News Delivery Is Now An Ongoing Conversation

Principle
The rise of cable news television began a trend toward constant news updating that has only accelerated with the spread of Internet-enabled communications. The emerging media—blogs, status updates, streaming video, and picture sharing applications—have increased the diffusion of breaking news coverage away from major traditional news operations.

Best Practice
Update your online presence as often as possible. Engage the news makers of today by producing content in emerging media formats throughout the day.  Proactively cultivate relationships with relevant bloggers and online news outlets. 

Context
Twitter, the microblogging application, has been the initial conduit for several recent breaking news events.  Janus Strum, who happened to be on the Hudson River ferry that rescued passengers of US Airways Flight 1549, provided one of the first reports of the crash landing and the first images of the plane in the river via Twitter and application TwitPic.[i]  The picture has since been viewed nearly 500,000 times, according to TwitPic’s counter.

Users of Twitter provided real-time updates from Mumbai, India, during terrorist attacks in November of 2008.  Tweets also brought insight into the unrest and protests in
Iran following the disputed election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.[ii]  “Forget CNN or any of the major American ‘news’ networks,” Ari Berman of the Nation wrote about the coverage.  “If you want to get the latest on the opposition protests in Iran, you should be reading blogs, watching YouTube or following Twitter updates from Tehran, minute-by-minute.”[iii] 

Case Studies
Political consultant Mark McKinnon said old media communication methods, such as press releases and satellite interviews, are losing utility.  “Everything being done now is in video,” McKinnon said.  “Instead of taking the time to draft a press release for instance, we’ll just make a YouTube video of the announcement and then send it out.”[iv]

McKinnon said his team leverages the low-cost, Voice-over-IP Skype video chat platform to do interviews and live talks with reporters and supporters, saving significant travel and equipment expense in the process.

Fellow political consultant Tom Ingram said his media strategy has evolved to meet the new ways information is disseminated.

“I’m more likely to go to the Nashville Post Online, to the blog and break a story to get it in the newspapers and on TV, and that’s a huge shift,” Ingram said.[v]

The shifting nature of communications requires greater vigilance on the part of marketers.  Citizen journalism missteps, such as a false assertion that Apple CEO Steve Jobs had suffered a massive heart attack, present a new set of challenges, requiring active monitoring and faster responses.[vi] 

 

[i] Shira Ovide, “Twittering the US Airways Crash,” Digits: A WSJ Blog, January 15, 2009, accessed October 2009.
[ii] Brian Caulfield and Naazneen Karmali, “Mumbai: Twitter’s Moment,” November 28, 2008, http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/28/mumbai-twitter-sms-tech-internet-cx_bc_kn_1128mumbai.html, accessed October 2009.
[iii] Ari Berman, “Iran’s Twitter Revolution,” The Nation, June 15, 2009, http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/443634, accessed October 2009.
[iv] Mark McKinnon, interview with authors, October 6, 2009.
[v] Tom Ingram, interview with authors, October 8, 2009.
[vi] Tom Krazit, “Jobs heart attack rumor not true, Apple stock swings,” October 3, 2008, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10057521-37.html, accessed October 2009.