on the death of print journalism

The Chicago Tribune filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Dec. 9. One of America's great newspapers is suddenly facing the very real possibility that it will no longer exist. It seems to be one more nail in the coffin of an industry that I would argue is much more important than even the automakers.

When I was growing up in Upstate New York, my family subscribed to six newspapers, five of which delivered Sunday editions. We got each paper for different reasons: 

• The Schenectady Gazette and the Saratoga Springs Saratogian gave us different perspectives on local news. My father was involved in local and New York State politics, so he wanted to keep track of local goings on.
  
• The Albany Times-Union gave us regional news. Plus, my father really liked a couple of the columnists.
• The New York Times for national and international news. Plus, my family made frequent forays to New York City, so my parents liked to know what was going on there. 
• The New York Daily News. My father was a huge baseball fan and he liked the Daily News' baseball coverage, especially columnist Dick Young.

On any weekday morning, the newspaper stack on our back stoop (porch) was probably six inches high. On a Sunday, it might have been two feet high. That's where we got our information. Yes, we watched television news, but if we wanted to really know what was going on, we read the paper.

I think handling all that newsprint made me decide to become a journalist. It was more than a career for me - it was vocation. As a colleague used to say about being a reporter: "the hours are long, but the pay sucks."

on new media and television

This post was inspired by an ABC television network announcement that two of my favorites shows - Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone - are being canceled. A third, Boston Legal, is "bowing out"  this year, reportedly because Producer David E. Kelley could not reach an agreement with ABC on payment.

This cancelation trifecta made me think - more and more things are moving onto the web. You can now shop, check out the person your child is dating and make dinner reservations on the web. According to digital inspiration , there are an estimated 156 million websites in existence. That's one website for every 34 people on earth.

So, why can't television shows move onto the web? Not as second run shows as the networks do now, but as first run shows? It seems a logical thing to do.

Many functions that used to be done in other ways are now moving on to the Net. Just look at the rise of social media. Two years ago, most people probably thought the expression "social media" meant a party at the local television station.

Now, look at its rise. According its own statistics, Facebook currently has 120 million active users.  It is the most trafficked social media website in the world. YouTube has over 100 million videos uploaded. As of last January, Twitter had an estimated 800,000 users. It is safe to say there are many more now. Yes, Pownce has died, but that is just part of the normal weeding out process.

There is a on-line market for television shows. According to The Nielsen TV/Internet Convergence Panel, the heaviest Internet users also watch the most television. The study found that the top fifth of Internet users spend 250 minutes a day watching television, compared to 220 minutes of daily television viewers for those who don't use the 'net at all.

The study also found that 50 percent of the Convergence Panel members had viewed online streaming content.

So, the market exists - it is just waiting for somebody to exploit it.

How could it be done? How could a producer make money? Well, look at Major League Baseball. Baseball charges $119.95  for a gift package for an entire season of baseball. Comscore found in July 2007, the average Internet user watched an average of three hours of online video in the month. Remember, that was a summer month when all viewership drops. Major league baseball had 7.6 million unique viewers - one of the lowest totals. Based on the charge for the season that represents $911 million in revenue or enough to pay three or four top pitchers.

 I think I can safely guarantee there are very few television shows grossing $911 million dollars for a season.

Would people migrate from the big screen to the computer screen? Good question. Well, the Nielsen service found Eli Stone had 6.35 million viewers Nov. 18. Since ABC announced the show is going off, several online petitions have sprouted to keep it on. Some people clearly care deeply about the show. 

Let's assume ABC did something bold and streamed the show online for say $50 for a season. And, let's assume 20 percent of the television viewers followed the show to online streaming. That would mean gross income of $63.5 million. I think that would more than cover the costs of production and provide a tidy profit.

So why not networks? Come on, give it a shot.

on the American auto industry and the 21st century

Much has been made lately about whether American auto makers deserve a $25 billion federal bailout. If that means giving the money to the auto companies, without any guarantee they are going to make deep, substantive changes in everything from the executive suite to the way they sell their product, I say forget about it.

Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom (he of "Tuesdays with Morrie" fame) makes an emotional, but flawed, plea in the Nov. 22 Detroit Free Press for the federal government to ante up. The gist of his argument is that since the federal government is giving $700 billion to Wall Street with very few strings attached, why can't the auto companies have the same deal?

