, explaining or supporting a position on an issue, or sharing news with constituents, customers or employees, still requires the training and discipline of strategic thinking, clear and convincing writing, and targeted and appropriate use of the media, which stems from a real understanding of the media.  It holds true if you're dealinmg with new or old media.

Young people in college now or new on the job need to be taught and trained in the basics of public relations.  Being technically savvy and knowing the shorthand of texting or Twitter does not a good p.r. person make.

Thus, I think social media should be part of p.r. education, just as p.r. itself should be included in the broader marketing curriculum in schools.

And, as I've said here many times, part of the responsibility for teaching must also fall on those of us already in the field.  It's up to us to train young colleagues and to set a good, professional example for them.

(Thanks to Judy Gombita up North in Toronto) for the tip to this online discussion.).

Once we were slaves...

Happy Passover.

Marketing in a Recession -- Don't Stop

How many times can we hear it?  Don't stop marketing in a recession.

The current issue of Advertising Age is almost entirely devoted to what it calls "recession marketing."

The message throughout is clear -- marketing is a long-term proposition that shouldn't be turned on and off like a faucet as the economy goes up or down.

Al Reis, in a guest column, says it.  Ten top marketing pros say it in a roundup story.  One of my clients, Steve Farella of independent media agency TargetCast tcm, said it back last summer, way before the bottom fell out.

Cutting advertising, public relations and other marketing outreach will save money in the short term, but it may be disastrous over the long haul.  History proves it, as research studies have shown following economic downturns and recessions.  Lose or diminish your visibility and you'll have a steeper hill to climb when you want to resume advertising and public relations.  Worse yet, while you were giving your marketing efforts a break, your competitor might have built up his profile, making it harder for you to compete.

Yes, it makes sense to look at your marketing expenses and see where you might trim or spend more wisely.  If you buy advertising, this might be the time to get good deals from media that are hungry to fill space and time.  Look at p.r., which is less costly than most advertising, as a way to keep up your profile.

Although we're in a recession, it doesn't mean business stops doing business.

Too little time, too much info

 

 

A story in this week's Advertising Age does an excellent job summarizing and explaining what newspapers are facing these days when it comes to reporting and then making money off that reporting.   Reporters Nat Ives and Michael Learmouth take a hard look at the realities of news in this internet age.  Many people simply want the headlines.  They’re not interested in all the details, certainly not to the extent of having “all the news that’s fit to print.”

 

These days, it seems, even the News McNuggets of USA Today are too much to information for many people.  They simply don't have, nor make, the time to read beyond the headline or the first aragraph. 

 

From the Ad Age story...  "There are a lot of people who never want to know more than 'Six Killed in Iraq," said Jane Seagrave, senior VP-global product development at the Associated Press, "so that the money spent to put reporters in place, to guarantee their security, in many cases to compensate their widows and orphans when they're killed in action is not offset by any actual income from the work."

 

The old model was supported by the newspaper's near-monopoly on local advertising and its ability to package all of its stories in a oprint product, whether they were wanted or not.  On the web, readers won't even pay for the content by clicking through to a free, theoretically ad-supported site.  And the slump in online display advertising isn't helping.

 

So much for newspapers monetizing their content, it would appear.

 

Ad Age continues...

Professional publishers know there';s a demand for links and headlines; that's why they often aggregate news from competitors.  And the ranks of people who want just the headklines are poised to grow in step with the web.

 

Michael Wolff, a Vanity Fair columnist, says it is changing the form of journalism itself.  "By offering more information, consumers are forced to look for abbreviations of that information, " he says in the Ad Age story.  "There's only so much time in the day.  If you're going to take in more, you're going to have to focus it more." 

 

Unless there's a way to turn the internet off, Ad Age concludes, publishers are going to have to figure out something or fail.  "The fact that Google has made a tremendous amount of money off of other people's journalism is not a bad thing for journalism," said Eric Newton, VP of the journalism program at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.  "It means journalism is wanted and needed.  It's not great news that those people whose jobs have been to monetize their own journalism, because those people have been beat out by the competition."

 

Oh, the times they are a changing.