Media not always athlete's enemy

A new winter sports season is approaching with rugby league trial matches beginning last weekend.

And that means we're about to see more footy players on our TV screens, on websites and in our social media feeds. It comes with being a professional athlete.

Most players aren't always going to like what's being said about them by journalists. Sometimes, they're right to complain.

In most cases, players who complain about journalists are tilting at windmills.

Former Aussie tennis great Pat Rafter summed it up well when he spoke to Sports Illustrated a few weeks ago:  

"You know, every now and then I stuff up like everyone does and I am in the spotlight a lot more than probably the general person," Rafter said.

"And I am not against that. I'd prefer if I didn't have it but if I didn't have it, I wouldn't also live the lifestyle I have. So you can't cut something off and abuse one side of it and say 'I want this' because it sort of goes hand-in-hand. The media have built up my profile and with that comes endorsements and sponsorships etcetera. So I have felt my relationship with the media has been really good and really positive. I'll be honest with them and they can be honest with me and it works well."

55 comms has been fortunate to work with several high-profile athletes who take the Rafter approach. Yes, most of them have been done over by a journalist in their careers.

But they have also benefited from the media publicity that has helped to make them household names. One of they keys to their success is this open mind - the road won't always be smooth but it's a journey that needs to be taken. 

Facebook moves the goalposts

Facebook has been generating plenty of talk about changes to the newsfeed that is central to the life of its users.

The over-arching goal of this algorithm change is to make time on Facebook more meaningful by improving the quality of interactions on the social media platform.

The changes will be seen physically throughout our news feeds in the coming weeks.

Every year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces what he is going to take on personally. Usually it doesn’t have anything to do with Facebook, but this year it does and he wants to fix it. Zuckerberg explains that his product team has been specifically instructed to focus on sourcing "relevant content to help you have more meaningful interactions."

Here’s a summary of Facebook’s changes

A new challenge for business

• There will be a noticeable reduction in public posts like business posts, brands and media.

The public content will shift towards content that is meant to encourage you, the user, to engage with more meaningfully. Zuckerburg’s argument is that if you are engaging with people you actually know, you will presumably be happier.

Fake news crackdown


• Facebook will be asking its users about which news outlets they trust. The feedback will then calculate a trust score which will be associated with each news outlet involved with Facebook and consequently, the more reliable source will feature in your feed as the more trusted source. Facebook is taking action after coming under fire for the presence of fake news in its newsfeeds. This is a difficult issue for news outlets. Mainstream publishers have been critical of Facebook’s rigour around news items but most of the big publishers haven’t worked out how to make money from Facebook traffic.

Welcome local news

• Just like Facebook wants you to see more posts from your friends and family, it also wants you to see more local news over national or international events. If you follow a local outlet or publisher, or a Facebook friend shares a local news story, it will likely show up higher in your newsfeed. The concept behind this is that local news builds and strengthens communities and Facebook is all about bringing people closer together.

It will be interesting to see how user behavior changes – we are so used to tagging friends in meme videos or links to articles, but as Zuckerberg said: "this experience has become too passive".

To be a part of a newsfeed that encourages useful interaction and informs the user is going to benefit the user experience greatly.

And whilst the push back on branded messages from businesses might trigger some discomfort, it will encourage businesses to get better with their engagement.

Businesses need to talk to their audiences like the people they are, discuss relevant topics and provide them with value in a way that improves their time spent on Facebook. Through Zuckerberg wanting to make our time spent on Facebook more meaningful, I expect that any business’s customers will become more loyal through the changes that must be made to adjust.

And that's a positive change. 

Paper cuts inevitable for major newsrooms

55 comms director Michael Crutcher was interviewed by ABC Mornings presenter Steve Austin about the future of Australian newspapers. 

This followed announcements by News Corp and Fairfax that they would issue more redundancies as audience behaviour continues to shake media organisations.

Listen to the interview: ABCmornings130417.m4a

Debbie exposes massive media shift

Cyclone Debbie came to Queensland and blew down trees, blew off rooves and starkly exposed the changing world of mainstream media.

The blanket coverage on television generated plenty of debate about reporters standing out in the cyclone, drenched and barely able to stay upright.

It was six years between major cyclones in Queensland - Yasi arrived at the tail end of the disastrous 2011 summer. And haven't times changed.

Since 2011, social media has become the best way to follow a breaking news story. Television has tried to keep up but it can't match the pace.

This is the era of the two-screeners - people with the TV in the background and their smartphones in their hands.

Their phones showcase natural disasters from so many inputs - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others were full of videos of the cyclone's wrath. 

And they enable users to localise information quickly - you can drill down into events in your surrounding area in a way that TV struggles to match because of its diverse audience.

Social media also starts conversation hubs that enable people to exchange information quickly.

It was almost as though TV knew times had changed. That may be why reporters were standing out in the cyclone. And it may be why we saw a countdown clock ticking down to the moment the eye of the storm would hit the coastline.