Reading Albom's column reminds me of the story of the kid who kills both his parents. When he is tried for the crime, he throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.

Remember, Detroit did this to themselves. Detroit has known since 1973 - the first oil embargo - that it should be building smaller, fuel efficient cars. No one said they couldn't build trucks also. Toyota builds the Tundra after all. That gets 17 mpg. But it also builds the Yaris. That car gets 35 mph. 

Why couldn't Detroit build a car for both ends of the market? Well, they will reply they do now. But I am not talking about just now. Why weren't they doing this in 1995? Because they were selling thousands of gas guzzling SUVs and trucks to the American public. They were like drug addicts. They were so caught up in the high of making that money, they didn't bother to consider what would happen when the high ended. 

In 2000, Ford Motor seriously considered ending car production. Trucks were so profitable the executives thought they should concentrate on building them. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

This is the same group of executives who for years resisted higher fuel standards. Why - because they were too short-sighted.

Even Mitt Romney said in a New York Times opedit last week that the bailout should not happen unless there is radical restructuring. Besides being a successful businessman in his own right, Romney is the son George Romney, who once headed American Motors. 

This is what Market Watch had to say Nov. 21st: It's hard to know what to make of the sad spectacle offered this week by the top executives of the country's carmakers begging for money from the government.

For the carmakers, you have to wonder how they could be so out of touch with the zeitgest. Sure their cars are not as bad they once were, and sure, millions of people buy them every year. But it beggars belief to hear General Motors Chief Executive Rick Wagoner earnestly tell a house committee that the problem is customers can't get loans to buy cars. Chrysler may be a private company these days, but sending Bob Nardelli to Washington to ask for money was a huge public relations blunder. One could imagine a member of Congress simply telling Nardelli that if thinks Chrysler needs money so badly, the former Home Depot CEO could lend some of the more than $200 million he pocketed when he ran that company.

And then there was the corporate jet moment, when it was revealed that the three had flown separately to Washington on three corporate jets. These companies have legions of public relations people on staff. You'd think at least one of them could spend some time looking after the image of their executives. But it's probably too late for that.

Personally, I think Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Tom Friedman had it right in a Nov. 12 column when he noted that the Big Three were asking for the government for innovation. He questioned what they had been doing for past 50 or so years. GM's chairman called global warming a "crock of s**t" in a speech in Dallas. Auto executives have quoted as saying the Toyota Previa - the leading hybrid in the world - doesn't make economic sense.

Detroit complains about their high health care costs. So why for the last 60 years haven't they been demanding national health care? That's one of the major advantages the Japanese have in auto production.

As was so ably pointed out in the Nov. 20 blog "China Matters", in 2006, GM spent $4.6 billion in healthcare for 350,000 retirees. In Japan, Toyota pays health care for its retirees for two year after they leave the company. The cost for the 3,000 or so retirees is so small, it doesn't show up on the balance sheet. After the two years up, the Japanese health care system picks up the cost.

Now, GM has shifted some of those costs to the UAW. But how do you think the UAW is going to pay for that health care? By demanding higher wages, which will drive up costs, which will continue to make Detroit's car uncompetitive.

In short, no one in Detroit gets it. I wonder if Steve Jobs would be willing to run another company?

on the rise of social media.

I don't think Ted McConnell, Proctor & Gamble's general manager-interactive marketing and innovation quite understands social media. According to an article in Advertising Age, McConnell is quoted as saying that it impossible to monetize something "where someone is breaking up with their girlfriend." He also said that calling social media "consumer generated media" is predatory. He doesn't think that social media sites like Face Book are a good place for his company to advertise.

It is surprising to me that an executive with the words interactive marketing in his title would take such a stance toward Web 2.0. Of course, when McConnell equates social media with advertising that should be a clue right there about his knowledge. Social media is the opposite of advertising. It seeks to eliminate advertising by providing consumers with information unfiltered by the seller.

As any public relations person who knows what they are doing can tell you, it is important to always tell the truth in an unvarnished way. Make a mistake - admit it, correct it and move on. Not always so in advertising. How many ads have you seen lately for Detroit made cars talking about how they are the best in class? Well, the consumer is not buying that right now. Not after all the years they have been hoodwinked.

