The Stark Truth About Media and Communications Today

It's been a bad week for newspapers. The Rocky Mountain News closed its doors today. Earlier in the week The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News announced they are filing for bankruptcy less than three years after the current group of owners bought the papers. They join The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Minneapolis Star-Tribune as the latest major market print media casualties.

Other major market newspapers are in trouble: the venerable New York Times and established newspaper chains McClatchy and Media General have halted payment of stock dividends. The huge Gannet Co., publisher of USA Today, cut 4,000 jobs in 2008 and is trying to sell assets to stay afloat.

Smaller markets are not immune. Journal Register Co., suburban-Philadelphia based parent of the New Haven (CT) Register and 19 other small daily newspapers in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan, filed for protection from creditors a week ago. Smaller regional newspapers used to be the most profitable because of local ads, lack of competition, and broad community support; Journal-Register shares were trading at less than a penny on Tuesday.

As a former major market print and network broadcast journalist myself, my directory is filled with the records of veteran former journalists who were fired in the past year, or who took "voluntary" buyouts. (Too often if you're a journalist over 50, you take the buyout because if you don't, you may well end up on the street soon after with no package at all.)

This has huge ramifications for PR and corporate communicators. The fact is that a good number of your old media contacts in newspaper, radio and local TV newsrooms are either no longer in the business, are looking at new careers, or are too busy coping with diminished resources to have time to hear your pitches. Just as the news media business landscape is going through wrenching change, we communicators have to strip ourselves once and for all of the illusion that media is as media was.

There will always be some major newspapers and news broadcasters. But they will be fewer. Our interaction with reporters will change as they increase their own direct communication with the public via their traditional news organizations' online and wireless media platforms. And that doesn't include the exploding blogosphere and other non-traditional social media conduits for news, information and conversation. Your own clients or bosses are already reaching the public on their own via webcasts and podcasts, bypassing editorial gatekeepers.

As a professional communicator how are you adapting to what's happening? How do you define media relations today? What media skills and experience of the last 20 years do you find are still of value, and what do you have to throw away and learn anew? Does the blogosphere offer you valid media outreach options?

ARod and Communications

We know several facts. Alex Rodriquez (ARod or Aroid or A******), considered one of the best baseball players of all time, has admitted that he used what are now illegal performance enhancing substances when he played for the Texas Rangers in the early part of this decade. He claims he has not used the now banned substances since he has been with the NY Yankees. Fairly recently, in answer to a direct questom from Katie Couric on "60 Minutes," he looked her in the eye and said "No." as to whether he had ever taken performance enhancing drugs.

After the information was first reported by Sports Illustrated last weekend, Rodriquez came clean in a tough, but friendly interview on ESPN. This quick "come clean" interview fits into the standard Crisis Communications playbook. If you can make the bad news a one-day or two-day story, you are better off.

Unfortunately for ARod, this is one of the exception stories. It is not a one-day story. It has spread rapidly throughout the US, with ARod now the poster child of the performance enhancing sports culture. His confession became the subject of a question at President Obama's first press conference. I doubt ARod's handlers thought this was going to happen.

And because of who Rodriquez is - playing for the NY Yankees, with a reputation as a great, but not clutch player who has yet to win a World Series ring - this news erupted on the first page of newspapers, not just the first page of the sports section.

I've had emails over the past few days from Red Sox fans who are gloating about another piece of bad news befalling the Yankees and other parents who know I'm a Yankee fan and asking what I say to my son - also a Yankees fan (duh).

Thomas Boswell, a sports columnist for the Washington Post suggested that now that the biggest "cheese" ARod has confessed, that Major League Baseball can move on. Another columnist in the same paper, Mike Wise, publicly took Boswell to task, and suggested that baseball should now release the names of all players it knows took steroids and other now banned substances. ARod is both the fact and symbol of what's wrong with professional sports. Late on Tuesday, another all star player, Miguel Tejada was accused of lying to a Congressional committee about drugs and sports.

I side with the full come clean story. Athletes trying to supe-up their performances is a decades-old story. It's not as if they all do it, but when you fit it in with all the other stories, too many of them do it and too many kids think it's okay for them to cheat or bend the rules for a slight edge.

Bringing it down to communications, events like these do present teaching moments and an opportunity to have discussions with children and co-workers about what is fair, what's acceptable behavior. In tough economic times, it's not uncommon to see people bend rules with an "ends justify the means" mentality.

Does ARod influence your life - work or personal situation. Does it present a teaching moment?

Sticky Messages: What sticks and what you wish would go away

We are always advising clients that in the interconnected world message consistency makes a difference. What you say to the media, to analysts, to shareholders, to consumers- may have different facts and relevant proof points-but must be consistent in themes and overall framework.

As we are watching the Presidential debates and the growing number of negative ads, we see a disconnect between the debate hall decorum, and the political ads and stump speeches at candidate rallies. The off-center stage attacks are different from what the candidates are saying to each other before the town halls and moderators.

We will see if this works in politics. It usually does not work in the corporate, association, and public sector arenas. Reporters, bloggers, activists and class action attorneys will seize upon inconsistencies.