It's All Digital Now, and Other Thoughts from Brodie Fenlon, CBC Director of Daily News

In 2016 I wrote a post about Brodie Fenlon, then Senior Director for Digital News at CBC. In it, he shared his thoughts about the digital revolution. In November I arranged for Fenlon—now Senior Director Daily News and Bureaus at CBC—to speak to a group of communicators from church-related agencies. This time it was about how CBC is adapting to this digital world. Below find excerpts from that presentation—a bit long, I know, but maybe there’s something here that addresses questions you are asking.

It’s All Digital Now

Fenlon noted that when electricity was developed, people talked about electric stoves, electric fridges, electric lights, etc. to distinguish them from the old technologies of wood stoves, ice boxes and gas lights.

But when everything became electric, people stopped doing that.

“That is where we are at with digital today,” he said. “Now it’s just a stove, a fridge, a light.”

It's all just digital now, in other words.

It's the same with stories at the CBC. They used to talk about digital stories versus print, radio or TV stories, he said.

“But then we decided it wasn’t a matter of digital versus broadcast, but just about storytelling. We want to start with the story, the story is first, then we move to platforms.”

The CBC, he added, has “stopped thinking of digital as a separate activity . . . we used to think of the platform first. But that model no longer works. We start with story, then think of best way to tell it across platforms.”

Today, he said, “it’s just a stove, it’s just a story. That’s how audience thinks of it, and how we should think of it, too.” 

Presentation Matters

When developing a story, reporters spend a lot of time on the content—as they should. Less time is spent on how the story looks on a screen.

Fenlon noted that presentation plays a huge role in whether someone clicks on a story or not. 

And what are the three most important things in helping people make that decision to click or not? Headline, image and summary.

“We spend a lot of time on stories, but little on the presentation,” he said. “Each headline, image, and blurb matters.”

It’s All About Mobile

As has been noted earlier on this blog, the future for non-profit communication is mobile.

It's the same for the media.

“The growth for the CBC is mobile,” he said. “73% of visits to our news site our mobile.”

For website designers, who build pages on desktops, this means remembering how most people see them—on phones.

Something may look great on a desktop, Fenlon said, but it should be checked on a phone to see what it looks like on that platform before going live.

This also affects video; most people use their phones vertically, so the CBC is making more vertical video.

“It’s a big ask to get people to turn their phones,” he said.

Reaching Millennials

The big challenge for non-profits is how to engage millennials. It also preoccupies the CBC.

Reflecting on millennials, Fenlon noted they are people in their jobs, newly-married or living with partner, having their first child, buying their first house.

Because of this, they are becoming more interested in news—about the economy, schools, childcare, housing, interest rates, etc.

This audience is on the phone, he said; outreach to them needs to be “phone first.”

As for what they want from a news outlet, "they also want to have some fun,” he said, noting that “the news is often bad.”

Millennials want two things from news, he stated.

“They want to know what’s going on, but they also like to feel uplifted, to laugh," he said.

This is why late night shows are so popular with this age group, he added, with their mix of news and humour.

Additionally, “they want to know what to do when there is bad news. They want constructive journalism, solutions journalism, they want to hear about people who are fixing problems, and know how they can be part of the solution.”

Back to the Future with Newsletters

Back in the early days of digital, organizations sent newsletters by e-mail—lots of them. The early ones were often just print newsletters in PDF form. They were hard to download and read.

Groups then moved to table-of-contents-style newsletters—a single (though sometimes long) page of links pushing people to websites.

When services like MailChimp came along, groups had better ways of not only sending newsletters, but also of counting click-through rates—how many people actually opened them and clicked-through to websites.

More recently, enthusiasm for newsletters has waned as people get bombarded with e-mails. 

Plus, most people are on social media; why not use that channel? Should we drop newsletters altogether?

Fenlon says no. The CBC, he says, thinks they are a great way to connect with audiences. 

Why? “The good thing about newsletters is that we own and operate them,” he said. 