I can see where advertisers would not like or understand social media. Maybe it's because people feel it's the best source of information. As reported in the eighth annual Burston-Marsteller/PR Week CEO survey , 62 percent of the 200 CEOs surveyed think social media can have an effect on a company's reputation. One only to look at this week's Motrin debacle to understand how true that is. In two days, a group of Moms using Twitter changed a major brand's advertising efforts. Although the same survey indicates CEOs are not yet diving into the social media pool, they seem to understand its power.

The bottom line is that the method for delivering the message is shifting and shifting fast. Now consumers help shape the message and some cases, decide what the message is to be. Woe to the company that does not understand. To use an expression from the '60s, people in marketing now "have to lead, follow, or get out of the way."

On the rise of social media

It is said that the late Peter Drucker invented modern management. This was the man who showed Japanese auto companies how to produce the best cars in the world. It was he who predicted - in 1946 - that the way General Motors was managed was eventually going to hurt it.

It was also Drucker who predicted the rise of social media. He said in an interview in 2000 that "around the world, chat rooms or study groups can easily be formed to discuss how best to apply global ideas to local business or health or other organizations." (Jobs Letter) Now, the terms blog and social media had not yet been coined. But, that's what Drucker was talking about.

He saw that the rise of the Internet was going to change the dynamics of capitalism. No longer would there be a one way conversation: the seller talking to the customer. The power was going to shift away from a central point to multiple points.

Consider this: According to an article on the Web Guild site: "A study by Universal McCann called When did we start trusting strangers? that rather than being passive, consumers have taken creative roles in consumerism."

What that study found was that social media has democratized our decisions. No longer do we rely on what the seller tells us. Now, we can talk to dozens, no hundreds, of other people on their experiences with a product or place. It can help a company, or it can hurt it.

Consider the example of Comcast. Guy calls Comcast for repair service. Repair guy is at house so long, he falls asleep. Homeowner videos it, puts video up on You Tube.  Comcast responds with press release. What happens to Comcat's reputation?

To be fair, Comcast now apparently gets it. They now respond, quickly, to web-based complaints.

Yet, this should never happen to a savvy company, especially one in the tech industry. What has surprised me is how few companies have yet embraced this. Drucker saw it coming 20 years ago. But, a lot places out there don't seem to realize just how dangerous it is to ignore social media. 

What do you think? Let me know.

on Barack Obama and social media

A lot has already been written about President-elect Barack Obama's use of social media as one of the tools he used to win the election. As Adam Mastrow noted on the Mashable blog, Obama used social media such a Twitter and Facebook to announce rallies, solicit contributions and keep his supporters wired in. (Full disclosure: I am one of those supporters.)

Much has also been made of what our new president will do with that data base of over 3 million supporters now that he's in office. His people have registered the domain name change.gov. It is a very well done site. It gives the president-elect the ability to communicate directly with his supporters without the filter of the news media.

Oh, I know that is unlikely Barack Obama himself is spending much time creating content for the site. He has a pretty full plate, obviously. But, I am willing to bet that he knows exactly what is on change.gov and approves everything that goes on it. In other words, I am sure he reads it alot, or at least gets daily briefings on it.

And that's the point of this blog entry. I want to turn the conversation on its head. I think what social media is going to do is return access to our elected leaders to us, the people. 

A century ago, the president held an open house at the White House at least once of year where anyone could come and shake the president's hand. President Teddy Roosevelt is supposed to have held the record - shaking over 8,000 hands at one such event. Remember, this was after the assignations of Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield and William McKinley. 

But, as time went on, the president became more and more walled away from us. The stories of Richard Nixon  holing up in the White House during the Watergate scandal and the first George Bush not knowing what a grocery scanner was are both indicative that isolation.

Obviously, there are some legitimate reasons for building walls around the president. There are a lot of people out there who want to take a shot at the president. I suspect it is going to even worse for Barack Obama because a lot of racists just cannot stand the idea of a Black man being president. That's on top of Al Qaeda, North Korea and every other group in the world who currently hates the U.S.

That means that the president could become very isolated from the American people. How could he not? It is not as if he could head down to the local Starbucks for Vente Latte and to shoot the bull about Wall Street.

