As communication in our world becomes more and more depend on computers to transmit messages, there is a shift in communications. The way that we get our news from the Main Stream Media (CNN, FOX NEWS, HLN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and NPR) and Daily and Weekly Newspapers is moving towards the online world. Like most people the first thing that they do at the office in the morning, is check email, and open up a browser. On this browser page whether it be Yahoo, MSN, iGoogle, or another, the news is one of the first things that they read.
As a Media Monitor, this directly affects my business. My company will have to adapt and shift the paradigm from monitoring traditional media to monitoring online media, blogs, RSS feeds, Newspaper and Television Websites. That is not to say that there is no need for traditional media. People are tactile creatures, we like to touch the newspaper turn the pages, flip them over. There is a sense of accomplishment once you have read the entire newspaper. Sure there is Wifi at the coffee shop, and news websites, and Amazon’s kindle, but the fact remains that newspaper are still printing papers. Not all of this content is online, therefore how will you monitor this? With a traditional newspaper clipping service that is how. Magnolia Clipping Service as been around for nearly 70 years, that is before TV news, which my great grandmother was worried about way back when. Nothing is going to change the fact that people still want newspapers, and that the Local 6 PM newscast will remain indispensable at least not in the near future. TV website have some of the content on the website, but usually it is only the package that they post, not all of the segments from the 5, 6, 10, and the two hours of AM shows. One thing that will not go away are the ratings from the TV, PR professionals will still need to track it, measure it, and make sure that they can count that towards their ROI stats for the PR campaign.
Currently there is a thrust of companies to try to get into blogging, and trying for find their place in the blogosphere, and again, this does not mean that they will not need to also follow the old ways too. This will be a gradual transition, as people and companies have different learning curves for the Social Media.
As always I welcome any comments you may have on this topic.
2 comments:
You make some great points, but something that I come across so many times is media-based people suggesting that the future of news is all web-based, what about the people that will never adapt to web-based news?
I work in the UK, in a pretty tech-savvy office, and most people are only just learning to read the news from Google... The idea of them suddenly adapting to Kindle or aggregating RSS feeds is something that I can't see for a while yet.
(This is not me casting criticism but..) A lot of people involved with media in general create the hype between themselves, in a herd fashion. This then escalates into a microcosm revolution, but it never quite translates the media pro's mindset into a general mindset...
(disclaimer!) I could be wrong though, I've only been in PR six months, what do I know...
I agree, once you are embedded in the digital news/media world you tend to forget. It makes me wonder how they did it in the past. Honestly we still have a room full of ladies reading each paper marking them to be cut out. This is how press cutting services have work for about a hundred and fifty years. So nothing has really changed, except perception of where the news is coming from. But the fact remains that in order to be competitive we must also follow this new media, as we grew to follow tv and radio. It is just another outlet, yet it is different altogether.
Post a Comment