It seems that how news is gathered and disseminated, as well as the platforms being used are barely recognizable compared to just twenty years ago. Same goes for the people gathering it.
If you flip on your favorite local news station, open a newspaper, or go to one of their websites or social platforms you may find yourself asking, “What happened?” But this is not some sudden shift. What has happened to or changed in local news is a story that is decades in the making. It is also a story that is important for PR professionals to understand.
Let me begin with an unpopular opinion: I don’t think local news is dead or dying. Is it enduring an earthquake of change? Absolutely.
If you go back to Economics 101 there’s an understanding of why it will survive in some form. Supply and demand. As long as people wonder what that big plume of smoke is rising to their south, why all those police cars went speeding past, or why there are so many boarded up storefronts downtown, there will be local news. How did the Cardinals do, or how bad will the storm be are questions people won’t stop asking. The demand for the information is not leaving us, so someone will have to supply it. The question is, how?
Is Corporate America To Blame?
That same Economics 101 class will also tell you why things have changed so much in the industry. This is not where I go into a long diatribe about the internet and social media. (Though both are part of the puzzle.) This is really a function of how our stock market works, and how corporate America has done incredible damage to the world of journalism.
Let me take you back to the late 1990’s. I’m at an event in Louisville, Kentucky where I come across a man named Barry Bingham Jr. and we talk for a while. I am working for a local TV station in Louisville. Barry, or more specifically his family, used to own that TV station. His family was like those in so many U.S. markets who had developed a small media dynasty in their community over generations. They started the big local newspaper. Jumped on the bandwagon when radio became a thing in the 20’s, then moved into TV when that emerged in the 50’s. By the late 1980’s, with Barry’s opposition, his father and siblings decided to break up the empire and sell.
During our conversation, he expressed concern for the industry, not because of the internet, which had just arrived, but because of corporations.
“Belo (the owner of WHAS-TV at the time) is running your station on about a 40-45% profit margin,” he told me. “You know what it was when my family ran it?” He paused. “3%. And we were fuckin’ rich.”
Indeed, they were very wealthy, but at the same time they were re-investing capital into their stations, paying good salaries, and offering benefits that people are pining for today. Among them a gym for employees, daycare for parents who worked there, and paternity leave…in the 1980’s!
Why were the new owners running at 45%? Because Belo, (who later sold to Tegna, who is now selling to Nexstar) is a publicly traded company. That means every quarter of every year you are expected to make a little more money than the last quarter. That’s hard enough when times are good, but times stopped being good two decades ago.
The Influence of Digital Media on Ownership
That’s when the internet, social media, streaming services and the like began eating away at the audiences of TV, radio, and newspaper outlets that were so dominant that day I spoke to Barry. Now you had ownership requiring more money every quarter and audiences steadily shrinking. I don’t have an MBA, but I believe the term to describe this is, “unsustainable business model.”
So how have all these TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers survived? First, they cut staff. Then they added programming. (More commercials to sell!) Then they cut staff some more and began replacing those who left with less experienced people. After that, they merged. Then they merged again. Two decades of this cycle leave us where we are today.
Where is that? Our media outlets are now owned by massive conglomerates. Nexstar, which owns KTVI and KPLR here in St. Louis, is the largest with 265 TV stations across 132 markets in 44 states and the District of Columbia. (And the merging continues as they are trying to purchase Tegna’s 64 stations including KSDK here.)
These massive ownership groups have a frightening ability to influence editorial decisions, but the larger issue may be the cost-cutting. Many staffs have been cut by more than half since those days when I was talking to Barry Bingham, Jr. Those who remain are, in many cases, far less experienced. Mistakes in coverage that were once made by a 24-year-old in Missoula, Montana, are now being made by that same rookie in markets like St. Louis, Nashville, and Atlanta. Top 10 markets like Chicago now have reporters arriving fewer than five years into their career. That’s a huge responsibility for a young journalist, and the stakes are much higher in bigger markets when it comes to errors. The reporter’s mistake is reaching millions more people.
So, how does this impact the PR and Communications world? Quite simply, we are far more likely to have a real impact on stories. A TV station might have half the reporters with half the experience trying to produce twice as much content as they did 20 years ago. Technology makes that a little more plausible, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are trying to do much more with much less and will take whatever help they can get. They are drinking through the figurative firehose.
The cynical view of this would be that PR people have a better chance of spinning the story their way. There is undoubtedly truth there, but the credible PR people I know don’t check their ethics at the door to seize an opportunity.
It is that ethical and professional responsibility that might be the most important thing. To be frank, our mistakes are far more likely to land on-air or online than ever before. The error that gets into a release and out of your shop is far less likely to be caught than in the past. This can be harmful to anyone in a given story, it can be harmful to a young journalist who accidentally publishes it, and it can be harmful to your client. Of course, that last one can cost you business or even your job.
Closing Thoughts: We Need Great Storytellers
The opportunity here is for those who are great storytellers to identify great stories within their business or those of their clients. You have a better chance of being heard, and probably a little more access to the reporter’s process to help that story be told in the way you and your client envision. This has always been the job, not to spin, but to highlight the facts that benefit your client.
As for the state of local news, I remain bullish. The people who do the job are more committed than ever. I was a journalist for more than twenty years and the truth then remains the truth now: you’re not going to get rich in news. It’s sort of like being a teacher. You do it because you love it and because it matters.
And how will the industry survive the economics? My hope is there are more Barry Bingham Jr. ‘s out there with a commitment to the public good, an understanding of journalism, and a longing to invest their money someplace that matters. These corporate behemoths are likely to collapse, at least to a degree.That means there will be bargains to be had in many U.S. cities and a demand for local news in some form that is going nowhere.
