Posts filed under 'Mainstream Media'
By Guest Author
This is a guest post from Dan Walsh, an Account Executive at Racepoint Group. Follow him on Twitter @DanWalshed.
RaceTalk recently had an interesting conversation with a blogger for MSNBC.com about a major company’s approach to the media. Once considered one of the most innovative and well respected companies in the world, in recent years it has lost some of its luster with the media and consumers.
One of the reasons for this slip, the blogger hypothesized, was the way they reacted to critical articles and questions posed by the media:
“You know how they tell you that when your car goes into a skid you’re supposed to turn in the direction of the skid? They did the exact opposite – they yanked the wheel the other way.”
As a seasoned New England driver, his point was well taken… this is a recipe for disaster. Very few companies can get away with even temporarily stonewalling the media – let alone making it part of a long-term strategy. As counterintuitive as it may be, often the best way to deal with negative coverage is to open the lines of communication. Find new ways to bring the media in and help them see what makes your company special.
Negative reviews and critical articles are unavoidable. How you respond is completely within your control. Remember: turn in the direction of the skid.
April 6th, 2011
By Guest Author
This is a guest post from Dan Walsh, Account Executive in Racepoint Group’s Waltham office. Follow him on Twitter @DanWalshed.
Natali Morris’s announcement yesterday that she’ll be leaving CNET at the end of April was certainly surprising. Not so much because a popular reporter was leaving an influential news site but because that news site wasn’t Engadget.
In case you haven’t noticed, over the last two months the tech media landscape has seen some turnover… to quickly recap:
- February 18 – Senior Associate Editor Paul Miller leaves Engadget
- February 20 – Associate Editor Ross Miller leaves Engadget
- March 12 – Editor in Chief Joshua Topolsky leaves Engadget
- March 12 – Managing Editor Nilay Patel leaves Engadget
- March 28 – Reviews Editor Joanna Stern leaves Engadget
- March 30 – Senior Mobile Editor Chris Ziegler leaves Engadget
- March 30 – Host of CNET’s Loaded and The Early Show Tech Contributor Natali Morris leaves CNET
Perhaps even more surprising is that each of these reporters left their current gigs without a new (public) home in hand.
Personally I’d like to see them all wind up at GDGT.
For the unfamiliar, GDGT was founded by the formidable tag team of Peter Rojas and Ryan Block (of Gizmodo and Engadget fame) and is somewhere between social network and peer review platform.
It was really Natali’s departure that got me thinking about the possibility that GDGT could launch an editorial team. Currently most of the content on the news tab is linked from other sites. Imagine if they were to hire some of the recent free agents listed above. A mix of professional and crowd-sourced reviews with the sharp commentary of any of the pundits above could quickly propel GDGT into direct competition with CNET and Engadget as the premier destination for consumer tech news and reviews.
With Josh leading the direction of the editorial (without the guiding hand of AOL) and Natali taking the reigns as the producer and creator of a GDGT show, the site would develop more of a mass appeal while remaining true to its roots. In short, it would be a force to be reckoned with.
GDGT 2.0 is already in the works. So how about that new editorial team?
April 1st, 2011
By Ben Haber
Even if you aren't subscribed to the NYT, you'll be able to access their content for free through Facebook posts (like this one)
Last week the New York Times announced a new subscription model that would effectively put up a paywall for many users. Under this new system, people that aren’t subscribed to NYTimes.com are able to view 20 articles a month (that are subscriber-only) for free, before being blocked from reading certain stories. However, there’s a rather big loophole.
The New York Times has confirmed that people accessing their content through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. will be able to view subscriber-only content even if they’ve already reached their 20 article monthly limit (similar to how you can access articles in The Wall Street Journal for free through Google). With this option in place, with the Times’ subscription model work?
The New York Times has already tried subscription-based access before (New York Times Select) which brought in $10 million in revenue, but wasn’t fully adopted by readers (it had 227,000 subscribers). It has also been reported that executives at the company were split on if a subscription model was their best option, especially since the value of their digital advertisements has been growing steadily.
It’s also been thought that this new subscription was meant to motivate people to sign up for weekend print subscriptions, which would give them unlimited online access. This would boost print circulation, and in return, ad rates.
So what do you think of all this? Do you plan on subscribing to the New York Times?
March 21st, 2011
By Ben Haber
I recently wrote a guest post for Piehead on why Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad news publication, The Daily, will be a success. Below is an excerpt of the article, to read the full post click here.
This month Rupert Murdoch launched The Daily, an iPad-only news publication. It’s on sale through Apple’s iTunes store and costs just $40 a year, which breaks down to just 14 cents per day. The Daily is focused on attracting a wide array of readers, as it covers breaking news, sports, pop culture, entertainment, apps, games, technology, opinion, celebrity gossip and more. The Daily is being treated like a big deal, too. Murdoch has put together a newsroom of 100+ people, including former New York Post columnist Richard Johnson and New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones.
