Every week my husband scours our local town newspaper, primarily to get a sense for discussion about town initiatives that he can glean from the surprisingly active editorial page, particularly the letters to the editor. We live in a town that has the most basic system of democracy you can imagine -- we vote in town elections and then we converge on the high school gym for sometimes interminable town meetings to ratify amendments and, as needed, stand and be counted regarding key, controversial initiatives. So the letters to the editor are a key vehicle that various factions use to forward their agendas and try to sway decision-making. Our town paper does not have the staff to provide deep analysis of local issues and referenda, so those of us interested in learning more about initiatives or tapping into the tenor of the debate around key issues need to read the local paper's letters section and subscribe to various email newsletters developed by activist groups in the town. Our city newspapers -- the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald -- rarely, if ever, touch upon our town-specific issues.
I was not surprised that the most recent study from Pew Research Center's Project for Excellent in Journalism (PEJ) revealed that most people get the news about their communities from traditional media --primarily print newspapers and local TV stations -- rather than from new media channels.
"The study, which examined all the outlets that produced local news in Baltimore, Md., for one week, surveyed their output and then did a closer examination of six major narratives during the week, finds that much of the “news” people receive contains no original reporting. Fully eight out of ten stories studied simply repeated or repackaged previously published information.
And of the stories that did contain new information nearly all, 95%, came from traditional media—most of them newspapers. These stories then tended to set the narrative agenda for most other media outlets."
Much of the reporting of the specific local stories the study tracked in the various media was not original. Much of it came specifically from government agencies, including local police or government officials. [I must add an editorial comment here -- this means that those agencies' communications professionals prepared and distributed the news.] The coverage of these stories in non-traditional media such as local blogs were repackaged versions of the news that appeared first in the traditional media. Interestingly, the report noted that "Traditional media made wide use of new platforms. Newspapers, TV and radio produced nearly a third of their stories on new platforms (31%), though that number varied by sector. Almost half of the newspapers stories studied were online rather than in print." The new media channels were used to get the news out more quickly and to further disseminate it rather than to create new "news."
It's an interesting study that got me thinking about what the results would be if you took this to national stories and a national stage and evaluated where the news originated and which media were the primary research source of detail and analysis of the event or announcement. I also wondered how this would track if the study were about the news in a particular vertical or horizontal industry or market segment. I would venture a guess that the traditional media would still be the originator or first-to-print (online or hard copy) with major national news stories, often because they are given preference for news due to their reach and reputation. The new media often reference key national media reports in their analysis or packaging of particular events or announcements. This likely will vary for vertical industries which have strong traditional and developing non-traditional channels that reach their core constituencies more effectively than more general traditional media.
From an industry perspective, we certainly can speak to the shifts in the technology marketplace. There is a constant clamoring for business press coverage by all types and sizes of companies, public and private, although the bar for "business press worthiness" of announcements or events has been rising much faster each quarter than public companies' stock prices. Some of the new media channels are developing good reputations among prospective customers and therefore are filling the gap when the traditional media simply doesn't have the space or the interest to carry all of the marketplace's news.
If you really think about the evolution of media, you need to examine, as PEJ has done in this study, who the media is serving and what will happen to that constituency if the media they rely on is no longer available. Newspapers like my local town paper are serving an important function and if they disappear, non-traditional media will have to be organized and supported economically to fill the information gap. City or regional newspapers need to be carefully thinking -- or rethinking -- the important function and constituency they are serving if they are to survive. Meanwhile, the non-traditional media should be watching their progress or lack of progress to seize an opportunity to fill the information gap that will be left in their wake. And those all-important original sources of "news" -- the often maligned PR or communications professionals -- clearly will continue to serve an important role of helping provide the original content for all of these media while helping determine which channels are the best route to the ultimate stakeholder that needs to be reached.
