Newspapers: not dead yet

Two developments which show that newspapers might still have life in them:

The Chicago Tribune is hosting a local site for bloggers called Chicago Now. Why don’t more newspapers do this? Local content has always been one of the leading reasons to read a newspaper – why wouldn’t they leverage that credibility to corner the online market for local news and commentary? (Via Poynter)

The New York Times looks at the London Daily Telegraph’s scoops that generated the British Parliament’s “expenses scandal” and concludes that this has brought a spotlight to a new approach at the UK’s leading newspaper: focusing on news and fresh content.

One of the most interesting aspects of the scandal is the revelation that old-fashioned scoops can still sell papers. Many publishers have assumed that in the Internet era, “exclusives” stay that way for about three seconds, so they are not worth pursuing. Instead, they have shifted the emphasis of their papers toward analysis or opinion.

The Daily Telegraph’s approach also is a reminder that there is an old marketing adage that still applies to newspapers: be different than your competitors. (By the way, one of my favorite headlines from the expenses scandal: “MP claimed interest on mortgage paid from Swiss bank account.”

Speaking of speeches

Some new links on speeches, the art of speechmaking, and the impact of new technology on presentations:

• Scott Feschuk dissects a Stephen Harper speech which, he says “deserves to go down as one of the monumentally inept addresses in Canadian political history”. (Macleans)
• On a lighter note, Scott Berkun draws attention to a web site dedicated to the “Top 100 Speeches of All Time“. He points to Malcolm X as the best speaker of the bunch.  I have always had a soft spot for Ronald Reagan – see him as the voice of middle-class Americans here, the voice of national mourning here (with Peggy Noonan’s famous closing words), and as the voice of freedom here.
• Think your speech will be the same when people are commenting on it through Twitter while you are speaking? Twitter is now being used to comment on presentations as they are presented.

The truth according to YouTube

One of the wonderful benefits of  YouTube is that elected officials and pundits alike can be held to account for their previous comments. Rarely do you see a better demonstration than this video: a YouTube video featuring financial commentator Peter Schiff’s warnings about the impending economic crisis with fellow pundits ridiculing him (found via Paul Kedrosky’s blog Infectious Greed).

Wrapping up the 2008 campaign

Here are some of the best post-election wrap-ups and analysis from a communications point-of-view.

• Secrets of the 2008 Campaign (Newsweek)
• How Obama won (The New Yorker)
• The day John McCain lost the election (Slate)
• Near-flawless run is credited in victory (New York Times)
• Obama’s savvy comms propel him to victory (PR Week)
• Why McCain Lost (Advertising Age)

Mistakes and media coverage

Slate Magazine digs up a 1988 New York Times article where Roger Ailes explains why presidential campaigns use the media strategies they do:

‘There are three things that get covered,” said Ailes, then directing George H.W. Bush’s media campaign, ”[V]isuals, attacks, and mistakes.” A successful campaign, he continued, avoided mistakes and gave the TV networks “as many attacks and visuals” as they could.

So why the focus on mistakes? According to Jack Shafer,

The networks overdo mistake coverage because 1) it’s easy, 2) the other networks are doing it, 3) the opposing campaigns are goading them on, and 4) it creates space for yet another easy story when the candidate who has gaffed can point to a gaffe by his opponent.

And as James Fallows points out in his blog today, it’s incredibly difficult to avoid mistakes during exhausting high-pressure political campaigns:

The candidates have to answer questions and offer views roughly 18 hours a day, and any misstatement on any topic can get them in trouble. Why do candidates so often stick to a stump speech that they repeat event after event and day after day? Because they’ve worked out the exact way to put their positions on endless thorny issues — Iraq, abortion, the Middle East, you name it — and they know that creative variation mainly opens new complications.

If someone is campaigning for the presidency or vice presidency, there’s an extra twist. That person has to have a line of argument to offer on any conceivable issue. Quick, without pausing in the next ninety seconds, tell me what you think about: the balance of relations between Taiwan and mainland China, and exactly what signals we’re sending to Hamas, and what we think about Russia’s role in the G-8 and potentially in NATO, and where North Korea stands on its nuclear pledges — plus Iran while we’re at it, plus the EU after the Irish vote, plus cap-and-trade as applied to India and China, and what’s the right future for South Ossetia; and let’s not even start on domestic issues.

The point about every one of those issues is that there is a certain phrase or formulation that might seem perfectly innocent to a normal person but that can cause a big uproar. Without going into the details, there is all the difference in the world between saying “Taiwan and mainland China” versus “Taiwan and China.” The first is policy as normal; the second — from an important US official — would light up the hotline between DC and Beijing.

Google Reader keeps getting better

Check out Power Readers in Politics.

Print (and radio) continue the long fade

According to a Pew Research Centre study, print and radio continue to fade as a news source for people while online sources grow and television maintains its dominance. The study identifies a group it calls “Integrators” as a growing segment of media consumers who:

“…get the news from both traditional sources and the internet, are a more engaged, sophisticated and demographically sought-after audience segment than those who mostly rely on traditional news sources.

See the study here.

News sources evolving?

Reuters reports that an online poll sponsored by We Media/Zogby Interactive has 64 percent of Americans dissatisfied with the quality of journalism in their communities. Nearly half of the respondents said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, up from 40 percent just a year ago. Here’s the twist:

Howard Finberg, of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, said the public often doesn’t understand that the sources they are accessing online such as Google News and Yahoo News pull stories from newspapers, television, wire services and other media sources. “It’s delivered in a non-traditional form, that doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t traditional journalism underneath it,” he explained.

Meanwhile, Edelman Public Relations has published its 2008 “Trust Barometer” (this link goes to a PDF) which reports survey results indicate that blogs, video sites like You Tube and social media like Facebook as the least used and least credible sources for information about businesses. So what do people find credible on the Internet: increasingly, it’s Wikipedia.

The Power of the Checklist

This article in The New Yorker has absolutely nothing that is obviously about communications, but it is one of the most fascinating pieces I have read in a long time. In a way, it is about communications though: the power of simple, straightforward – even obvious – communication.

“In the Keystone Initiative’s first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated hundred and seventy-five million dollars in costs and more than fifteen hundred lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years—all because of a stupid little checklist.”

Click here for the whole article by Atul Gawande.

Facebook in life

A friend of mine just posted she was single on Facebook. Why I wondered (out loud, or as out loud as sending her a message on Facebook can be). She said it was an official announcement — sort of letting the world know hew new available status.

I think this is the communications genius of Facebook — it’s a vehicle for announcements to your key audience. I am shocked to say I have gotten bigger news than someone has kicked their most recent dating partner to the curb. Babies (oh yes congrats to JK2), engagements, separations, new jobs. Oh and it is the way to offer birthday greetings in the modern world.

The next question is — how do we harness this for targeted campaigns?