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Many moons ago – when I attended SUNY Brockport as a journalism student – I learned that news was timely and relevant. News was written to include the 5Ws in the first ‘graph and it was also supposed to be:
Objective. Sterile. Unbiased. Fair. Balanced. Factual. Accurate.
Flash forward to 2008 – I am thinking about going back to school for my Master’s degree in Journalism. My choices include either a Magazine or News Editorial focus. The former is pretty clear. The latter? It made me wonder what our definition of “news” is these days. So, I went out to the blogosphere to inquire.
Here’s what Howard Owens said (reprinted verbatim, as it is both pithy and poignant):
“For thousands of years, news was reported in a personal fashion — via campfire or troubadour. The printing press enabled the rise of mass media and process of reporting news from one to many. The Internet enables a return to one-to-one, personal journalism. We can now report news in the same way we did when it was over a campfire — complete with nuance, context and personal insight.
Mass media needed “objective journalism” because news was reported one to many, so it had to be generic and meet the needs of a highly differentiated audience.
Today, all news is one-to-one. It can be personal, because if you or I disagree with that personal POV, we have the means to respond, question, and provide our own facts or commentary.
Modern news will win/succeed because it returns us to our roots, our DNA, our way of being — the way we most naturally like to communicate — in a personal voice.“
To put it mildly, Howard’s response was an eye opener. I always thought about news as it was defined for me in college! I’m also surprised and dismayed at how tightly I held on to that definition all these years. With his added perspective, I already feel better equipped to make my decision about school. However, I still have questions and curiosities, mostly about objectivity in news reporting:
- Do you think there’s any value in objective, just-the-facts-ma’am news reporting?
- And how do you determine what news is “credible?” Is it based on the degree of objectivity or how well you know (or how well you think you know) the person?
- Is it even possible for a reporter – a human being with feelings and preconceived notions – to be truly unbiased?
- What’s more important – the story (the facts) or how it’s packaged (how it is told)? Or does this depend on the receiver (ie, right brained or left brained individuals)?
What do you think?
RECOMMENDED READING:
- Five W’s and a H that should come *after* every story (A model for the 21st century newsroom: pt3)
- News of Future – future news for year 2020 and beyond
- News Should Be Neither Fair Nor Balanced
- What is News? (a February 2009 post on my new blog)
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Blog readership in the United States is very healthy.
As of 2007, there were 215,088,545 Americans (representing 71.4% of the US population) online. Of that segment, 48% (about 103,242,502) were online “Spectators” (including those who read blogs) in 2007 according to “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.”
How does that data translate in terms of consumer-buying behavior? Recently, the Opinion Research Corporation released the results of a survey indicating that “nearly two-thirds (61%) of respondents reported consulting online reviews, blogs and other sources of online customer feedback before purchasing a new product or service, with search engines being the preferred method of conducting the research.” In addition, 83% of those surveyed said that online reviews and product evaluations had a direct impact on their purchasing decisions.
If you own a business and you want to stay “open” for business, you need to consider the implications of these trends. At one time, it was okay if your website was like the Sun – the center of your online universe. Today, your website needs to be more like Jupiter – massive in size – in terms of its online pervasiveness…with its multiple moons representing different facets of social media, including blogs. And Jupiter’s super-strong magnetic field would represent your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and your website’s interactive elements.
So what or who now holds the distinction of representing the Sun – the center of your universe? Your existing and prospective customers, of course.
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As I stood with my arms outstretched and legs spread in the sea of people – many of whom cast curious, suspicious or accusatory glances – the uniformed woman said: “Before I begin, is there any part of your body that may suffer pain as a result of this search?” I said “just my heart.”
Why would the touch of a mere physical search of my person reach to the inner depths of my soul?
- It wasn’t the embarrassment and shame that comes from public humiliation.
- It wasn’t the feeling of surprise and shock that comes with the spontaneous order to search one’s person.
- It wasn’t the revulsion of feeling a stranger’s hands run slowly up and down my arms, my sides, my back and deliberately along my inner and outer thighs.
- It wasn’t the feeling of helplessness that comes from knowing that even the smallest of protests could earn me a worse fate.
- And it certainly wasn’t the horror of watching authorities paw purposefully through my personal effects.
I stood frozen with arms outstretched – not strong and welcoming like the Christ statue in Rio, but weak and weary – beholding the cruel realities of our nation’s current state. Our rights have all but eroded. And our freedoms are no longer protected.
These are not new issues and they’ve been propagating at a brisk pace. Although I’ve always found them disturbing, this time it hit close to home…and all I was trying to do was to go home.
What was my crime? I stood in line – to get on a plane in Jackson Hole, WY.
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Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, is the proverbial gift that keeps on giving.
This book is a gift of timely and practical knowledge about the value of our participation in the social media phenomenon – from a business perspective. The Groundswell gift comes wrapped in a bow cut from the sophisticated fabric of Forrester’s finely woven research experience.
While there is much to say about Groundswell and its astounding greatness (more in future posts), I’d like to immediately call out one side benefit – for professionals who leverage the groundswell – that was subtly mentioned in the book…a benefit that I believe will have a very strong appeal to the book’s core readership – marketers and communicators:
Getting that coveted “seat at the table” in your organization
It’s been my experience and that of many of my professional colleagues that the hardest part of our job is educating upper-level management and getting buy in. The ultimate and ever-elusive brass ring, of course, is empowerment. These sentiments, which erupt regularly in the blogosphere, were also echoed earlier this year during a Forrester Research and Heidrick & Struggles co-sponsored webcast based on “The Evolved CMO“ research report. According to the report’s executive summary:
“Marketers want to be more business-focused and strategic in their roles.”
“…almost two-thirds of chief marketing officers want more involvement in business strategy development and increased P&L responsibility.”