It was a stretch too far and audiences picked it immediately. The social media chatter on the cyclone grew to include commentary about the TV coverage.

Audiences are smart - they know when mainstream media is overcooking something. That's not a new thing - audiences have always been smart. Only now, their voices are raised through social media.

That's not to say that television did not cover Cyclone Debbie well. But this is a new era of comparison.

It's a changing world and some established institutions are learning that more than most.

The ingredients for a good spokesperson

In most organisations, the big boss is the default spokesperson for every topic.

It’s the CEO, general manager, managing director or whatever title fits best.

But good CEOs aren’t always good media performers.

Some are naturals, others can be trained to be very good and some just never get it – those of the nervous voices, shifting eyes and fidgeting hands. It’s like teaching courage to a scared footy player – it’s never going to happen.

But don’t think that the most senior person in the organisation must be the spokesperson for everything, especially when it comes to matters that aren’t top priority.

That’s when you need the naturals in your organisation – those people who tell stories and tell them well.

One of our clients has a grounds manager who is very good at talking to audiences – they’re intelligent, down-to-earth and full of the common touch.

Most importantly, they’re genuine. And that’s something that can’t be learned. You’re genuine or you’re not.

The grounds manager is a very good spokesperson for the areas in which they specialise. Journalists struggle to interrogate him because he knows far more about his topic than they do.

And he talks with a disarming, jovial touch. He’s good – although a touch of media training made him a lot better.

Genuine people can deliver messages that other people can’t.

Audiences eventually see through non-genuine people. And they stop listening.

Find your best speakers today and make sure they’re well used in tense situations.

Ardent's crisis comms nightmare

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”.

Ernest Hemingway wasn’t writing about crisis communications in A Farewell to Arms but let’s adapt it for the next few minutes.

Crises aren’t necessarily all bad for businesses. For some, it’s when their true colours can be shown – when compassionate, decent companies emerge stronger from a crisis by the way they respond.

And then there’s Dreamworld. Or, specifically, its owner Ardent Leisure.

The devastating incident at Dreamworld last week received massive media coverage for the most obvious reasons – the deaths of decent, loved Australians in front of friends and family, at a place many people knew well.

And, it was the power of the opposite – people go to Dreamworld for memorable, fun times. They don’t spend their final moments there.

As sad as the story seemed, it didn’t have to be a crippling moment for Ardent.

It was a time for the company to show compassion, professionalism and decency.

Well, that’s how it could have played out.

Instead, Ardent botched it, creating a case study for crisis comms workshops for years.

Here’s a selection of Ardent’s dunderhead behaviour:

• Not travelling to Dreamworld as soon as the incident happened. Ardent’s bosses remained away too long.

• Claiming at a press conference that Ardent had “reached out to the families” but, when challenged by a journalist, admitting “we didn’t know how to contact them”. Sheesh.

• Holding its annual general meeting about 48 hours after the incident, approving a massive bonus for its CEO. While it may have been difficult to postpone the meeting, did anyone discuss deferring the vote on the bonus?

• And, probably the most ridiculous point, trying to re-open Dreamworld three days later for a “memorial opening”. What the hell is a “memorial opening”? It sounds like something you would hear in an episode of The Simpsons after an accident at Itchy and Scratchy Land. Unsurprisingly, police told Ardent to forget about re-opening for at least a few more days. The rest of Australia nodded along.

There are more tests ahead for Ardent which, fortuitously, renamed itself Main Event Entertainment Ltd at its AGM.

We’ll be hearing a lot more of that new name if it’s determined in numerous investigations that Ardent had cut corners in its maintenance of Dreamworld’s rides. That prospect should be causing sleepless nights for Ardent’s management group.

Crisis communications is really about common sense.

And it’s about authenticity.

Journalists on the Gold Coast say that the Dreamworld staff have shown plenty of this – they’ve been excellent since the incident despite their exposure to the raw emotions.

Unfortunately, Ardent hasn’t replicated this.

When Hemingway wrote about the world breaking everyone, he mentioned that “many” become strong at the broken places.

He didn’t write “all”.

May the families and friends of the victims, and those at Dreamworld that day, become strong as time goes on.

As for Ardent, there’s a whole lot of mess to patch up.

And that may not be possible if the findings of investigations compound Ardent’s woeful behaviour of recent days.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men know that not everything can be fixed.

Pollies and papers set for bad break-up

Politics is a mess of uncertainty with the Brexit shock and the rise of Trump.

But, there is something you can bank on – this is the last Federal election during which our politicians will tangle with the print editions of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Fairfax’s Sydney and Melbourne paper warriors are almost cooked and unlikely to see out a full term of a new government. The websites will carry on but the print editions are in palliative care.

And websites, in their moving, intangible forms, don't carry the clout of the newspaper.

What does that mean for the political parties that still rely on newspapers while agonising over every little thing they do in election campaigns?

They will still have the News Corp print titles, which have more financial clout and desire to combat these cyclonic winds crunching old media. While Rupert Murdoch remains at the helm, News Corp will continue to support journalism in print form.

