Hey, Media; If You Want to Engage More People, Don't Bum Them Out

Surprise! People don’t like news that bums them out.

That’s the conclusion of a new study reported by Nieman Lab about why people avoid news that makes them feel depressed.

You know, like almost all the news out there these days.

In the article, it was reported that almost a third of people surveyed worldwide for the Reuters Digital News Report said they “often or sometimes” avoid the news.

And why is that? The leading cause was because “it can have a negative effect on my mood” (48 percent).

Twenty-eight percent (the third leading cause) said it was because it made them feel helpless.

Now, some things that happen in the world just can’t be sugar-coated: War, crime, poverty, natural disasters, mass shootings (in the U.S.), starvation.

People need to know about those things if they are to be informed and engaged world citizens.

But that’s not all they need to know. 

They also need to know what, if anything, they can do about it, or what others are doing about it to make things better.

And that is called Solutions Journalism, which I have written about before on this blog. (Here, here and here.)

With Solutions Journalism, people are presented with a problem, but also with ways to respond.

For example, they could be being given links to aid groups when there is a natural disaster in the developing world.

Like this article, in the Winnipeg Free Press, about how to respond to Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas.

Or it could be interviews with people who are working on fixing the problem—neighbours, social service organizations, faith groups, NGOs, etc.

Something that shows somebody is doing something; it's not all hopeless.

Of course, that requires more time, and likely also follow-up, instead of just drive-by reporting.

It means reporters coming back to the story in a month or more to see if things are improving—along with things learned that could be useful next time around.

And not only that; people who feel empowered by journalism come back for more.

Research by Caroline Murray and Talia Stroud at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas confirms this.

They found when people don't feel bummed out by a report they have a higher perception of the quality of the article, a greater sense of personal positivity, an increased intention to become engaged, and a desire to read more articles about the issue.

“When it comes to solutions journalism, the more information you can provide readers, the better. Adding additional components beyond the problem and the solution (i.e. implementation, results, and insights) can bolster positive responses to your work,” they say. 

This is a change from past practice. .

In the past, reporters were content to see their role as describing problems, then letting others figure out how to fix them.

But that is changing as the media finds itself on the ropes and needing to engage news consumers more.

By working with people to fix problems, the media can be seen not just as a watchdog—an important function—but also as a good neighbour who helps out. 

Someone who doesn’t bum us out all the time, in other words.

Photo at top from the Rescue Time blog.

Fake News and Facebook, or What can we Learn From the Russians During the Cold War?

In the 1980s, during the Cold War, I read an article the state of news coverage in Russia.

Back then, the media in Russia was state-controlled. 

Bad news about the state was suppressed, and negative news about the West was highlighted.

As a result, you might think that Russians were poorly informed about the world.

Of course, many were. But the researchers also found something surprising.

Because they knew their media was state-controlled, many Russians assumed whatever it published or broadcast was slanted or untrue.

This made many of them diligent about seeking out alternative sources of information, like the BBC or underground newspapers.

In this way, they could either confirm or debunk what they were getting from their media.

It was different in the West. Since we had a free press, we assumed everything we read, heard or saw was the truth.

Much of it was. But some of it wasn’t.

Governments and corporations in the West also lied or bent the truth—like about progress in the war in Vietnam, about the march of Communism around the world, the size and danger posed by the Russian military, or the lack of danger from certain kinds of chemicals or pollutants.

Even cigarettes were safe; all those doctors said so. It was in the newspaper! 

By assuming what we got from the media was always true, we let our guards down.

(We didn’t know, back then, that the CIA used to plant negative stories about governments the U.S. disliked in newspapers in other countries, then get them picked up and republished by American newspapers, from where they would travel to other western nations. Voila! Instant credibility.)

It took the diligent work of activists, or whistle-blowers like Daniel Ellsberg releasing the Pentagon Papers, to help us see the truth about various situations.

That old article about the Russians, the media and the Cold War came back to me recently during the huge debate taking place about Facebook.

In an article on the CBC website, reporter Michael Braga wrote about how people are stealing photos of children off Facebook and passing them off as their own.

In addition to all the other fake news, posts, free offers and such on Facebook, it is “a good reminder of how easy it has become online to pass misinformation off as authentic," he wrote.