In turn, these summary statements were underscored by the many comments from webcast attendees:
“CMO and CIO relationship is critical…”
“Alliance with CFO is key to build and execute on strong corporate strategy.”
“I heard somewhere that the average tenure for a corporate-level CMO is 24 months…why would that be?”
“CMOs are often seen as company doctors to bring about immediate change which – however – is a joint effort of the management board.”
“So many other C-suites see Marketing as only advertising and their feedback is based on font or background color of an ad rather than understanding the strategic importance of Marketing.”
“What can be done to increase CMO profile on the Board?”
“Marketing is an investment and not a cost!”
In the end, the report prophetically summarized: “CMOs have a great opportunity to transform their marketing team from order takers to collaborators, partnering with business units to drive the bottom line.”
And now – months later – as I was reading Groundswell, my eyes became wide when I saw this:
“Own the resource <for tapping into the groundswell> that generates the insights, and you have clout.”
So, how do you gain that clout in your organization? You guessed it. Buy the book and you’ll find out.
A FUN ASIDE: I really love the title of the book, too. Made me think: If you were on a flat wooden raft in the open seas and a groundswell began, how would you protect yourself from falling?
Would you give in to the movement, flexing your knees and absorbing the shock and the motion in synchronicity…? Or would you keep your knees rigid and straight (ouch, that could be painful!) in show of defiance and strength? For me, the answer is the former, with the operative word being “flex.”
Finally, if you knew you were going to fall regardless of your stance, which way would you choose? Again I would choose the former, because the distance to the ground is shorter and the chances of breaking a bone would be fewer. ;0)
Here’s to getting our social-sphere sea dogs, folks!
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Don’t you think it’s ironic that the traditional marketing “funnel” also looks like a megaphone? :)
“The funnel has outlived its usefulness as a metaphor. Face it: marketers no longer dictate the path people take, nor do they lead the dialogue.”
- a quote by Forrester Marketing Analyst Brian Haven in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
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A recent study conducted by AARP and the Center for the Digital Future boasts that online community involvement by users aged 50+ “even mirrors teenage use.” Overall, it seems both the quantity and quality of Internet experience has matured among senior adults.
According to the report, 58% of AARP’s 38 million members “log in to an online community daily or several times a day.” And this interest in online communities from seniors is not going unnoticed. Do a search for “online communities for seniors” and you’ll find a slew of sites under construction. With baby boomer annual spending power at $2.3 trillion, smart marketers are already on this like a rat on a doughnut. And smart advertisers – like MasterCard with the Mr. Bill campaign – also know how to appeal to the power of the purse, which is lined with our aging seniors’ vast discretionary income.
“Older boomers are the focus of market opportunity in the next decade,” says Brad Edmondson, former editor-in-chief of American Demographics magazine, in Turning Silver into Gold. “The smart business is going to define a specific consumer target and aim for it with the best marketing information available. The key concepts for reaching boomers around the globe are preservation and quality of life.”
Other AARP report findings – for the 50+ demographic – included:
- 42% get daily news online
- 68% browse brick-and-mortar stores and then buy online
- 46% said Internet was “important for maintaining their social relationships”
- 70% reported their online community was very important or extremely important to them
Not mentioned in the report’s announcement was the power of the Internet to close geographical gaps – an important benefit for any senior user who may have moved to a retirement community out of state or has friends and family spread throughout the country or has a grandson/granddaughter serving in the military.
For the senior adult community, the Internet is no longer just for sending humor emails.
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The time had come for my husband to part ways with his home-grown, nurtured, and impressively functional PC. Rather than send it to recycling heaven we decided to ship it to my mom – who became a widow not long after my parents moved to Florida – about 1,300 miles from the majority of family up in New York.
My mother, who never had a computer before, was wired in no time. She took to the web world like a bee takes to honey. Through the years, my husband fielded her tech support calls (I was backup), which became less and less frequent as her computing skills and online agility grew. During my last visit, the hard drive on her second computer, a new Dell, bit the dust – which was either good or bad timing depending on how you wanted to look at it.
Dell had a replacement delivered the next day. The tech installed it in record time and blew out the door. When it was time, we fired it up. No luck. Shoot, I thought – thinking about my flight out in two days. My mother suggests calling Dell’s support line. So we call support and I start the “conversation” because I’m the one who knows about such things…I’ve been there before, you know.
After about a half hour talking with a young man from India with an Anglo name that I can’t recall, I’m getting a little testy. It wasn’t so much the communication barrier (Ok, that’s ”L” as in Larry…Do you mean “L” as in Llama? {or maybe Lama?}) that was causing my anxiety as it was the clock ticking down on my departure to the opposite coast (yeah, right!). And it kind of went downhill from there – that’s when mom took the phone and restored some semblance of helpdesk order. I walked out to insure that I didn’t interrupt anymore in my zeal “to help.” Soon I overheard them talking nicely, congenially. With patience and respect. OK. I pop back in. The call continues…now we’re wiggling wires and switching this and flipping that – no luck. We try one last thingy-dingy and it works. Mom says good bye to her friend in India and informs me that I need to learn how to be nicer if I want to have better service. Touché.
That particular visit was pivotal for a few reasons. Like a new hard drive, my mind was fully scrubbed of old stereotypical notions about senior adults and computers. I witnessed first-hand my mother’s competence and comfort in resolving the hardware snafu. And I was reassured – one last time – that when it comes to personal computing, my mother was definitely up for the good, the bad, and the ugly (in this case, my helpdesk phone manners). In the end, the benefits of being online far outweighed the hassles of maintaining the technology.
AFTERWORD: Recently I called Delta to change an international flight seat assignment, which wasn’t showing for some reason online. When I connected with the helpdesk agent in India, I was patient and friendly. And I also got the seat I wanted. :)
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