November 24, 2009

Mainstream Media Still Matters: A Shocking 20 Percent of PR will Focus More on Traditional Media Relations in 2010—Here's Why

Spin is an adjective likely to get PR professionals spun up—and for good reason. It's a superficial description and a mere scrape at the surface of an interesting career choice that I prefer to liken to advocacy: Everyone has a rightful voice—but some have a greater skill for articulating ideas than others.

Yet spin was the label used in the headline of a New York Times article about a Silicon Valley-based publicist in July. "Spinning the Web: PR in Silicon Valley" cast PR professionals as flip-flopping, candy chewing flacks that "whisper in the ears" of the elite or influential amid a changing media landscape. Suffice to say it's not a perception that the PR industry relishes. It made me cringe.

The reaction to the article was staggering. Backtweets, an online tool for searching Twitter, indicates links to "Spinning the Web" were posted to Twitter more than 1,400 times. A search of blogs on Google shows scores of results. Addme.com, a free tool for checking backlinks, shows a total of 113 independent sites linking to the article including those through Yahoo! and Ask.com, but noticeably, not from Google.

Alas, it appears The New York Times refrained from enabling the comments section for this article, though there's little doubt it would have sparked substantial interaction. The article "reinforces every stereotype about our industry and undermines our ability to make the case for our role as a serious advisor on both policy and communications," wrote Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman, on the company's blog.

The debate about the content, while interesting, underscores a far more salient point: Traditional media still matters. The New York Times article framed the issue—it provided the basis by which the ensuing conversation about the PR profession was referenced. For all the rightful admiration for the power of social media, it was traditional media that drove the conversation in this case. More importantly, traditional media drives debate on any number of issues—healthcare, economics and foreign and domestic policy, for example.

Yet there's evidence to suggest that PR professionals are more focused on social media than traditional media, which has historically been considered a pillar of PR work. A recent Vocus survey on PR planning in 2010 found that 80 percent of respondents will focus more on social media in the next year, while just 20 percent said the same for traditional media relations. To be clear, social media is important—it deserves additional focus—but there's reason to believe an equal or perhaps greater opportunity still rests in traditional media.

Tim Dyson, the CEO of Silicon Valley-based Next Fifteen argues on the blog "A view from Silicon Valley" that, despite the hard times facing the traditional media, its importance has not declined. He writes that, historically, "a news article was as powerful as the people who happened to read it that day," while in current times, an article lives on in search, social media and the blogging community. In many ways, the influence of traditional media today can be measured by the volume and methods by which it spreads: Social media amplifies, rather than detracts from, its influence.

The indexing of news in search engines like Google is another case in point. Far from being a newspaper killer, Google introduces a wider, perhaps even a global, audience to content which that audience may not have otherwise had access to. Further, the "findablility" that search provides extends the shelf-life of news: A bad news announcement buried in a press release on Friday afternoon is easily discovered and Tweeted on Monday morning or even Retweeted months later.

It seems too that while print circulations are down, this isn't the much lamented death of newspapers. Rather, it's an evolution of where readers go for news. MediaPost recently reported that 40 percent of all Internet users—some 74 million people—visited newspaper websites each month in the third quarter of 2009. This is not a fluke but a trend. PR luminary Todd Defren points out on the blog "PR Squared" that, while print newspaper circulations may be down, unique visitors to newspaper websites grew by 15 percent in the last year. Defren's conclusion is that, "Mainstream media relations is more important than ever." I couldn't agree more.

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal has bucked the circulation trend in 2009 by actually growing its subscriber base and securing the top spot among the 25 largest circulation newspapers according to BtoB Business Media. The Journal's circulation has reached two million subscribers when factoring in subscribers to its online edition, WSJ.com. Few, if any, would contend the merits of a quote or a mention in a Journal article, online or otherwise.

It's ironic that the headlines over the last 18 months hail social media's birth and commiserate the deterioration of print while the subtleties of growing influence are lost in the details. The challenge to find a sustainable new business model for traditional media should not be mistaken with its compelling and enduring credibility. Indeed, the PR industry has vested interest to that end: News without independence, no matter how glowing or critical, is also devoid of third-party validation.

I believe there will be demand for objective, well-researched professional journalism in the form of traditional media for the foreseeable future. PR professionals should continue to vie for traditional media's influence, to advocate for their causes and hopefully frame the conversation around something other than spin. Social media may be winning headlines, but traditional media clearly still matters.