As newsrooms disappear… IPR 536

• • Show Notes

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We have our own news to break on this week’s Inside PR. Gini and Martin are going to be working together. Martin has joined the Spin Sucks team. Gini has been building Spin Sucks as a community for a decade – and growth has reached the point in which she needs help leading the content team. Enter Martin. Gini and Martin talk about the Spin Sucks editorial approach, in which Joe hears some traits of Jay Rosen’s community-interest-driven alternative model for journalism. We also talk about the role of the Spin Sucks Slack community.

We also talk about the acceleration of job losses in journalism. In one way, it might be like that old saying that, “I went broke very slowly for a long time, and then very quickly very suddenly.” So, there’s no doubt that the journalism job losses this year have been massive. But even more remarkable is where most of those losses have been this year — in digital media. Digital media, which only a couple years ago many investors and entrepreneurs were betting on as the platform that would replace traditional media. Clearly, online journalism has proven no less immune to the hoovering of advertising support by Google and Facebook. So, in 2019, we’re still waiting for the new model that will save journalism as we know it.

And talking about PR in a world of disappearing and shrinking newsrooms, Martin and Gini argue that PR pros must stay true to the core value of relationships while making the search for the new influencers and news brokers with whom they must establish working relationships.

Having said that, are we in a world in which we are playing for time. Do we need to find a new core to PR to replace the central role that media relations once played. At one time, we thought it would be social media. But that has fragmented. And it seems that the pace of change is accelerating. So, we continue the search for the next key leverage point.

Linkworthy

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We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows.

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Joseph Thornley.

Creative Commons Licence
As newsrooms disappear… by Joseph Thornley, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Do you feel better about news media and truth today than you did yesterday?

• • Show Notes

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We often think back to where we were when we first heard about a life altering or world changing event. And as we do, we think about the emotions and thoughts that those events triggered.

A White House Press Corps that falls over themselves to distance themselves form a comic sho spoke truth to power. The remarkable performance of Rudolph Giuliani and the rapid shift in the President’s tweets from “Rudy’s got it right” to “he has to get his facts right.” What is truth? Where is truth? And is the news media even less capable of providing us with the information we need as citizens. Or are they locked in a race to the bottom?

In the wake of these events, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley revisit how we felt in the days after President Trump was elected. We struggled then, as we do now, to understand the new President, the people around him, and the effectiveness of news media outlets weakened by a deterioration in their business and distribution models.

So, after several weeks of reflecting on Facebook and social media, let’s take a step back and replay our conversation from Inside PR 464 about the new Trump administration and whether the news media is too weakened to do its job.

And as you listen to it, we think you’ll find that the questions we asked in January 2017 are as apt today as they were then.

Linkworthy

Will the media ever stand up to Trump? Judd Apatow talks with Mehdi Hasan

Should psychiatrists diagnose Trump? Should journalists? The Weeds podcast with Sara Cliff, Dara Lind and Brian Resnick.

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows.

#IPRMustKnow

Our hashtag is #IPRMustKnow. If you are tweeting or posting about the podcast, please include our hashtag so that we can find your post.

Please rate us on Apple Podcasts

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, we have a favor to ask: If you like this podcast, please rate us on Apple Podcasts.

Subscribe on the podcast app of your choice

We’re trying to be wherever you want us to be. So, you can subscribe to Inside PR on the most popular podcast apps.

Thank you to the people behind Inside PR.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Joseph Thornley.

Creative Commons Licence
Do you feel better about news media and truth today than you did yesterday? by Joseph Thornley, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Inside PR 464: Is the news media too weakened to do its job?

• • Inside PR

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We’ve entered a new era, a whole new world, an alternate universe. And Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman and Joseph Thornley focus this entire episode on the implications of the approach to media relations (and truth) being taken by the New President and the ability of today’s weakened news media to play their important counterbalance role in relation to Power.

Sources that we found useful for this:

It’s your turn.

We’d love to know what you think about the topics we discussed as well as your suggestions for questions you’d like answered or topics for future shows. Leave a comment on the blog, send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], leave a comment on the Inside PR Facebook group or the FIR Podcast Network Facebook group, We’re also on Twitter. We’re @inside_pr or connect directly with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman.

Please rate us on iTunes

We hope you like the podcast as much as we like making it for you. If you do, we have a favor to ask: If you like this podcast, please rate us on iTunes.

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR. Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Joseph Thornley.

Inside PR 392: The algorithm called journalism

• • Inside PR

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We start this episode with a burning question from Gini: Is lasagna pasta – yes or no?

Joe and I both say yes. And so Gini, armed with the information she desperately needs, is ready to take on her dinner menu. That is, unless you, our listeners, think otherwise. Please let us know.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Joe starts the show talking about the notion of who makes news decisions – editors or algorithms. This was sparked by an Emily Bell speech and spawned a discussion online as well as several posts, including one by Jeff Jarvis.

In her talk, Bell contends journalists, who once controlled the determination and distribution of news, have lost their hold or maybe they’ve been supplanted. Their replacements? In digital channels, many editorial decisions are made by people fine-tuning algorithms or the algorithms themselves.

Martin says on the editorial front, we’ve traded one concentrated group of publicly-traded companies (media) for another (social networks as new media).

Gini says there’s so much info out there that until something’s been confirmed by the fourth estate, we tend not to believe it. Traditional media is the filter.

Joe contends PR is in an ideal position to bridge the gap between journalistic decision makers and the way algorithms pick content. And by seeing both sides of the coin, we can still help get news in front of people either though media or their feeds.

And that’s where understanding influence and influencers comes into play. Martin mentions a new type of influencer: a young video game player with an engaged audience who was featured in an article in the NYTimes. And the profession needs to refine its approach to public relationship-building to take this into account.

Are algorithms the new equivalent of editors – we don’t know who/what they are and yet they make many decisions? Is that a good or a bad thing? We’d love to hear what you think.

Send us an email or an audio comment to [email protected], join the FIR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Google+ Community, join the Inside PR Facebook group, leave us a comment here, message us @inside_pr on Twitter, or connect with Gini Dietrich, Joseph Thornley, and Martin Waxman on Twitter.

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Thank you to the people behind Inside PR.

Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer.

Inside PR is produced by Ashlea McGrath.