And because it is so difficult to police or control, it's also a good reminder of "how the onus has largely shifted, unfairly or not, onto users to sort out what's real and what's not.”

In other words, we can be critical of Mark Zuckerberg all we want, but at the end of the day it’s up to us to be smart about what we like and share.

Of course, this is just simple media literacy: Assume what we read on Facebook, or any other media platform, isn’t true until we can be satisfied that it is.

We need to ask: Does it come from a credible source? Can it be corroborated by a second source? Does it sound too good to be true? (Is WestJet really giving away free airline tickets?)

My own worry is that Facebook has become too big and too successful to ever reform itself.

Maybe governments around the world will impose regulations on it. But until then it’s up to every user to screen out the fake from the true.

Maybe those Russians during the Cold War can be our guide. 

P.S. The rise of "deepfakes"—videos that overlay celebrity faces on to porn stars or make Barack Obama say anything you want him to say—make separating true from false harder all the time. It's a scary world out there.

Nine Ways Newspapers Can Reconnect with Readers

It’s no secret the media is in trouble.

Newspapers, in particular, are really on the ropes.

The main reason is the loss of advertising revenue. For decades, newspapers built their business model on businesses buying ads.

Circulation was still important, especially since it helped establish the price of ads. The more subscribers you had, the more you could charge for advertising.

But circulation wasn’t enough to pay the bills.

As the old adage put it, circulation paid for the paper and ink, but ads paid for the journalism.

When its business model fell apart, newspapers were in trouble.

Faced with the loss of advertising revenue, newspapers turned to the other source of dollars—readers.

But circulation was in decline, too.

At the very time newspapers needed readers to help them survive, they found many of them were gone.

Now they want to get them back, and attract new ones.

But how?

A new book out of Denmark offers some suggestions.

Titled The Journalistic Connection, the book is the result of year-long research in Europe and the U.S.

The authors visited 54 media companies pioneering new ways to connect with their audiences and communities and came up with nine suggestions for ways forward.

1. From neutrality to identity.

In order for people to relate and identity with the media, they must show “what you stand for,” the researchers say.

“Show them who you are, and from which perspective — geographically, socio-demographically, or politically — you view the world.”

2. From omnibus to niche.

 

“Apart from a very few media with global reach, all media can be considered niche operations. However, many broad-reaching legacy media hesitate to openly show and communicate which niche audience they seek to engage.”

 

Targeted niche media show it “is possible to create both quality journalism of high public value and cater to targeted audiences at the same time.”

 

3. From flock to club.

 

“Gathering people around the news media, in clearly defined communities — clubs — is a strategy gaining momentum on both sides of the Atlantic. This implies transforming what were formerly known as subscribers, users, or readers into members, that must either register or pay to join the inner circles of the crowd around the news media.”

 

4. From ink to sweat.

 

“Many media companies are pursuing new ways to create physical journalism in the form of public meetings, festivals, events, and stage plays. Live and engaging. And yes, they consider it journalism.”

(The Winnipeg Free Press experimented with something like this, with its cafe, as in the photo above.)

 

5. From speaking to listening.

 

“The legacy media business often has the character of a walled fortress more than of an open and accessible house. But both in the U.S. and Europe, news organizations are increasingly opening up — physically and mentally — in order to be more accessible to the citizens they serve.”

 

More than anything, “this means listening to citizens and creating more transparency in editorial matters. This can be done through direct personal dialogue, through physical presence in communities, or through the systematic use of small and big data.”

 

6. From arm’s length to cooperation.

 

“In order to maintain independence and neutrality, modern journalism has kept its distance, holding everyone outside the newsroom at arm’s length: citizens, interest groups, public institutions, private corporations, decision makers.”

 

However, “this pattern is clearly changing. More and more newsrooms are involving citizens directly throughout the journalistic process: from ideation to research to delivery of independent content to the subsequent debate of published stories.”

 

Without giving up editorial gate keeping, a number of media are working with local groups, NGOs and public institutions “as a way to create a both substantially deeper and more engaging journalism.”

 

7. From own to other platforms.

 

The consensus in the media today is that it “weakens business opportunities of the news media and their journalistic control when they put their content on social media.”

