THINKing

News Media: Your Slip Is Showing

You’ve probably read about it by now – the hoax pulled on the media by a group posing to be from the US Chamber. The CopyWrite, Ink blog has a good overview.

And it was a hoax on the media, not on the US Chamber of Commerce, as Bloomberg characterized it. Says Bloomberg,

The Yes Men, a New York group that pulls pranks on corporations, issued a fake press release and the text of a purported speech by Chamber President Thomas Donohue under the chamber’s letterhead yesterday, said Jacques Servin, a Yes Men member. The imposters also held a news conference at the National Press Club with ersatz chamber officials.

No, this was a hoax on the media. Plain and simple. Today’s media follow their template and biases, try to get the “news” out too fast, with little to no fact-checking.

Reuters called it more correctly after the fact. Initially, they too ran with the false story that the US Chamber of Commerce was changing its position on cap and trade. That’s what the liberal media wanted to hear and that’s why they didn’t question it. That’s what I mean by the template.

Today’s media members are overwhelmingly liberal.  A 2005 UCLA study confirms this. Former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg has written a book on the subject – Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How The Media Distort The News that was spawned by an op-ed piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal. Goldberg says that it’s not a purposeful left-wing conspiracy. According to an article in Newsmax,

Goldberg, who spent his last years at CBS in the doghouse for his 1996 Wall Street Journal piece, says that if these correspondents were to take a lie detector test as to whether they slanted the news leftward, they would deny it and pass with flying colors. Many of them don’t consider that they’re leaning in any political direction. They really think they are simply mainstream. There is no other side of the argument except what you hear from a few right-wing nut cases. In their world, mainstream conservatism doesn’t exist.

Don’t be surprised by more of these hoaxes.They are just too easy to perpetrate.

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Top Content

In case you missed some of our posts, here are the top five read of all time:

Twittering Journalists

Top 10 Story Starters For Blocked Bloggers

Newspapers: Dig The Grave 

When Billboards Go Bad

It’s The Relationship, Stupid

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Reading List

What are you reading today? Here are a few items we are checking out.

Newspaper Online Traffic Heads Up

Google Fast Flip Speeds Online News Reading

iPhone App Helps You Find Guinness

Measuring The Business Effects Of Web 2.0

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Top 5 Tips For Media Selection

Marketers have a wide variety of media at their disposal. Even in this digital age, many think first of the advertising troika of newspapers, magazines and TV. But there are a number of other options depending upon what you are trying to accomplish.

1. Create a sense of urgency. Direct marketing offers that contain a deadline for consumer action can create that sense of urgency that motivates your customer to buy now.

2. Fill in the blanks. Brochures are a great vehicle for providing the detailed information about your product’s many benefits.

3. Be impulsive. Signage speaks to people when they are in buying mode at the point of sale. Besides spurring impulse buying, signs also act as a reminder, connecting the dots to your other marketing efforts.

4. Get interactive. Your web-related marketing efforts can capture a consumer’s attention, direct the prospect to additional information to help educate and answer questions, ask for the business and make the sale.

5. Establish intimacy. Radio is a one-to-one medium that allows the marketer to build a close connection with the prospect.

So, before you select your media, think about what customer action you want to spur.

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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.

Today, it panders to the lowest common denominator and doesn’t provide us with the balanced information we need to make informed decisions. It merely regurgitates the government position. And the media wonders why it is withering and dying.

Let’s take this example, and it is not an isolated one. USA Today covered the death of Michael Jackson like it was D-Day.  But didn’t even mention what may be one of the biggest goverment tax increases ever through the cap and trade bill.

According to the Business & Media Institute,

Jackson, who passed away June 25, dominated USA Today. Nine articles were devoted to Jackson on June 26 and 29. The June 26 front page blared: “MICHAEL King of Pop dies” over a photo of Jackson that took up much of the remainder of the page. The top of USA Today advertised: “Faces of Jackson: Keepsake posters, 8-9D.” Jackson also was the headline on June 29: “Inside Michael’s Last Show.”

Many newspapers reported on cap and trade but relegated their stories to pages so deep most people didn’t see them. I saw some highly opinionated articles that should have appeared as editorials, instead of masquerading as unbiased reportage.

If you have been reading THINKing for a while, you know that I believe the media has a decided liberal bias. Compared to the media of my youth, it now looks almost like the state-run media of fascist Germany. Do you think the media has disappeared? Agree or disagree with me, why don’t you?

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Old Media Drives New Media

The average American’s Internet use has nearly doubled in the past two years, according to a MediaPost article. This means that the Internet now accounts for 1/3 of the average US consumer’s media day. So, how are you going to get those Americans to your website, hmmm? By the way, did I tell you that your website is one of about 186 million?

Google Adwords can help, but it doesn’t drive the volume of web traffic most local businesses would like to see. If you have your own email list, superb. Nothing like email to drive current customer traffic. But what about for customer acquisition?

If you haven’t noticed, there is a fire sale going on at the old media store. Newspapers are struggling, so, too, are many radio and TV stations. Rates are down and so is competition for eyeballs. It’s a great time to increase your share of voice and take market share from weak competitors.

