The Media in an Age of Disruption: Book Review

I just finished reading John Stackhouse’s new book, Mass Disruption: Thirty Years on the Front Lines of the Media Revolution.

In it, Stackhouse—a long-time journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail--chronicles the steep decline of the newspaper industry, in particular, but all media, in general, due to the disruption caused by the digital age.

It’s a sobering read.

He writes about how print advertising—the lifeblood of a newspaper—plunged from a high of $65.8 billion in 1999 in the U.S. to about $20 billion now.

Some of those ads have moved online, but it doesn’t begin to cover the loss. For every $1 billion in lost print ad revenue, only $200 million comes back digitally, he says.

At the same time, newspapers have seen their circulations fall, and newsrooms reduced by cuts.

The digital revolution also changed newspapers in other ways.

Before moving online, newsrooms were run on “a sort of informed whim,” he writes. “The smartest and most vocal people in a story meeting tended to win the day.”

With digital, however, there was no need for whim. Editors and reporters knew exactly what people were reading.

For example, the Globe found that roughly 40 percent of the paper was being read by only about 1,000 people—hardly comforting to those who worked hard to produce those articles. 

Some welcomed this new knowledge, he says, but not all. Some journalists still believed that they, not readers, should decide what is important and worthy of coverage.

What they need to deal with, Stackhouse states, is “the fact they no longer controlled the reading experience.”

If this new reality is tough for journalists, it’s a boon for readers. We have never had it so good. There’s “an entire planet of information” at our fingertips, he says.

Old Model Broken

Most of us get that information digitally, usually on our phones. Not through print, TV or radio. And few media outlets have figured out how to make money that way.

The old model for sharing news was paid for by advertising. But advertisers no longer need newspapers (or other media) to reach customers. 

And, if they do, they aren’t willing to pay as much as they used to—certainly not when its online. (The so-called dollars-to-dimes, or pennies, media universe we now live in.)

It’s similar for classified ads, which once yielded huge profit for newspapers. They have disappeared to places like Kijiji. (The New York Times estimates its losses in classified ads to equal half the cost of running its entire newsroom.)

The tragedy for Stackhouse is that things could have been different.

Journalists knew the world was changing back in the 1990s, but failed to start making the steps needed to adapt to the new digital world.

Part of the reason is how well the media was doing well back then. Profits were high and things looked great. Newspapers made huge investments in new offices and print redesigns. 

(The Winnipeg Free Press moved from downtown to a $150 million new building with a printing press in the suburbs—a decision they likely regret now.)

The Wrong War

And they went to war against each other. Stackhouse devotes a chapter, titled “The Wrong War,” to the huge competition between the Globe, the then-new National Post and the Toronto Star.

Unfortunately, they were fighting the wrong enemies. The real enemy was Google, and all the other digital upstarts that aggregated and, later, created news and other content. (Without the burden of buildings, expensive reporters, printing presses, union contracts and other legacy burdens.)

But change is hard, says Stackhouse.

“I have sympathy with their (newspapers) plight,” he writes. “Adapting multimillion-dollar firms on the fly is hard. Very few industries attempt it until it’s forced on them.”

And now it is being forced on them. It isn’t pretty. Anyone who cares about journalism grieves the losses of the many good people who have been downsized, and the publications that have closed.

The Future 

So: Will newspapers survive? That’s a good question. Stackhouse says the book is not an obituary.

“It is a journey through the news model . . . to see where fundamental change is needed and can be found.”

Among other things, he says that newspaper owners need to be patient; advertisers need to re-evaluate their association with newspapers; governments need to be supportive; and journalists “need to see their work as entrepreneurial and competitive, not tenured and enshrined.”

And readers? We “need to accept the cost of news—in time and attention, as well as in money,” he states.

Stackhouse concludes by saying this crisis may have given everyone—publishers, journalists, advertisers and readers—the sort of wake-up call that was missed earlier.

“There’s still time . . . to forge a better future for news,” he says.

Is he right? Part of me hopes so, but part of me wonders if the world hasn’t changed so much and so fast that there is, in fact, no future for the kind of newsgathering institutions that once dominated the sharing of information.

