Last Thursday, the American Press Institute hosted a CEO Summit sponsored by the fine folks at the McCormick Foundation. (The Foundation is accepting bids for their PR business, by the way.) Forty-nine leaders from the top newspaper media companies met behind closed doors in Reston, Virginia to discuss an “Industry in Crisis”. The motivation for these influencers to show up en masse continues to be chronicled in their own publications, such as a recent AP story in The Wall Street Journal citing continued pressure on stock prices from eroding ad revenue. To say that newspaper advertising revenues are continuing to shrink at an alarming rate would be cliché, so instead I will say that they are decreasing at a speed that has even their noisiest critics silenced in amazement.
The sad truth is that print advertising dollars turn into dimes online. Online revenue just won’t support the costs of the traditional newspaper delivery channels. The audiences have moved but the newspaper companies have been stuck for a while, unable to get mentally divorced enough from being newspapers to understand and react. The industry puts all kinds of energy into developing younger audiences for the newspaper delivery channel, instead of just delivering information over whichever channel the audiences choose to use. I know this is easier said than done, but starting work on a mental move towards being delivery channel agnostic would be a good thing.
So what is the connection to our world? PR professionals use newspapers to impact audiences. The good news is a larger audience than ever is accessing information created by newspaper companies. Unsurprisingly, younger segments are more likely to choose digital channels over print. What is really crazy and, oh so scary to these media companies is that the growing digital audiences has become proactive. They are not just signing on as information receptacles; they want to “talk about” the information. The new challenge for PR professionals is being able to listen in a more profound way, and then respond – and promptly. Are you ready?