Murdoch’s focus on building a digital media powerhouse will pay off big. It probably won’t happen in the next year or two, but in the long run – if The Daily continues to evolve and adapt – it will have a bright future. However, as consumers continue to adopt the iPad and tablets, they will become increasingly comfortable getting their news from these new technologies. Additionally, consumers will become excited by the new format in which news is delivered, making the entire media consuming experience more interactive and visual. However, before looking ahead, it’s important to examine the evolution of written news, which can be broken down into four main stages:
1. Print: people had newspapers and magazines delivered to their homes or purchased them at a local store (remember those days?) People weren’t able to access breaking news online – the timing was forced and consumers had to wait until the news arrived to read about what had happened in the past 24 hours.
2. Online: newspapers and magazines began publishing their content online, giving readers the choice between reading content via a physical newspaper or their computer. Consumers got hooked to receiving breaking news at all times of the day.
3. Blogs: The traditional editorial process went out the window – news became more opinionated, less research-based and occurred in real-time. Video and multimedia also became central as blogs have unlimited space for content. Traditional media outlets began sourcing stories to leading blogs, as they wanted to get in on the real-time news cycle and appeal more to online consumers.
4. Devices: The next phase of written news will be focused around specific devices, such as the iPad. For consumers, this means news will be accessible anywhere at any time, due to the mobile nature of tablets.
March 8th, 2011
By Molly Galler
For the past two weeks, infamous Hollywood playboy Charlie Sheen has been dominating headlines with his, how can I put this discreetly . . . “questionable” behavior. Given the recent developments in his personal life, his professional career hangs in the balance.
Rather than make a gesture of goodwill, Sheen has taken to the airwaves first in a radio interview on the Alex Jones show, followed by a television interview with ABC’s 20/20 and an appearance on Piers Morgan’s show on CNN, pleading his case to the public.
Out of these interviews have come some incredible sound bites. In fact, an entire website (www.livethesheendream.com) was created on which you click on Charlie Sheen’s head and a new sound bite appears beneath his face with every click.
How else can a person capitalize on great sound bites? Gee, how about via a wildly popular, real-time social media platform designed for mini updates, say in . . . 140 characters?
That’s right folks, after extreme public demand, Charlie Sheen has joined Twitter to broadcast his pearls of wisdom to the entire world wide web. You can follow him @CharlieSheen. You can also join in the Sheen-related conversation by using popular related hashtags, such as #winning, #winner or #chooseyourvice.
Last night Elizabeth Holmes, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, tweeted:
As I write this post, his follower tally is currently at 760,746.
Thought Sheen has lost his role on “Two and a Half Men” and his publicist, he sure knows how to take lemons and make lemonade. In fact, he’s set up his stand on the best block in the neighborhood: Twitter.
March 2nd, 2011
By Ben Haber
The Daily is not just Rupert Murdoch’s pet project – it’s going to be taken seriously. Jesse Angelo, editor-in-chief of The Daily, made this clear when sent around the following memo to his staff this week, clearly stating his expectations for the publication. He’s not going to let The Daily become another news organization that re-publicizes the same content as everyone else. His goal is to make The Daily different and unique, not substitutable. How refreshing!
Subject: The News
Folks, Egypt is over – time for us to get focused on covering America.
We need to get out there and start finding more compelling stories from around the country – not just scraping the web and the wires, but getting out on the ground and reporting. Find me an amazing human story at a trial the rest of the media is missing. Find me a school district where the battle over reform is being fought and tell the human tales. Find a town that is going to be unincorporated because it’s broke. Find me a story of corruption and malfeasance in a state capitol that no one has found. Find me something new, different, exclusive and awesome. Find me the oldest dog in America, or the richest man in South Dakota. Force the new White House press secretary to download The Daily for the first time because everyone at the gaggle is asking about a story we broke. Get in front of a story and make it ours – force the rest of the media to follow us.
It’s good stories that will keep people coming back to The Daily – we’ve assembled a crack news team, so let’s show the world what we can do.
February 15th, 2011
By Molly Galler
This morning during my commute I was listening to @MattyShow (Kiss 108′s morning show, Matty in the Morning) and DJ Matt Siegel was asking his staff why all of these businesses are paying big bucks for Super Bowl ads and giving it all away the week before the broadcast?
Siegel makes a great point. Why are all of these corporate giants paying millions of dollars for a 30 or 60 second spot and not waiting for a big reveal during the game? Not only are they not waiting, they are actively promoting their commericals now, the week before.
This pre-game promotion was confirmed to me this morning when I saw an article in my Twitter feed from Elaine Wong at Forbes called “The Super Bowl Ads You Can’t Miss.” Really? Two full days in advance?