I also wonder if the appetites of media consumers have changed so dramatically that there's no longer any need for traditional journalists or journalism.

Writers like Stackhouse, and other observers of the decline of the media, lament what the loss of newspapers will do for our society and democracy. But what if people really don’t care about the news as much any more? What if we’d really rather watch cat videos and read listicles about celebrities? What then? 

But those are different questions. Maybe someone will write a book about that one day.

Informavores, Foragers and Web Snacking

The Canadian government is reviewing its website standards. A couple of analogies are being employed to help civil servants make websites that visitors find useful.

The first analogy is that of animals hunting for food.

Users, civil servants are told, are “informavores” who “forage” for information.

Like animals, the look for an “information scent” online. When they find one, they ask themselves: “Am I getting closer to the prey?” and “is it an ‘easy catch’?”

The closer they get, the more they want o know: “How ‘rich’ is this hunting ground?”

The second analogy is that of snacking.

In one section of the new guidelines, web content writers are encouraged to “Be a Snack” and to “avoid making readers/visitors sit down for a full meal!”

Still with the eating theme, another goal is to “trim the fat” by  removing “redundant, outdated and trivial” content from web pages.

The snacking analogy is backed up by a 2013 survey by Mobiles Republic, a global news syndication company in the U.S.

According to the survey, based on responses from over 8,000 News Republic app users, news consumption is rising, but people are reading less—they are checking the news more frequently, but for shorter amounts of time.

“Forget news reading,” says an article about the survey in Adweek. “Today, it’s all about ‘news snacking,’ meaning people are checking the news more often and typically on mobile devices.

“75 percent of readers with smartphones and 70 percent with tablets check the news more than once a day.”

And how do people find the news? 73 percent said they use aggregators, while social media (Facebook and Twitter) is on the rise. 

At the time of the survey, 43 percent of respondents said they used Facebook to check news.

What does this mean for communicators?

Understanding the habits of people looking for information on your website is key to developing the information that will attract them—and keep them coming back.

And today many of those users are informavores who are following information scents so they can forage for a quick snack.

So make sure you leave lots of information scents throughout the Internet.

And whatever you do, don't offer a full-course meal.

Why So Much News Coverage of Paris, but not Beirut? Maybe it's Time to Look in the Mirror.

There’s a lot of discussion going on about why the ISIS attacks in Paris received so much North American media attention, but the ISIS attack in Beirut a day earlier go so little.

One common theme is that people who are not white just don’t matter—it’s because of racism. I don’t think that’s the case. 

The media uses a variety of factors to determine what to cover each day. Proximity is a key one. This is also known as the local angle. 

The local angle is why a car crash that kills nobody on a main street in your city or town leads the news, but a bombing in Baghdad gets no attention at all.

After all, you might want to travel on that road—it affects you. The bombing in Baghdad won’t alter your daily routine.

Plus, you might know people involved in the car crash. Chances are remote you know anyone hurt or killed in bombing so far away.

How does that relate to the Paris and Beirut attacks? 

Paris might not be proximate in terms of geography, but it is close in terms of our thoughts, plans, ideas, books we read (A Tale of Two Cities, Les Miserable). Can you name one book or movie about Beirut?

Plus, there's a better chance you will go to Paris, or know someone in Paris, than Beirut.

Then there’s the basic news test: Is it new? Is it different than normal? Unusual? Out of the ordinary?

When it comes to bombings and attacks in Beirut, the answer is no; it is not unusual.

There have been 59 significant attacks and bombings in Lebanon since 2004, not to mention various civil conflicts. There have been 14 in France in the same time period.

It sounds callous, and I mean no disrespect for the many harmed by attacks in Lebanon. But violence of this type is more common in Lebanon than France, and therefore less potentially newsworthy.

Those are all factors. But a main reason why we got more news about Paris than Beirut is us, the media consumers.

Reporters have known forever that international news is of less interest to readers, viewers and listeners than local news, sports and arts and life.

For a long time, it was hard for them to quantify this knowledge. But the Internet has solved that problem. 

