Why Playing by ‘Old Media’ Rules Might Be Holding Your Strategy Back
Media relations people spend a lot of time teaching their organization’s executives and experts the ground rules of engaging with journalists.
I wonder sometimes if that is time well spent. Are we training them for a niche sport that fewer and fewer people are playing?
Longtime Canadian journalist Kirk LaPointe devoted a recent Business in Vancouver column to telling newsmakers what they need to know about how journalists operate.
“I’d like to present a few tips from the standpoint of the reporter, derived from our codes of ethics and guidelines,” LaPointe wrote, before going on to lay out what are reasonable expectations to have when you engage with journalists, and what are not.
I want to highlight LaPointe’s tip No. 10:
“Each journalist is different, there is no ‘the media’ any more than there are ‘the politicians’ or ‘the businesspeople,’ so generalizing or speculating about them is a mistake.”
Why then, did the previous nine tips generalize about how media interactions are supposed to go? I think it’s because LaPointe was talking specifically about journalists who have some formal training, codes of ethics and guidelines. What the column overlooks is that traditionally trained reporters are becoming a smaller fraction of the media with each passing month. Therein lies the rub.
‘Media’ Does Not Equal ‘Journalists’
It’s becoming increasingly important for communications pros to make a distinction between journalists and media. All journalists are media, but not all media are journalists. Journalists tend to adhere to guidelines. Media, however, may or may not.
Being able to say, “Oh, we’re not going to engage with that media outlet because they aren’t real journalists,” is a luxury that communications professionals may not have for much longer. That podcast or YouTube channel may have a much larger reach and much more influence than the real journalists you know.
For example, think of some of the media outlets U.S. presidential candidate Kamala Harris hit up during her recent unsuccessful campaign:
- Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper: Podcast with a weekly audience of about five million listeners. Cooper is not a trained journalist.
- The Howard Stern Show: Satellite radio show with a weekly audience of about 10 million listeners. Stern is an experienced interviewer but not a trained journalist.
- All The Smoke with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson: YouTube-based podcast with one million subscribers. Barnes and Jackson are former NBA players, not journalists.
We have entered an era when newsmakers who want to reach a large audience with their message will have to play by the new media’s rules, and should never assume that journalistic standards are part of the equation.
A Transition Period for Communicators
I encourage all media relations professionals to read Daniel Nestle’s recent newsletter in which he argues that “Media Relations is Dying and We Should Let it Go“. Nestle argues that we should be worrying more about “earned attention”—in whatever form that may take—than media relations.
“Media Relations is problematic in part because it’s focused on an increasingly undefinable, fractured, and dying category,” Nestle writes—although he correctly points out that “a traditional Media Relations program makes sense if you’re in a highly regulated industry with significant public interest.”
Media relations people are dealing with a media landscape that doesn’t look anything like it did 15 years ago. It’s an eclectic buffet, and some of those buffet trays are indeed filled with formally trained journalists whom you can expect to operate by certain rules and norms. Others are not at all—and those are the trays that seem to be getting consumed the fastest.
You’re in the challenging position of having to navigate both worlds simultaneously, at least for the time being. And as Nestle points out, you’ll probably be forced to do this for longer than makes sense:
“I have an inkling that enterprise-level corporate communications will hang on to Media Relations long past its expiration date. And herein lies a conundrum. Or a paradox: Executives and Boards will question the ROI of investing in traditional media coverage, but will continue to use media coverage as a KPI for evaluating their communications teams. They will wonder why the Wall Street Journal isn’t interested in their CEO, and demand that the communications team ‘do something about that.’ As long as the pressure is on from above, Media Relations will maintain its place in communications plans, agency scopes, and job descriptions.”
I’d like to hear what expectations you and your communications team have of the media who interview your spokespeople. Are you becoming more comfortable operating outside of journalistic norms to leverage the broad reach and younger audiences of new media? Visit this post on our LinkedIn page to leave your thoughts and join the discussion.