Stuart Elliot, the advertising critic for the New York Times also wrote a piece called “Some Super Bowl Ads Go Online Before the Game” in which he writes:
“For decades, most Super Bowl advertisers followed a simple rule: Keep commercials under wraps until the moment they go on the air. But social media like Faceboo, Twitter and YouTube have ushered in a new era, and marketers are doing what was once unthinkable. In addition to offering sneak peeks of their spots and revealing contents of the commercials, many, like the vacation rental company HomeAway, are going the full Monty and sharing the entire ads in advance.”
I was discussing this with my RaceTalk colleague, Ben Haber, who echoed Elliot’s analysis, “You aren’t paying millions for the air time during the game. You’re paying millions to drive people to your social media channels and engage with your brand.”
Personally, I have always liked the mystery of having to wait until the game to see the commercials that score these highly coveted spots. While I understand wanting to maximize the investment and heighten the curiosity, I find it disappointing that these companies aren’t honoring the sanctity of the Super Bowl element of surprise.
What do you think? If you worked for a company who paid for a Super Bowl ad would you reveal and market it before the game?
February 4th, 2011
By Ben Haber
The New York Times took a major positive step today in the integration between their print and digital properties by removing their Social Media Editor position. While this may sound backwards at first, it’s actually a sign that the NYT has adopted social media and is embracing today’s media world – just hear us out.
Over the past few years Jennifer Preston has been the NYT social media editor. In this position her most important responsibility was educating NYT reporters and editors on how they can use social media in their current roles. At this time, the NYT apparently feels it has successfully educated its employees and now wants to focus becoming one medium that combines print, digital and social. Simply put, the NYT understands that media organizations shouldn’t divide their print editions form their online, iPad and mobile subscriptions. It is all the same brand to consumers, and an aligned outlet with all of its properties functioning together successfully will be more powerful and useful for readers.
So while the NYT sees how important it is to have one overarching brand, it still needs to make sure its reporters are educated about the latest social media tools. Sure, they’re using Twitter and Facebook, but location-based social networks have exploded and it’s important that these new developments in social media and digital media won’t be overlooked. So while they don’t need a social media editor to do this, they do need social media education. But the way that the paper is approaching the collide of the print and digital world, it appears they are aware of where the media world is headed (and where it has been for a while now). We’ll take this as a positive sign.
December 13th, 2010
By Guest Author
The following excerpt is from Simon Hilliard in Racepoint’s UK office. You can follow Simon on Twitter at @simonhill.
There has a been a heck of a lot of discussion, analysis and comment since Monday when News Corporation announced official subscriber figures for the, relatively new, Times and Sunday Times websites.
A quick history: News Corps’ ever enigmatic head honcho Rupert Murdoch and associates got rather fed up with the freebie nature of providing news content online that has followed the rise of this here Internet. To deal with this, a paywall was erected around The Times and Sunday Times websites that halted Google and the like from crawling content and indexing it for any and all to find, and also required anyone wishing to view news online to pay for it – by either buying a day pass or subscribing.
Until now, the success of this has been something of a mystery for those in the media, advertising and PR lands. It was acknowledged from the off that the paywall would significantly reduce the number of visitors to the newspaper sites, but the trade off would be the quality of reader (and some cash). Since the walls went up in June we’ve waited, literally in the middle of our seats, to see what’s what. And now we know.
According to figures released by News Corp this week, the paper has “more than 105,000 customer sales to date”. That’s around 0.5 per cent of the 20 million unique monthly visits they had before the paywall. Or 0.25 per cent if you chop out all those paying for a day pass rather than a regular subscription…or 5 per cent of the 5 per cent paying vs free subscribers you generally need to make a ‘freemium’ model business work (not that they’re shooting for freemium). You know what, don’t get bogged down in the numbers.
The point is, there’s way less people clapping eyes on Times editorial than there used to be. But those that do are, one would assume, more engaged, dedicated readers. Times editor James Harding thinks so anyway, as he’s stated “We haven’t been cut off from the conversation, because the media works as a huge echo chamber and readers are commenting on our stories in a more engaging way.”
So what does this all mean for PRs? Let’s have a look:
Read the rest of Simon’s post here.
November 4th, 2010
By Guest Author
This is a guest post by Anne Potts, Senior Vice President, Racepoint Group.
The mid-term elections give us a chance to take a hard look at the health of our democracy and the direction of public discourse. The consolidation of the journalistic voice brought about by media mergers and failures under the weight of an unsustainable economic model is unacceptable. It inexorably weakens our democracy.
Leave it to Google to see the chance to make change with a $5M gift to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on “advancing journalism in the digital age.” In partnership with the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge, Google’s $5M will fund projects that meet the “challenge” by addressing the critical success factors of a new approach, like expanding access to news and generating community involvement, use of mobile technologies, helping people understand the source for the news they read, and creating new economic models to sustain a journalistic enterprise.
Bringing this much Google juice to their work will be a true accelerator and will hopefully blaze a trail for a new and powerful Fourth Estate. Focusing American innovation on our media and its critical role in our Democracy – thanks, Google and Knight. We’ll be watching for the outcomes of your efforts.
November 1st, 2010
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