Now they can know day-by-day and hour-by-hour what stories resonate with media consumers.

Stats from my hometown newspaper back this up; a snapshot of website visits for one month in 2014 show that the most visited sections were local, sports, arts & life, opinion, Canada, business, world.

Local, at 2.9 million visits, was over seven times more popular than world news at 396,059. Arts & Life was three times more popular.

Today, an editor recently said, Miss Lonely Hearts, the romance columnist, is more popular than most other parts of the newspaper, except for the local hockey team.

The media isn’t stupid; they aren’t going to publish stories people don’t want. And advertisers won’t pay top dollar to be on pages that few people visit.

In other words, we get the media we want, and maybe that we deserve.

As a panel the Columbia School of Journalism put it, as reported in the book News Prism: Challenges of Digital Communication (2012):  

“There is a crisis in international news reporting in the United States—and not one that should simply be blamed on the reporters, the gatekeepers, or the owners. We know there is stagnation, and even shrinkage, in the number of international stories in the media . . . but the primary reason for this decline is an audience that expresses less and less interest in the  international stories that do appear.”

In the 1960s, reporters at a major U.S. network put it more cynically with what they called the “Racial Equivalence Scale.”

The scale showed the minimum number of people who had to die in plane crashes in different countries before the crash became newsworthy. One hundred Czechs was equal to 43 Frenchmen, and the Paraguayans were at the bottom.”

(BBC journalists had a similar scale, in which “one thousand wogs, 50 frogs and one Briton” were equivalent.)

Not in real life, of course; the death of anyone is a terrible. But in terms of reader interest, that's how it often works.

Of course, there are other factors—the political significance of the country in question (there was more reporting about Iraq in the U.S. during its war against that country), its economic impact (especially if it has oil), or if there are strategic military concerns.

Sometimes complexity can also militate against coverage. Lebanon, with all its competing militias, militaries, political parties, religions and ideologies is very hard to report about and understand.

Good guys versus bad guys is much easier to report about—and read about.

(Of course, if a celebrity is involved, then anything that happens anywhere can be newsworthy.)

This doesn’t excuse the media. But it does begin to explain the difference in coverage of Paris and Beirut.

One more thing: If the lack of media coverage about Beirut bothers you, or the lack of coverage from any other of the world’s hotspots, then tell your local media outlets. 

And also make sure to click on those stories on their websites.

For more on this topic, read my post Why Audiences Say They Like Vegetables but Eat Candy.

The Reason Playboy is Dropping its Nudes (Hint: It Rhymes with "Lacecook")

What’s the real reason why Playboy decided to stop publishing nude photos of women?

One would assume it is the plethora of free porn on the Web. As Playboy chief executive Scott Flanders put it: “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free.”

But it appears that the real reason is Facebook.

If Playboy is going to survive, it needs to attract more viewers and subscribers to its subscription ($9.99 per month) website. And the best way to do that is social media.

According to a report earlier this year, Facebook drives 25% of all web traffic. Altogether, social media now drives more traffic to websites than organic searching.

As Danny Wong put it on Shareaholic:  “Over the years our media consumption habits have changed dramatically. We rely less on homepages and search engines, discovering news pertinent to us through social media and direct messaging on mobile apps.”

So—what does this have to do with Playboy? Facebook doesn’t permit nudity. 

That’s an important reason why Playboy is dropping its nudes.

Said Peter Nowak, author of Sex, Bombs and Burgers: How War, Pornography and Fast Food Have Shaped Modern Technology: "Playboy is . . . looking to play a new game, where it wants to attract online readers through its journalism. To do so, it has to gain traction on Facebook and Twitter, the biggest drivers of online traffic. Both platforms have rules against explicit nudity, so Playboy is conforming." *

Whether it will work is an open question. But the change confirms what we have known for some time: When it comes to online, the conversation has shifted to social media—and to Facebook and Twitter, in particular.

In the case of Playboy, which once broke all the rules and created new ones, it means playing by someone else’s rulebook: Facebook's. 

* Globe and Mail, Oct. 15, 2015.

The End of Print Newspapers in Canada by 2025?