That is not the way the Founders wanted things. They saw the president as a leader, but also one of the people. They did not want him isolated. Thomas Jefferson often answered the White House door himself. Andrew Jackson threw a three day party when he was inaugurated. Anyone could wander into Lincoln's White House early in the Civil War and talk to the president.

It has been a long time since the president was able to walk among the rest of us. In the recent past, there was really was no way to talk directly to the president - unless you had the cash to attend $10,000 a plate fundraiser. Or you were a boyhood friend. Sure, you could write a letter, but do you really think any president in the late 20th century saw those letters?

Now, though, I think there is way for the kind of interaction the Founders envisioned. Yes, Barack Obama can now talk directly to the American people without any filters. But, now we can talk back. Sure, I don't think that Barack Obama is spending much time on Twitter or Facebook. But, if 10,000 people suddenly start Tweeting him about something, I think there will be a response.

Unlike a letter writing campaign, we are going to know if there are 10,000 tweets. Social media is much more transparent. 

So, while I doubt most of us will actually be shaking the new president's hand anytime soon, there will more communication than in a long time.

Some Thoughts on Barack Obama and new media

Barack Obama scored many firsts in becoming the 44th president of the United States. Those milestones have been well covered in many outlets.

What I want to talk about is how Obama became the first social media president. And, the failings of the pollsters - with one exception - to understand just how big the president-elect's victory was going to be.

Of course, it wasn't Barack Obama and his people who first realized the power of the Internet and social media. That first belongs to 2004 Democratic candidate Howard Dean. It was Dean's campaign who first used the Net to get their message out. Ultimately Dean failed in his attempt to win the nomination, but he showed the way for a more savvy campaign.

Then in 2006, the junior senator from Illinois decided he wanted to be president. At the time, no one gave him a chance. After all, wasn't this Hillary Clinton's time? 

Very early on though, the Obama campaign realized they had to do things differently. In February, 2007, Robin Hamman noted in his blog cybersoc. com that Obama's campaign "has pulled all the stops to embrace social software. From the main index, visitors can join the site and create a profile which they can use to network, find or plan events, or write a blog. Obama's site calls their suite of social networking features 'My Barack Obama.'"

That was simply brilliant. Why? Because Obama was reaching people who have never before been touched by conventional campaigns. 

How do most conventional campaigns reach people? There are four ways:

• Mailings. Here in Wisconsin, I think more trees died for the 2008 campaign than any campaign ever. Everyday when I came home, my doorstep was covered with literature and my mailbox was stuffed. What happened to all of that slickly produced information - it got recycled without being read.
• Word-of-mouth. Joe Smith tells neighbor Jill Jones about candidate Paul Politician. Jones gets excited. The problem with that is the country is so polarized right now, with a few exceptions, no one is going to cross over to help someone of the other party.
• Advertising. Yeah, like anyone believe a political ad anymore - if they ever did.
• Telephone calls. That was the biggest failure of all. Forget robocalls, as annoying as they are. Look at a simple fact: According to IT Facts, in 2007 14 percent of Americans had only a cell phone. That means approximately 44 million Americans did not have a land line. The number is probably even higher now. No land line means no listing in a directory of any kind, so there is no way for campaigns or pollsters to reach those people.
  

That last bullet is especially important. Most of those 44 million people are under 30-years-old. They voted for Obama in huge numbers. But no pollster ever found them. I suspect this is  why the McCain people were saying right before the election that things appeared to be trending their way. They never saw the change  coming because they had no way to see them.

The same thing happened to a lot of polls. They just didn't talk to the people who were under 30 because they had no way to reach them. The one web site that got it right was fivethirtyeight.com. Smart people there. Of course, they also run the Baseball Prospectus, where being right really counts.

However, the Obama people knew where those under 30-year-olds spend their time. They are on the web using applications such as Twitter and Facebook. That's where Obama's campaign went looking for voters and that's where they found them.

Of course, Obama's people did not turn their backs on conventional media. They knew they need to do that too to also reach supporters. In other words, they had a two pronged attack.

What's the lesson for those involved in marketing and public relations? Well, just substitute a client's name for Barack Obama. You want to reach your client's potential customers - make sure you don't leave social media out.

What do you think? Let me know.