Unlike with Facebook, which owns that medium and uses it to suit its own needs and goals, newsletters “are ours alone, not dependent on others to share information.”

Although Facebook is the main driver of visits to the CBC website, it controls how people find it and what they hear from it. It makes the rules.

“We are beholden to their interests, and their interests are not our interests,” he said.

Newsletters, on the other hand, are completely controlled by the organization that creates them.

He doesn’t worry if the CBC’s newsletters don't drive traffic to the website.

“We provide a short summary and a link to full story, but it’s not critical that people go to website. It is not a way to drive them somewhere else. The newsletter is the destination.”

Audiences, he said, “hate it when you try to push them somewhere else. If this is their only news source, that’s fine.”

What makes a newsletter successful?

“It has to be useful,” he said. “That’s why people sign up for them, open them.”

For groups that make newsletters, it means being “clear about their purpose, and who they are for,” if they are to succeed.

Which Social Media is the Best?

Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram—so many options. Which ones to use?

This is a big question for non-profits, which are often cash-strapped and constrained when it comes to staff time and resources.

As it turns out, the CBC also wrestles with this question.

How to decide which social media platforms to focus on? Fenlon asks three things:

Does it have reach in Canada?

Does it have good growth prospects? (e.g. Twitter is declining, but snapchat is growing.)

Does it convert the audience back to our website?

At the end of the day, though, “none of the platforms matter if you don’t have a good story to tell.”

How CBC Decides Which Stories to Tell

Non-profits that want media attention often wonder: How does an outlet like the CBC decide which stories to tell?

For Fenlon, it’s a “combination of story and logistics. It is partly driven by what is current, but also by whether we have the people and resources to cover it.”

On the story side, it’s a question of the angle, whether its current, if the audience is interested or if they should know about it.

On the logistics side, the questions are more prosaic: Is a camera and reporter available? Is there time to run it? How much will it cost?

For international stories, this is complicated by the need to travel, get visas, file a security plan, and have a reporter and camera out of the studio for a week or more.

Added to this is the fast-pace of the news cycle today.

“This is a news cycle unlike anything ever experienced due to Trump,” he said.

“It’s a new paradigm—everything is news, and it keeps changing. Much of that is driven by Washington . . . The normal rules of the media and news don’t apply.”

“Add a disaster to that, and it’s hard to know how to keep up,” he said.

What do Audiences Want?

That’s a question facing the CBC, and non-profits, too.

“There are always two competing interests for audiences,” Fenlon said. “Is it relevant to me, is it close to me—geographically, do I know someone involved in the story, is it in my country or province?”

“The further away the story is, the less interested people are.”

At the same time, there are things people should know, he said.

“We try to keep that in front of them,” he said, citing how they sent a reporter to South Sudan to report on the famine in that country.

“There wasn’t a huge audience or appetite, but it reached a small number of people who could make a difference,” he said.

How to Attract Media Attention?

“I get hundreds of messages every day,” he said, noting that press releases with his name copied into them don’t work.

“I don’t look at them. I don’t have time,” he said.

The best route “is to build connections with actual reporters,” he said. “But it still needs to be a good story. News always based on a hook. It drives everything. The pitch needs to be newsworthy. We want something new and original, and that is tied into news cycle.”

How to Measure Engagement?

At one time the main measurement was reach, he said—how many people clicked on a story.

Today the key is “how long stay on page, how much they read, watch and spend time.”

CBC uses Chartbeat to measure this form of engagement.

“Reach still matters, but think we will achieve more by getting more engagement,” he said.

Competition for Attention

“The competition for attention is huge,” he said, adding that the CBC is not just “competing against other Canadian media, but against media in other countries, with anyone who publishes in the English language. Everyone is our competitor.”

Conclusion

Thinking about Fenlon’s presentation, one thought occurs to me: It’s comforting to know that even a media outlet as big as the CBC is challenged by the changing communication’s environment, and in keeping up with the news—it’s not just little non-profits feeling this way.