No newspapers in print by 2025 in Canada—that’s what an expert in media trends is predicting.

The prediction was made in August by Ken Goldstein in a paper titled Canada’s Digital Divides. 

Based on current trends, Goldstein says it is “likely there will be few, if any, printed daily newspapers” in Canada by that time.

As for those newspapers that manage to make the transition to online digital formats, they will not be able to “match their current scope in print.”

The reason for the change is dropping circulation and falling advertising. Based on current trend lines, circulation should be below five to ten percent by 2025.

“We do not believe that a viable print business model exists for most general interest daily newspapers once paid circulation drops below 10 per cent of Canadian households,” he says.

“Canada’s daily newspapers now are engaged in a 10-year race against time and technology to develop an online business model that will enable them to preserve their brands without print editions.”

(Goldstein also predicts the end for local broadcast TV stations, suggesting that a decline in advertising will mean that TV watching will move to a pay-per-program model in the future.)

What’s true for mainstream newspapers is also true for church publications.

Last month ChristianWeek, which has existed since 1987, laid off its editorial staff and ended its print edition. It will become online only.

“Moving forward, ChristianWeek will invest in online platforms,” said publisher Brian Koldyk in an e-mail to advertisers.

Although the new online version will continue to solicit ads, it will try to make a go of it by also seeking donations.

In an article in the Winnipeg Free Press, David Botting, chairman of the ChristianWeek board, said that the publication has been existing “on a shoestring for a long time."

He said the paper's board of directors was ready to shut down the entire operation, but agreed to let two new staff try to make a go of it online. 

They will be paid if the website proves sustainable.

News about changes at ChristianWeek will ripple through the Canadian Church Press membership.

The CCP, as it is known, is the umbrella organization for 55 church publications. 

Twelve years ago it had 80 member publications. Nine have closed in the last five years.

A 2015 survey found that almost half of the CCP’s member publications have declining circulation, aging readers and rising costs.

Forty percent rely on denominations for subsidies or grants, meaning that their health is tied to the health of those denominations—some of which are experiencing declining membership and giving.

 “Like all publishers, those in the Christian industry feel pressure from the digital world,” says former CCP President Ian Adnams.

Most church publications have print and online versions, but moving to only being online is problematic.

The majority of paying readers are older, and still like getting printed magazines—which makes it tough to move to online-only formats favoured by younger people.

The other problem is advertising; advertisers aren’t willing to pay the same rates for online ads as for those in print.

Moving to an online-only model, like ChristianWeek, is a bold move. Montreal's La Presse is doing the same thing, moving to a tablet-only version in 2016.

Will it work? By 2025 we'll know the answer.

La Presse Tablet, The Star's Touch and the Newspaper Extinction Timeline

Earlier this month, Montreal's La Presse announced it will eliminate its weekday printed edition starting in January.

The decision puts us right on track for the prediction of the Newspaper Extinction Timeline, which predicts that “newspapers in their current [printed] form will become insignificant” in Canada by 2020.

(The Timeline was a sort of whimsical, sort of serious effort by futurist Ross Dawson to start a conversation about the future of news.)

Also this week, the Toronto Star unveiled their new tablet version, based on the success of La Presse in Montreal. The Star plans to continue the print version.

(Also this month, ChristianWeek,  Canada's only national Christian news publication, announced that it is ending its printed version of the magazine. It will be web-only.)

Anyway, all of these changes makes me look ahead to the future, when those of us who grew up reading newspapers will have to explain them to our grandchildren, as in the Bloom Country comic below.

Got Milk? What Non-Profits Can Learn from the Decline in the Dairy Industry

Canada's dairy industry has a problem: People aren't drinking as much milk as they used to.

According to data released by Statistics Canada, per capita consumption of milk in Canada has fallen by 18 percent since 1995.

Why is this happening? 

One reason is demographics: Canada is getting older. This means fewer children drinking less milk.

Another is ethnicity. Canada welcomes many immigrants from parts of the world where milk is not perceived as a food staple, as it is here. 

When immigrants come to Canada, they bring along culinary traditions that often don’t include milk.

