16 May How Does the Fourth Estate Compete with Grumpy Cat?
A recent article in the New York Times talked about a basic business practice: adapt or die. This is nothing new for business, and something that we deal with in marketing on a daily basis. The interesting part about this article was that it was discussing the business of news.
In For News Outlets Feeling the Squeeze, It’s Bend or Bust, author Jim Rutenberg talks about how traditional print news going digital, social media and changing attitudes of news consumers are changing how news is reported and presented.
Some of my journalism school cohorts are gasping. Others are not. Most of us chose this career path because we wanted to be good storytellers. There were a few that wanted to be beacons of democracy, to keep the public informed about important issues. The second we stepped into newsroom, we quickly learned that ratings, circulation and ad revenue do have an effect on what and how news gets reported.
In recent years, that pressure to deliver what the masses want instead of what they need to know is increasing. And, it plays out in a real-time popularity contest. In the article, Rutenberg says, “Through real-time analytics, reporters and editors know how many people are reading their work and through which devices and sites, how long those readers are sticking with it, and what they are ignoring.” A friend of mine who still works in a newsroom agrees. He says their web analytics lead them to move most shared articles to the top of the page, and drive what topics get the most coverage.
According to the author, all this means “big changes” are coming in the way news is presented and reported. My first thought was: welcome to the 1980s. When CNN and USA Today first hit the scene, the idea was that these news outlets would change journalism forever. In some ways they did. Faster paced, bite-sized stories included a dose of flash and a lot more fluff.
Jim VandeHei, co-founder of Politico, was interviewed for the article. He claims, “journalists are killing journalism.” By sticking to their old ways of long-winded articles that aren’t interesting, they aren’t adapting.
The goal for journalists has always been to draw a big readership and a large audience. Adapting doesn’t mean you have to become BuzzFeed or Mashable. It means journalists must change with the times and find more ways to be relevant to their audience.
As journalism continues to evolve, hopefully the same tenets the profession was founded on still apply. Hold fast to your independent voice. Tell good and important stories in a truthful, impartial and fair way. If you can do it in 140 or less, that just means you’ve mastered the art of creating crisp content.
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