 

And “using social media is a double-edged sword. [B]ut handled in the right way — maybe more as a way to cooperate than distribute — social network technologies have big potential to enhance and deepen engagement, while at the same time creating stronger journalism.”

 

8. From problem to solution.

 

“Even the most hardcore investigative journalists have discovered they gain greater impact if they add a solution-oriented level to their work.”

 

Also known as solutions journalism, constructive journalism “creates more engagement among readers, users, viewers. They read more, they are more likely to share content, and they express more interest in knowing more about the issue when the piece has a constructive angle.”

 

9. From observers to activists.

 

Several news outlets are testing “whether they can create a new relevance to their readers, users, and viewers through activist campaigns or journalistic advocacy. This move is particularly controversial for many journalists.”

 

Conclusion

The researchers conclude that the media which are most successful at creating and maintaining ties with their readers, users, listeners and viewers “will increasingly be media that dare challenge some of the journalist dogmas of the last century: the dogma of arm’s length; the dogma of neutrality; the dogma of objectivity; the belief that journalists have a special ability to find and choose what is important for citizens.”

For journalism to be relevant for citizens in the future, they go on to say, “it will to a large extent need to challenge these deeply rooted professional dogmas, thus creating a media landscape that is more varied, more lively, more organically open to the citizens and much more diverse than the news industry we have seen for a hundred years.”

Challenging words. What do you think?

First it was Unbundled. Now is it Time for the Media to be Unscaled?

Are you ready for a magazine called "Me"?

In a previous post, I wrote about how the media had become unbundled.

That process is pretty much complete.

As I wrote earlier, the media became bundled as a way to most efficiently and effectively serve its customers. 

It was not profitable, or even possible, to deliver each article the moment it was finished.

So publishers collected articles into daily, weekly and monthly bundles called newspapers and magazines.

They then delivered these bundles of information to readers.

This bundling had the positive, and perhaps unintended, effect of being attractive to advertisers, who wanted to reach the most people.

Then the Internet came along and disrupted this practice of bundling.

Now that the barrier of cost and efficiency was eliminated; single articles could now be shared immediately and inexpensively.

There was no need to bundle them together anymore.

Since the media's business model was built on bundling, and with it the ability to attract advertisers, this was devastating.

Since the early 2000s, advertising revenues have been falling. In the U.S., newspaper advertising fell from $49 billion in 2006 to $18 billion in 2017.

But if unbundling was the cause of the problem, can it also be a solution—from an advertising point of view?

Yes, say authors Hemant Taneja and Kevin Maney in their new book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future.

In it, they say the main idea behind business in the 20^th century was to get bigger—to scale up.

The reason was simple: By being bigger, they could take advantages of economies of scale.

For the media, this meant newspaper chains buying more titles, and broadcast companies buying more stations.

That way, they could attract more eyeballs, making them more attractive to advertisers (especially national advertisers).

But this traditional idea of “scaling up” in business has been disrupted.

Today, most advertisers aren’t interested in reaching the masses. They are more interested in reaching individuals who are interested in their products—micro-targeting.

And so they have fled things like traditional newspapers, TV and radio for platforms like Google and Facebook where they can put their ads in front of people who want to see them.

For the media, this is a huge loss. But, the authors say, it may also be an opportunity.

It means moving from a mass market—larger circulations or listeners or viewers—to an audience of one.

Here’s how it might work.

Through AI, the media can now learn exactly what I am interested in reading, seeing or listening to.

It can then create special editions or channels for each reader, viewer or listener—a product geared just to me.

This now becomes attractive to advertisers, who can target their ads to me and what I am interested in.

In an article on Nieman Reports, Taneja and Maney write:

“AI holds the key to media profits. The most valuable advertising online today is the most targeted. Advertisers will pay more to a Facebook or Google because it can learn about you from your activity and fire ads at you that you’ll likely want to see.

“AI-driven media platforms will take that to the next level. If you opt in and let your media access data from your online and offline activity you’ll only see ads for products you’re likely to desire—and only see the kinds of ads that are effective on you.”

Of course, this raises other concerns: Won’t people become even more isolated inside their individual political, racial, religious and other silos?