Another phenomenon hitting the dairy sector particularly hard is animal rights. A recent survey found that a significant portion of the drop in milk consumption is due to the belief that industrial farming practices are unethical.

As well, the healthy foods sector is promoting other ways to get protein, calcium and other nutrients, such as almond, soy and rice milk.

Then there are those who say that milk is actually bad for us. A Google search turns up web pages titled "Eight reasons to stop drinking milk now" and "Study suggests milk is bad for bones, heart."

Finally, there is all the competition: Juice, tea, coffee, pop, sports drinks, and more.

In the face of this, the dairy industry needs to do more than buy ads that say "Got milk?" They need to take the issues head-on and take them seriously--not rest on their laurels as a healthy drink.

What does this mean for non-profits?

First off, if a downturn can happen to something as traditional and wholesome as milk, it can happen to anyone.

Second, like with the dairy industry, our main source of "customers" (our donors) is shrinking. The older demographic is literally dying off, and we haven't figured out a way to get younger people to "drink" more of our products.

Third, ethnicity is a challenge. It's not that people from other cultures aren't charitable; they are. But their charity may be more limited due to income, or because they funnel all their giving into the own community and its many needs.

Plus, immigrants send a lot of extra money back home to help their families through remittances. They may not have disposable income for charitable causes.

Fourth, if they do want to give to a traditional charity, what do they know about us? And what do we know about them? One of the fastest-growing ethnic communities in Manitoba is the Filipino community. How many groups offer information in Tagalog?

Fifth, we have our critics, too. Why send money to Africa--why not keep it at home? What about waste and corruption? Why should we help those who won't find jobs?

And, like with non-dairy sources of nourishment, there are alternatives to traditional charities. Many people today wonder why they should give to big, faceless and "corporate" non-profits when they can start their own charities. 

Sixth, competition is a reality. There are over 80,000 non-profits in Canada. Why should people give to yours?

What's the solution?

People in the dairy industry are calling on it to become more innovative, do more research and know more about consumer demand. How is the landscape changing?

Non-profits can do the same things. We need to understand the challenges facing our groups today, learn more about the people we want to reach, target our messages better, and counter our critics.

Most of all, we need to build and present compelling cases for why people should give to us.

After all, ads and messages that say the equivalent of "Got milk?" ("Got need?") won't cut it any more.

Dead Child on the Beach, Dying Child in the Desert: The Power of Images to Move Us

If ever anyone wondered about the power of a single image, the tragic photo of the dead Syrian child on the beach provides a chilling and moving answer.

The photo has appeared in media and social media around the world. It has not only affected people emotionally, it has also changed the nature of the Canadian election.  
(The child, whose name is Aylan Kurdi, was 3. Also drowned was his mother, Reham, and brother, Gulip, 5.)

This isn’t the first image of the terrible refugee crisis in the region. Many photos of crowds of refugees walking to Europe or crowded into small boats have been published. They have had the power to overwhelm, but perhaps not move us the way this image has.

And why is that? The fact that the child is dead is one reason. How small he is is another. And the fact it is a child—an innocent.

It’s unfortunate that it takes such a tragic incident to capture the world’s attention. But it’s perfectly understandable, as I wrote earlier about why our brains make us want to help one child, but not millions of people.

The photo reminds me of another seminal photo from 1993 by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kevin Carter (above).

Carter spent much of his career recording the horror of famine and war in Africa. In 1993 he took a photo in Sudan of a vulture stalking a dying child. 

Like the photo of Ayan dead on the beach, the photo of the vulture and child came to encapsulate the tragedy of war and hunger in Sudan and helped shape both the public discourse and the response. 

For the photo, Carter won a Pulitzer prize. A year later, at age 33, he killed himself. 

In his suicide note, he said, among other things, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain . . . of starving or wounded children.”

Taking photos like that affects the photographer and the viewer. It affects us all at a visceral level.

But will it move us to action? That is the big question. And what action should that be?

That’s also a good question. Making a donation to your favourite charity to help people affected by the crisis in Syria would be a good place to start.

What Makes a Story Go Viral?

Why do some things posted on social media go viral? What do they have in common?

