Telling the audience story correctly for newspapers is critical to future success

It started with a post on Facebook from the parody newspaper The Onion.  The humor was evident in the headline, which read:  Report:  Majority of Newspapers Now Purchased by Kidnappers to Prove Date.

 It was a good natured poke by the newspaper that has made me laugh for years. And newspapers weren’t the only media targeted in the post, stating that magazines still have purpose as “kidnappers still find them useful for making cut-and-paste ransom letters and death threats.”

 A few days after seeing that on Facebook, I was riding along with a sales rep who was struggling to defend the newspaper industry’s audience decline. It didn’t take long to realize that the rep had bought into the negative headlines and didn’t have enough data to help show the power of the printed word. And that power goes well beyond just proving the date for kidnappers! I’m not ignoring some alarming trends. As an industry, we have some work ahead of us as things continue to fragment and decline. Here are some real concerns the media world is facing: 

·                  Youth are consuming less traditional media
·                  Media outlet owners are worried about the move to digital
·                  Online consumption of content has doubled since 2010

 The irony of those three headlines is that they were not for the newspaper industry. In order, those articles were from broadcast TV, cable TV and radio. The concerns we face are shared by other media platforms, but my sense is we are defeated reading our own headlines instead of trying to tell our good story and fight the good fight.

 The best digital content on the web comes from legitimate news organizations. Our newsrooms and our content is our frontline defense for the transition to digital. The online audience we have is the envy of the TV, cable and radio industries.

 During my ride along with the sales rep, we discussed readership of the print product. She commented that our numbers had dropped over the previous six months. I asked her what that number was and she was vague. She knew the distribution number and stated that as readership. But there is a big difference.

 There has been a debate on how many readers a newspaper has per copy. The pass around number has varied during my career from 1.9 readers to as high as 3.2 depending on the study you choose to use. For me, I’ve always used 2.5 readers per copy. An entry on the Media Genius Blog quotes a NAA phone survey from 2013 that put the readership at 2.48 people per copy.  There are some newspapers that are higher, and some lower but using 2.5 is still a reasonable number to quote when talking about total audience. 

The key is to put that math to work in your market. While the audience has changed and declined in print, the total print audience most newspapers delivers is still the biggest and best audience in the market. Your total audience versus the local radio station? Your total audience versus the best rated broadcast or cable channel? The newspaper audience is a slam-dunk winner nearly every time.

 Many newspapers are not telling this great story. And you know what? That story gets even better. Pew Research Center has determined that 56% of a newspaper’s audience consumes it exclusively in print. Thus the large numbers of unique visitors to your website expands your audience even more with unduplicated reach. 

Our concerns for the industry cannot be ignored, and I’m not suggesting we should. But there are still some great stories to be told in all of our markets. Better training of what our audience is locally versus our competitors is a good place to start. 

The need for a free and independent news source is greater than ever

Two days ago marked Friday the 13th. This is a fact that I didn't need to have checked. My wife, quoting a Facebook post a few days before Friday informed me it was Friday the 13th and a full moon. And I believed her! I should have checked the facts.

In fact, the next full moon is coming up this coming Saturday, May 21st. But a snazzy mime and enough social media likes and shares, and presto an error is being treated and repeated as a fact. Welcome to the new world of social media as a news source.

Clearly when the next full moon is not major error, at least in my world. But the propetuation of inaccurate information is happening more and more, and at an alarming rate through social media. People are using things like Facebook as a trusted source of information, which it is not. This unfounded trust of the Internet is causing a dumbing down of society.

I'm not talking about the breaking news posts I get every few weeks mourning the the loss of Joe Cocker. He actually died in December 2014. In the midst of the presidential election in the US currently, both sides are blurring facts and fiction courtesy of social media.

In the past few weeks, there have been reports that Facebook is purposely suppressing stories that favor the Republican Party. Mark Zuckerberg has told the media that they are investigating into those claims.   I'm not here suggesting that they did, or did not. I do believe it is very possible for an unchecked, non-journalistic outlet could start to manipulate content. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

There has been a lot written about this topic. For me, the best take I've read has come from Anurag Harsh through a blog post on LinkedIN titled "Is Facebook biased or are its users?  He writes:

"Social media already allows us to tune out everything we dislike and create an echo chamber for what we love. We don't need help entrenching ourselves in our limited world views. Selection biases abound. If Facebook wants to help create a more educated citizenry, then they shouldn't got down this road."

The best political views are the ones that are challenged by others who offer thoughtful opposing views. Hearing only what you want to hear might seem nice, but in the end will actually weaken your intellect and your political values.

Using comedy to create great advertising messages

For whatever reason, I never watched a Seinfeld episode while the classic NBC comedy was new. I'm sure I've seen every episode now, thanks to syndication and specifically cable network TBS.

Comedy in advertising is always risky, especially on a local level. National commercials have as big a production as a network sitcom, including comedy writers if you choose to go down that path. Locally, not as sophisticated and too many times epic failures.

I helped a local candy shop set up a photo shoot for a Forrest Gump parody. I was nervous about how the audience would receive it. The popularity of the movie was big at the time, and the ad actually won awards.




The Floor Trader billboard is a good comedy example. It works as a standard billboard with a simple message. But the parody is there if you know the episode from Seinfeld.

I'm not sure this parody was as strong as that Gump reference from the 1990's. But I still thought it was funny, even if Seinfeld signed off of first run in 1998. The episode in question, where George's nude photo was actually 20 years ago. And it still makes me laugh....