That's good news because more journalists make for better reporting and for better governments.

But political parties will have to think harder about finding new ways to reach the masses – they’re still reliant on that ancient path of news drops to newspapers.

They have social media teams but there’s no evidence that political parties are using social media with any greater success than the myriad other organisations. 

Politicians and papers are heading for a bad break-up.

Politicians spend too much time worrying about how papers behave in campaigns.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard asked me twice in the week prior to the 2010 election about which party The Courier-Mail would endorse in its editorial. On the Monday of that week, I told the Prime Minister that we would not make that decision until after a lengthy editorial meeting on Thursday.

On Thursday night, the Prime Minister called again.

I told her the paper would endorse Tony Abbott’s Coalition team. She took it well. Three years earlier, The Courier-Mail had endorsed Kevin Rudd’s Labor opposition.

Newspapers have influence but it's nothing to match the power of the reader. Political strategists wrongly think that newspapers hold great sway over their readers when the opposite is true.

The readers don’t want to be lectured and they certainly don’t want a newspaper bossing them around.

They want information presented clearly and in depth so they can make their own decisions.

The Remain camp in England’s Brexit battle can tell you about that.

The New York Times takes on the world

Frank Sinatra sung it a few times - if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.

The New York Times is pitching up $50 million in the hope Frank was right.

The Times is looking beyond the US and to the world to help boost its revenue in this challenging media environment.

The Times hopes that it can attract subscribers well beyond the US borders. It's creating a new division called New York Times Global, dumping $50m into the division in a quest to gain more traffic and paying customers from other countries.

It's an ambitious play given that widespread readership hasn't meant riches for the likes of the Daily Mail, which missed its revenue target last year despite boasting more than 200 million unique users globally each month. The Mail relies on advertising so the Times will know that it has to sell subscriptions to make this work.

The New York Times is grappling with shrinking online ad prices and the constant battle to get readers to pay for news. Anyone who gets an email weekly from the Times offering special deals knows that it needs more subscribers.

The Times' quest will be watched by other news executives who seek a solution to the shrinking revenues that have crippled newsrooms in many parts of the western world. 

For now, it's up to you, New York, New York.

Clock ticks on printed newspapers

For how long will you be thumbing through a printed newspaper in Australia?

If you read The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age, your printed newspaper is in palliative care. Without pain relief. Saturday papers may last longer but the loss-making weekday versions are in serious trouble.

Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood has not committed to printing the SMH and The Age beyond this year, explaining: "I can't say that newspapers are forever".

Fairfax isn't isolated. Australia's other major newspapers must also confront the loss of daily editions albeit not in the same rush as Fairfax.

In recent weeks, UK newspaper The Independent printed for the last time. 

The economics of newspapers are relatively simple. Newspapers are:

• Expensive to produce - paper isn't cheap, the presses need maintenance

• Expensive to distribute - almost all distribution is done by road because air freight is even more costly. That means at least one truck and one person for each route

• Getting smaller and smaller - fewer ads means smaller papers

• Expensive to buy - fewer ads means falling ad revenue and a need to increase the cover price

• Selling fewer copies - this one is simple

Newspapers have also been the most profitable platform for publishers, raking in far more revenue than digital products.

But many are hitting a tipping point - when the cost of production of the papers is not covered by the revenues. Especially for weekday issues. 

This isn't new. New Orleans' Times-Picayune, a giant in its community during Hurricane Katrina, announced four years ago that it was dumping daily issues. 

The end of daily newspapers should not be doom-and-gloom for journalism. The mastheads will continue in digital form at a time when audiences are consuming more news and information than ever.

And that's where the challenge really begins for these publishers - how will they generate the revenue to sustain their newsrooms?

That question has stumped publishers across the world. Many have delayed a solution while wringing every possible dollar from their print versions.

But those days are almost done. And that's when the hard work begins. 

Facebook makes another change

While Twitter wobbles, Facebook continues to set the pace in social media platforms.

The numbers are surging despite fears that Facebook is hitting saturation point. Try these from Facebook:

• 1.59 billion monthly users (up from 1.22 billion two years earlier)

• 1 billion monthly WhatsApp users

• 100 million hours of video watched each day

You can add to that a bunch of other numbers to underline Facebook's dominance.

But, how do you best reach these people without paying for ads? Plenty of advertisers are paying - Facebook reported ad earnings for the last quarter of more than $US5.6 billion.

And 80 per cent of that came from mobile advertising. That figure is stunning considering the struggles of newspapers and others to make any decent revenue from mobile ads.

If you don't want to pay to reach Facebook's many millions of people, then you need to know how to dominate their news feed. And Facebook has just announced a change that will harm those clickbait kings.

Facebook has revealed that it will take a dimmer view of those posts that promise a lot through an intriguing headline or video intro, only to disappoint. Yet again, Facebook is changing that mysterious algorithm that determines news feeds.

But Facebook does have one valuable tip: "Post things that your audience finds meaningful".

Sounds like a useful motto for many communication methods.