That was the question raised by Maria Konnikova in the Jan. 21 issue of the New Yorker. 

In the article Konnikova references research by Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania, who analyzed about 7,000 articles that had appeared in the New York Times in 2008 to see what distinguished items that made the most-e- mailed list.

Through their research, they found that two features predictably determined an article’s success: how positive its message was and how much emotion it provoked.

Just how arousing each emotion was also made a difference. Stories that might make readers angry or anxious—about a political scandal or a risk for cancer—were as likely to be shared as one about cute pandas.

Berger and Milkman went on to test their findings in a more controlled setting. They presented students with content and observed their propensity to pass it along.

Again, they found the same patterns. Amusing and positive stories were shared more frequently than less amusing ones, and stories that elicited anger were shared more than moderate ones.

How a story is framed also affected its virality.

A story about someone who was injured that focused on the preventable cause of the injury was shared less frequently than one that emphasized how the injured person was overcoming that injury—even though it was the same story.

The findings have been replicated by other studies that found that videos that make people angry or inspire them are more likely to be shared. 

Berger has captured his findings in his new book Since his initial foray into the nature of sharing, Berger has gone on to research and test a variety of viral-promoting factors, which he details in his new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

According to Berger, while emotion and arousal still top the list, there are other factors.

One is what he calls social currency—something that makes people feel that they’re not only smart, but in the know. 

I would call it the mirroring effect; people are interested in knowing what others will think of them if they share something.

Before they share something, they may wonder: “How will this make me look if I share it? Will I look smart? That I care?”

The presence of a memory-inducing trigger is also important, Berger says; we share what we know or are thinking about. 

In media relations, this is known simply as currency—something that others are already talking about is more likely to be shared because people know about it. 

Finally, the quality of the story itself is a predictor of going viral, he says.

“People love stories. The more you see your story as part of a broader narrative, the better,” Berger says. 

In other words, a compelling, well-written story will be seen as worth sharing.

Well-written stories that are positive and arouse emotions—those are the ones that go viral, according to the researchers. 

The challenge for non-profits is that, somewhere along the way, many came to believe that stories needed to be drained of emotion and personality.

Somehow we came to believe that if we simply presented the facts of the case or detailed the scope of the injustice, people would respond. 

Unfortunately, lists of numbers of people who are hungry or in need rarely move us, or make us share that information.

For that, we need our hearts to be touched.

For more on this topic, check my post Why Your Brain Wants to Help One Person, But not Millions.   

Also see Boiling Over to Get Media Coverage for a local example of how one group managed to get media attention by hooking their cause to a story in the news.

Mike Duffy, Nigel Wright, the PMO and the First and Second Rules of Media Relations

The troubles besetting the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Prime Minister himself, over the Mike Duffy affair bring to mind a column by Don Martin of the National Post.

Written back in 2008, when the PMO was engaged in another communications disaster, Martin provided two simple rules for good media relations and communications.

First, tell the truth

Second, never lie.

It’s also good advice for avoiding trouble with the law, not to mention getting re-elected.

Lying to the media is probably the worst sin a media relations professional can commit. (Exaggerated claims is a close second.) 

By not telling the truth, communicators risk poisoning their relations with reporters. And once trust is lost with the media, it’s hard to get back.

Plus, it never works, as the courtroom drama in Ottawa these days is showing—someone will always spill the beans.

And if that doesn't happen, reporters are enterprising people. Their job requires them to probe, research, ask questions and investigate—and be naturally suspicious.

If the truth is out there, they will find it. 

When they find it, and if you have been lying, it will not be a good experience for you or the organization you represent.

Not only will it cast a pall over your relations with reporters, it will jeopardize the reputation of your organization and cast the net of suspicion even wider to current and potential donors.

And any goodwill you have created over years of diligent and careful media relations will be lost—maybe never to return.

As Martin put it: “One lie and a flack is a liar forever. And that's the truth.”

For more on this topic, read "The First Rule of Crisis Management: Don't. Lie." by Scott Reid, a political analyst with CTV and formerly part of the PMO under Paul Martin, in the Ottawa Citizen.