THINKing

Links – 7/10/2009

Here are a few things we’re reading today:

AP Works Toward Universal Online News Format -  The Associated Press, along with fellow non-profit The Media Standards Trust, unveiled a digital news “microformat” to effectively encapsulate the content and key meta-data of every news story online.

Has The News Media Disappeared?

The free press of my early career was a thing of beauty. It was truly a watchdog over big everything, including government. It provided non-biased coverage of issues and kept its editorials on the op-ed pages.

Everyman 1, Influentials, 0

Back in the 20th Century, you might remember, PR people were advised to determine who were the influentials in their market and spend the majority of their efforts reaching these elites. The theory was that if you reached these centers of influence – the media or someone who could influence popular culture – you could develop more targeted programs and avoid a mass approach. Approaching influentials was less expensive than mass communications.

Twittering Journalists Update

Hey, I’ve had a lot of interest lately from journalists wanting to be added to the My Creative Team Twittering Journalist Wiki. A lot of new ones have been added and I’ve made the wiki a little more portable. Now, there is a downloadable Word file containing all the journalists and media outlets in the wiki. I typically update this file monthly, so check back often.

Pithy Pitches

Your painstakingly crafted email pitch is completely customized and ready to send to the in box of that carefully targeted reporter. There it goes! Did you hear that? That was your email pitch being deleted.

The Land Of The Free

America, digital America in particular, has become the land of the free. So many online services are offered at no charge that now it is hard to get anyone to pay for anything online. Newspapers are circling the drain because of this phenomenon.

A MediaPost article addresses this problem,

Quick Hits

A couple of quick PR-related items in which you may be interested:

MediaKitty is an online source for connecting with travel journalists. Sign up and follow them on Twitter.

Bill Stoller, who writes the Publicity Insider Newsletter, is on Twitter as well. Follow Bill onTwitter and sign up for his newsletter.

Media Update

Although I believe the main stream media are dying, there still are opportunities to receive media coverage that can benefit you and your organization. After all, the media is not dead quite yet. And you need to take advantage of these opportunities if your organization is cutting back its marketing budget because of a challenging economy.

Newspapers Are Circling The Drain

Yes, that was the toilet you heard flushing on newspapers. We’ve talked about this topic often here at THINKing. Newspapers are in deep trouble. A handful of smart ones will survive. But most are either on their way out or they will morph into something different. eMarketer reports on the outlook for the newspaper industry. Based on eMarketer’s review, it’s time to call the funeral home,

I’ll Alert The Media That People Don’t Like Them

My predictions is that we’ll see a lot of media outlets going down in 2009. There are many reasons, of course, ranging from bad management to media bias. This just in: Americans really don’t like the media.

A new study indicates that 77 percent of Americans think the media is actually making our economic malaise worse. MediaDailyNews reports,