That is a big issue. Maybe it can be countered by ensuring that no matter what is in my special feed, there is always an option to catch other important news.

Of course, it’s already happening at a user level; we pre-select the websites we will visit, the news sources we follow, the friends we accept on Facebook.

But what Taneja and Maney are suggesting will take it to a different level. 

Back in the selfish and self-absorbed 1980s, the old joke was that magazines had gone from Life to People to Us.

Soon, it was said, someone will create a magazine called Me.

That wasn’t possible back then. Soon it may be literally true.

A (Very) Unscientific Survey About Young Adults and the News

Every now and then I get a chance to speak to university students about communications and my work at an international NGO.

I like to use those occasions to learn more about their information-gathering habits. Where do they get their news?

This fall I spoke to a group of students taking an International Development Studies (IDS) course at the University of Winnipeg.

Before speaking, I had them fill out a short (and very unscientific) survey.

Demographically, they were between the ages of 18-25. 21 were female, 4 were male.

Here's what I asked.

What do they think are the most trustworthy sources of information?

90%: NGOs

63%: Activist organizations

47%: Mainstream media

5%: Social media

0%: Political parties or religious groups

I was surprised to find NGOs and activist organizations higher than the mainstream media. But maybe that's because they are IDS students. 

I wasn't surprised to see that politicians and religious groups were poorly regarded—but zero percent?

What news do they want the most?

60%: National

56%: Foreign

37%: Local

30% Sports

16% Health

13% Arts

0% Business

Again, given they are taking an IDS course, it follows that foreign news would rank high. 

The poor showing for business surprises me, since business impacts international development in many ways.

What is your main source of news?

69%: Social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)

66%: Mainstream media (79% online)

32%: Radio

32%: TV

In this, they are like other Canadian young adults; social media is the primary source of information.

At the same time, when you consider how little trust they put in social media, it’s surprising to see that as #1. 

I’m guessing they see it as a way find and access information from other news sources—that's how many people use Facebook and Twitter today to learn what’s happening in the world.

As for how they access news, it's mostly online. 96% said they get it through their phone. Laptops trail far behind at 18%, with desktop computers at 3%.

As for what media they get like to get news from, they listed the New York Times, Globe and Mail, Winnipeg Free Press, Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC and the Guardian.

What to make of this? 

Not too much, except to confirm what we already know: Younger people get their information online, and via social media.

As for politicians, these young adults are not alone; a recent survey found that politicians are the least respected profession in Canada for all ages.

In retrospect, I should have asked if they would pay to get news. With media trying to find a new business model, that would be interesting information.

What other questions would you ask? 

Can you Live without a Newspaper? Almost 9 out of 10 Canadians Say Yes

Could you live without a newspaper?

86% of Canadians say yes.

That information comes from a survey conducted in June by Abacus Data.

According to the survey, almost 9 out of 10 people in Canada say they’d be fine if their local newspaper went out of business—they’d still be able to get all the news and information they need.

If Canadians aren’t turning to newspapers for news, where are they going?

Facebook.

In another survey conducted by Abacus in 2016, they found that 21% of Canadians turn to Facebook first for news.

Altogether, a total of 41% of Canadians go online for breaking news, either to social media or a news website—not to print.

For people ages 18-29, that figure is 69%, with 43% turning to Facebook first.

It’s a generational thing, in other words. While 40% of those aged 60 and over read a printed newspaper each day that number falls to just 10% of those aged 18 to 29.

24% of people aged 18-29 never read a newspaper. 25% might check one once a month.

“If you want to get a story or opinion in front of a Canadian audience, you need to make sure you’re making it available to consumers in an attention-getting and engaging way on Facebook,” Abacus says, noting that 82% of Canadians use it to read news stories.

The challenge of Facebook is that the range of knowledge tends to narrow for people who use it as a main source of information.

As Abacus discovered, only 28% of younger Canadians report using Facebook to follow a broad range of topics. 51% pursue only what interests them.

Older age groups are more likely to keep up with a variety of topics.

With Facebook’s algorithms designed to cater news and information to each user’s unique interests, this means the likelihood of them encountering new ideas or stories is limited.

