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5 Ways to Adapt Your Media Strategy to the Changing Media Landscape

A man typing on a typewriter.

Whenever I look back on my 50-year career in American journalism, I inevitably have two reactions: 1) Yikes! I’m getting old! and 2) the changes in the media landscape have been so incredibly dramatic that it sounds like I’m telling tales from another century (which it actually was when I started in 1973.)

I worked before cellphones and before desktop computers—using something called a typewriter! I actually dictated breaking news stories, like a prison riot, by calling the newsroom and asking for “Dictation” to read my hastily hand-written story from my reporter’s pad to a typist. I later transmitted my typed stories via a first-generation “electric facsimile machine” by plugging a telephone receiver into a gizmo that spun each page on a roller, gave off a horrible smell and a whining noise, and took two-minutes-per page to transmit.

The revolutionary reshaping of both the technology and the basic size and structure of the news media has been so stunning that it’s hard to believe it happened so fast and continues happening. Understanding these changes is crucial for public relations professionals if we want to keep serving our clients by getting their messages out to the broadest audience possible.

As the primary editor and “Chief Storyteller” for The Reis Group for the past 10 years, I have thought a lot about finding the best methods to help clients tell important stories. At TRG, we specialize in some of the nation’s most important issues in health care and social change, so we strive to reach both the mass media as well as specialty trade publications.

But our job has become harder than ever because mainstream journalism has been decimated over the past two decades as its advertiser-based business model was virtually destroyed by the internet. Journalism jobs have declined by 26% in the last 15 years, and what is particularly concerning is both the shrinkage and the disappearance of subject-matter experts among reporters.

Consider a few examples: in Denver, just 15 years ago, two major daily newspapers, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, employed 600 journalists. But the News went out of business in 2009 and the Post has been steadily milked dry its by hedge-fund owners who have shrunk the newsroom to about 60 people—covering a metropolitan area of some 3 million people.

Subject-matter expertise has largely disappeared. When I worked at The Washington Post from 1981 to 2013, our Justice Department reporter was a lawyer, our health reporter was a practicing part-time emergency-room doctor, and our Agriculture Department reporter was actually a part-time farmer. Major news outlets like The Post still have some specialists, but they are rarer than ever and non-existent in most media organizations.

This means PR professionals must be smarter, more creative and more persistent than ever in pitching your stories. Here are some tips for trying to maximize your impact:

  • Identify your targets: since few outlets have subject-matter specialists anymore, you have to closely follow the bylines for every article that touches on your clients’ topics. A media outlet may not have a health specialist, for example, but a reporter who has written a story or two on health topics will be your most fruitful target to pursue.
  • Be persistent: in shrinking newsrooms, reporters are busier than ever. It will not be easy to get their attention or their time. But well-phrased emails, texts and phone calls can still do the trick if you persist.
  • Vivid subject lines are vital: reporters get a million emails, the majority of which they won’t even open. You need the grabbiest wording to get their attention. “Local hospital closing feared” is much more likely to get opened than a subject line saying, “Funding problems jeopardize care.”
  • Make it easy for them: most journalists, like most people, can be lazy. So the more information you can provide (a “story kit,” if you will,) and the less work they have to do, the more likely a reporter will be to make the effort to pursue the story.
  • Be realistic: it’s exceedingly difficult to get stories placed in major publications like The New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Better to spend more time diversifying your list of targets.

There’s no question that these tips will help you succeed. It’s just that it may take a while, like the good old electric facsimile. It was pretty slow, but if you were patient, it eventually did the job.

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