What's Ahead for PR When Traditional Media is in Decline
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Staff of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle's oldest newspaper, were stunned last week to learn Hearst Corporation, the P-I's owners, planned to sell the venerable daily within 60 days or close it down. The recession has hurt the media business, but there’s more going on in the media than just a weak economy.
Brooke Gladstone, host of NPR’s On the Media, started the program last month with this introduction: “Media Land is drowning in red ink – like that’s new. NPR just let go seven percent of its workforce, canceling the programs Day to Day and News and Notes. The New York Times announced plans to borrow a quarter of a billion dollars against its building. The Tribune Company, owners of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun, declared bankruptcy. We could do this every week. All over the country, at papers large and small, budgets have been slashed, journalists have lost their jobs.”
The Oregonian recently shed close to 100 positions, including more than 40 full-time reporters and editors. It announced this month that it will now print just one edition daily and limit downstate distribution. Earlier, like many newspapers, The Oregonian announced format changes, essentially making the paper smaller. Monday’s paper was cut to three sections from four.
Eleven Medford Mail Tribune and Ashland Daily Tidings employees were laid off last May. Eugene’s Register Guard laid off 12 percent of its staff in July after what its publisher called “an unprecedented shortfall in revenue.” In December the Salem Statesman Journal announced a dozen layoffs. Vancouver’s The Columbian cut 20 percent of its staff and announced plans to move operations back to its old building after moving into a brand new building a year ago.
Lee Enterprises, which owns newspapers in Coos Bay, Albany, Corvallis and Longview, disclosed two weeks ago that it will have trouble paying its debts because of severe reductions in revenues.
In its media business forecasts for 2009, Fitch Ratings negative outlook for newspapers included this dire prediction: “Fitch believes more newspapers and newspaper groups will default, be shut down and be liquidated in 2009 and several cities could go without newspapers by 2010.”
Broadcasters are pinched, too, though election-year political advertising boosted an otherwise weak 2008. Still, KPTV recently announced 10 layoffs. KMTR in Eugene laid off six in June. Broadcasters expect more cuts in 2009.
Certainly the economy is a major reason for media business problems. Fitch Ratings forecast for 2009 that, unlike previous recessions, this downturn is putting pressure across a wider spectrum of advertising categories. “Five of the top 10 advertising categories or over 40 percent of the ad mix will be under meaningful pressure next year,” Fitch reported. “In particular, the automotive category (which can represent over 20 percent of a broadcast affiliate’s revenue) will present meaningful challenges. Fitch maintains that the auto industry is enduring structural changes that will permanently reduce local and national advertising and that the supply of available advertising units will need to contract as a result.”
The bleak economic outlook for newspapers and broadcasters masks something more basic going on. People are relying less on traditional media to package and deliver news to them. Increasingly, people are looking online for their news. They are relying less on ads to form their perspectives on products, and looking to friends and online sources to sort and select the products they buy.
And, of course, newspapers and broadcasters have moved aggressively to stake an online presence that complements their traditional media products. In announcing the P-I’s fire sale and possible closure, Hearst Corporation said the P-I may become a Web-based news outlet, with a substantially reduced staff. When the Portland Tribune cut its staff and went from twice- to once-weekly publication last year, it shifted its promotion to emphasize its online edition as an alternative daily news source for Portlanders. Today, nearly all the most visited Web sites in Oregon are linked to local media.
Given the yin yang relationship between public relations and journalism, when people use media differently, the practice of public relations evolves.
What is public relations? It’s often described as promotion or “spin.” But we agree with David Phillips who described public relations in a Journal of Communications Management article as: “Building and managing relationships with those who influence an organization’s important audiences.”
It’s a management function and, like journalism, it’s a communications discipline. Applying best practices, PR communications are based on thorough research, thoughtful planning and skillful execution – followed by hard-nosed evaluation of their effectiveness in achieving goals.
PR professionals will continue to work closely with journalists. Though there may be fewer journalists, those who remain are likely to be multi-media journalists. Today we are finding more of our outreach is aimed online – at influential bloggers, online journalists and directly to our clients’ key audiences. Tools of the new media are perfect for public relations because they facilitate genuine engagement, one to one, with those we’re trying to reach.
So-called Web 2.0 tools not only ease the challenge of building and maintaining relationships, they also provide effective tools to connect with our clients’ key customers and contacts, and provide a platform for dialogue.
A long time ago I remember my mother telling me that God gave me two ears and one mouth so I should listen twice as much as I talk. Some see PR as an amplifier to make what they have to say louder so people will hear them. That kind of PR doesn’t work very well, especially in today’s communications environment where people expect to control their conversations with companies and organizations communicating with them.
What works is active listening, using research and direct engagement, to join in a meaningful dialogue. That builds the mutually respectful relationship communicators should be seeking with their audiences.
We don’t expect newspapers or local broadcast stations will disappear anytime soon. But their world is changing. So is ours. To be credible, companies, brands, organizations – even governments – must value dialogue and engage with those they seek to influence.
That’s where public relations is headed in 2009.
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