As Abacus put it: “The resulting reliance on Facebook as a primary source means users are getting a limited world view and a limited set of opinions that most closely match their own (confirmation bias).

“To get messages and stories to reach a wider untapped audience, organizations need to be creative with organic online activities and clever with paid online activities.”

(Interestingly, 19% of Facebook users say they follow charities on that platform, which is a good bit of news for non-profits. 10% say they follow religious organizations. The trick is how to get them to like and then share information sent to them.)

Many will lament this situation, but there’s no going back.

Says Abacus: “Offline breaking news sources are being eclipsed by digital news sources as generational disruption and widespread use of social media and mobile technology radically alters the news and information landscape.

“The change we are witnessing is moving so quickly that we anticipate within another five years, how Canadians consume news and information will look nothing like it did two decades before.”

And you won’t find that in a newspaper—if you can find a newspaper at all.

What Can the Media Learn From Churches?

What can newsrooms learn from churches?

If there ever was a title that was made for this Faith Page columnist and media junkie, that is it.

It appeared on an article by by Benjamin Mullin on the Poynter Institute earlier this month.

(It also reminded me of my earlier post about what the mainstream media might learn from church publications.)

In the article, Mullin notes that prior to the Internet and social media, the media didn’t need to innovate. Profits were strong and steady, so why change?

Today, however, the traditional business model for legacy media “has been gutted.” 

Advertising has declined precipitously, and circulation, viewers and listeners are decreasing across the board.

In response, the media has been casting around for an answer. The problem is, Mullin says, they keep asking each other how to get out of the fix they’re in. 

Problem is, none of them have an answer, either.

So what if instead of seeking answers in the same old places, the media looked elsewhere—like to churches and other membership organizations?

That’s what New York University professor Jay Rosen says they need to do.

“In the news industry, it's very common for managers, when confronted with something different, to say: ‘Who else is doing this?’” Rosen said. 

“But what they mean by ‘who else is doing this’ is, ‘who else in news?’ And, more specifically, ‘who else in our category?’

“They tend to look horizontally at their own kind.”

What they should do, he suggests, is look to churches, orchestras, activist organizations — to groups that have managed to build and keep devoted, paying followings.

To learn more, Rosen created that the Membership Puzzle Project, a collaboration between the Dutch journalism platform de Correspondent and New York University. 

The aim of the project is to “gather knowledge about the most important question for the future of high quality, public-service journalism: How do we build a sustainable news organization that restores trust in journalism and moves readers to become paying members of an online community?”

Or, to put it another way, the Project wants to find out what makes membership programs successful.

Based on the success of de Correspondent, Rosen believes the membership model holds a lot of promise for news organizations.

And what is he learning so far?

Again, based on what’s happening at de Correspondent, he believes a key to success is for everyone in the newsroom to accept the principle of connecting with members and engaging with people as knowledgeable readers.

He also thinks it is important for the media to customers, but as people who are engaged in the creation of the news.

When people are engaged with journalism and they feel a part of it, a “strong bond” is created between members and journalists, he says.

At de Correspondent, a way this happens is that reporters are required to do weekly emails that explain what they're working on and the knowledge needs they have.

“They ask for help from the membership,” Rosen says. “And so they're constantly drawing information — knowledge, tips, contacts, links — from the members . . . they treat the members not just as financial supporters, but as a knowledge community.

What he’s trying to figure out is how to create “a more muscular notion of membership than simply, ‘Donate money to support this site?’ That has become our headlight observation.”

To come up with is more “muscular” model, Rosen intends to research a variety of membership organizations. Churches are of particular interest.

Reflecting on the Project, part of me wants to warn Rosen—churches aren’t doing as well as he thinks. Like the media, and every other group or organization, they are challenged by a greying and shrinking audience.

But I applaud him for looking beyond the usual places for answers. This is something I think all groups, organizations, faith groups, and the media should do.

What if we got the leaders from all those different groups in a room and invited them to work at the common challenges together? What kind of wisdom might arise?

Who knows—maybe the answer might be found in the place that is least suspected and expected.

And if it can’t be found—if there truly is no new model to replace all the models the Internet broke, to paraphrase Clay Shirky—then at least, at the end of the day, we can say we tried our best.