In my mind, a local business should be looking at these media opportunities. In particular, I’d look at my local newspaper, especially if it has a solid web presence. You can pick up packages that include both print and web options. For instance, according to the same MediaPost article:

The report further reveals that seven daily newspapers have achieved a net unduplicated reach of 80% or more when the past 30-day website visitor figure is combined with the past month print readership figure. Among these newspapers are the:

• New Orleans Times Picayune with a total unduplicated reach of 85.8%
• San Antonio Express-News (80.6%)
• Post-Standard in Syracuse (84%)
• Buffalo News (83.3%)
• Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester (80.9%)
• Peoria Journal Star (80.4%)
• Omaha World Herald (82.2%)

Says  Bob Jordan, President of The Media Audit,

“Daily newspapers were the first to embrace a multi-platform distribution strategy amidst a period when consumers were spending more and more time with the Internet. And as a result, newspapers followed the way of the consumer. By doing so, they have broadened their reach to include younger consumers. And these consumers are buying new cars and driving sales for retailers who represent a significant portion of the newspaper industry’s revenue… ”

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Links – 5/22/2009

Here are a few item we are reading today that you may also find of interest:

Consumers Like Newspapers Less Than They Do Airlines

In the first quarter of ’09, newspaper customers’ satisfaction rating was 63. To put this in some perspective, those surveyed expressed a greater deal of satisfaction with airlines (airlines!) which scored 64. And cell phone providers (cell phone providers?) which score a 69.

Yahoo Helps Newspapers Book Local Ads

About 150 or so papers have started using a new platform meant to simplify ad targeting and selling that Yahoo delivered last fall. Another 350 or so are up next. The new platform was largely responsible for a 30% increase in online-only ad sales across Scripps newspapers in the first quarter, according to Scripps.

E! Harvesting Celebrity Tweets

E! is planning to harvest the power of Twitter for “Celebri-Tweets.” The network will run tweets from a number of celebrities in the news crawl at the bottom of the screen during its programming. In addition, E! will feature a “Celebri-Tweet” widget on its homepage keeping users up to date on what the celebrity Twitterati are saying in 140 characters or less.

Email Continues To Perform For Retailers

Compared with last year, 56.4% of retailers report their typical sales conversion rate for an e-mail marketing campaign remains about the same. More than one quarter of survey respondents, though, report conversion is up: 22.8% say up slightly and 3.7% up significantly. Only 17% report conversion is down: 13.7% say down slightly and 3.3% down significantly.

FaceBook Fights Phishing Scam

Facebook was hit with another round of phishing attacks Thursday, cluttering members’ inboxes with messages attempting to send them to sites to steal their login information. 

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Links – 4/24/2009

Here are a few things I’m reading today about journalism and the newspaper industry. Thought you might have some interest:

NY Times Has No Plans To Go Private

The Newspaper Biz: More Poison Please

McClatchy’s Ad Revenues Fall 29.5%

Wikipedia Founder: How To Save Newspapers

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Creative Destruction

It’s happening all around us and has been happening here in America since Europeans hit the shores. It’s the “creative destruction” that economist Joseph Schumpeter borrowed from Nietzsche. According to the 20th Century economist,

Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.

Newspapers, broadcast TV networks and old line ad agencies are just the latest victims. They got complacent and didn’t see the tiny mammals carving out a new niche right beneath their feet. Mass media got left behind by the fragmented masses. Old line agencies didn’t see that the media world was undergoing revolutionary change right before their very eyes. And they didn’t notice that corporate clients were tired of paying their overhead. Instead, clients were looking for a new way to do business. Creative destruction is working its magic once again and the victims decry it.

If you are going to be a successful business in a capitalist society, you must always be looking for the a better way or you too will become a victim on the roadside of creative destruction.

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Twitter: Time Waster Or Cool Tool?

Liberal newspaper columnist, Leonard Pitts, today says he won’t Twitter. Ever. Works for me. The only thing Pitts and I agree on in this particular case is in his column’s last line:

I will never Twitter you. In the first place, you have better things to do. In the second, I am not that interesting.

It’s not just liberal Pitts. I heard our local Libertarian radio host this morning disparaging Twitter, too. They don’t get it. They condemn it because some people misuse it to broadcast the banal aspects of their lives. Hey, movies, telephones, newspapers, TV, email, blogs, all communication tools have been misused at some point in time.

And, they condemn it because they don’t take the time to figure it out. Luddites!

Scott Hepburn has an excellent response to Pitts’ screed. Hepburn says,

Yes, Mr. Pitts, some people actually accomplish things via Twitter. We’re growing businesses, finding jobs, raising money for charity, planning conferences and engaging in ethics debates.

I’m going to help out the Luddites. Sometime back we took a look at the tactical business use of Twitter, and we provided a list of the top 8 links on the business value of Twitter.

I welcome your thoughts on Twitter. Is it just a fad for broadcasting the banal, or does it have real value?

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