What can professional journalists bring to the table – part #2

Excellent crowd sourcing gave Expressen journalist a story in a few minutes. Done and published. Added value to their readers. But next time…? I doubt.

I happened to be at  Kungliga Dramaten in Stockholm tonight, to enjoy the theater production “Tre herrars tjänare” with the protagonist Morgan Alling. Great Show… until Morgan suddenly run off the stage to vomit. Well we didn’t know until someone told us. A man from the back stage told the audience that Morgan felt a bit dizzy and it was time for a short pause.But the pause became for quite a while and later people in charge informed us that the show has to be stopped due to Morgans illness. Some said that he went to hospital for examination.Shit happens. But not the end of the story…

I checked in at Foursquare and told my network about the drama. And some of them wonder what’s happening. One of them was a friend and former Expressen employed, who also send me a sms.

He forwarded the tweet to his former colleagues at Expressen, who immediately tried to reach me, including over phone. A few minutes later he got my side of the story. As far as I could understand, he (or her ? because the story in Expressen were written by Marit Sundberg) also get in touch with Dramaten’s press officer, Christina Bjerkander, and got some info and statements from her. The story became short and pretty pointless, but maybe not for their readers?

I’ve got some reflections regarding this specific drama, though.

I guess things like this happens all the time, right? People is sharing their experiences and stories with their friends. A lots of journalists getting better and better at crowd sourcing, after all. They might not be so lazy as the rumour says (personally I’ve never said that journalists are lazy, maybe because I worked my as off as journalist once upon a time). And social media are a must for journalist these days to keep up with the latest.

But – and this is a big BUT –  in the long term I do think journalists in general must add more value than this journalist did in her article, otherwise she’s out of there. In the long term, she won’t be able to compete with the crowd when it comes to deliver stories. When things like this happens, people will tell their side of the story, for an example on twitter with the hashtag #morganalling. That will include the press officer Christina Bjerkander, and even the back stage people, maybe even Morgan himself, on his blog and his Twitter? Because all the info that can be shared – will be shared.  Information that can be digital – will be digital.  Influence indexes and ranking, might edit the story. Your personal magazine will package and distribute it.

This time – it didn’t happened (very few added info to #morgonalling). Maybe not even tomorrow. But sooner or later it will. And by then journalists like Marit Sundberg will got hard time.

What can professional journalists bring to the table?

As citizens we don’t need “journalists”, we need journalism. And journalism is no longer a profession, it’s an activity. An activity that millions of engaged citizens seems to take care of in a much greater extent than ever before. Now days, with help of thousands of web services for researching, editing, packaging, publishing, and distributing.

Still there is people within the industry that claim for the need of professional journalism, among other things, to sustain democracy. If so, I wonder why none is willing to pay for it? Neither consumers nor advertisers or government, as far as I can understand?

As citizens, we would like to know what’s going on, keep ourselves informed. We would like to hear about the latest in the topics we’re interested in. We would like the truth from sources we can rely on. We would like the overview and the details. We want the hard core facts combined with vivid descriptions. And so on.

But we want to express ourselves, as well. Especially in subjects we are engaged and interested in and masters. But we also want share experiences and happenings that just cross our ways or minds, stories we think matters for the neighborhood.

As you well know, the journalists have always been the middleman to meet our needs in this matter, because they’ve been the only ones that got the exclusive opportunities to investigate, refine, edit, produce and distribute stories. And their media have become the gatekeeper or the bottle neck as communication channels. To such an extent that we’ve been prepared (or forced) to pay for it. As consumers or advertisers, each in his special way. But the willingness to pay decreases.

Now days, journalism is a fabulous mix of millions of citizens sharing their experiences and knowledge with each others, via thousands of web services and devices that take care of editing, refining, publishing, packaging and distributing parts, as well. Sometimes in collaboration with professional journalists and media. But mostly not.

The question is what the professional journalists really can bring to the table? And who’s willing to pay for it? No light in the tunnel, what I can see. The news business seems to be broken. And “the owner of the media fumbles in the dark” as Fredrik Strömberg and Jonas Nordling says in Mediavärlden (in Swedish)

A few weeks ago I attend to Berlingske Media international conference about – What Professional Journalism Means for Democracy – as a speaker.

Lisbeth Knudsen, the Chairman of The Berlingske Foundation, wrote in the invitation letter:

For decades, professional journalism has played an important role in our democracies. It still does. But the traditional commercial media business is challenged in its traditional publishing role. The old business model is dead, and the new ones are still not profitable enough to support the same number of professional journalists that the old model could finance.

Being the DNA of our democracy as public watchdogs and creators of the local and national forums for debates, the traditional media business needs to find new ways of financing the expensive part of their business: producing original, investigative, indept journalism.

Can we generate a political debate, political awareness and political involvement on news snacks, news copies and entertainment media?

In Denmark newspapers provide 70% of all original journalism reporting. What are the consequences for our democracy, if professional journalism continues to shrink?

Does it matter at all? How important is quality journalism to our society? Can companies, individuals, institutions, governments, WikiLeaks and others inform us directly? Does our democracy need professional journalistic filtering?

With speakers like Dan Gillmor, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Anne McElvoy – the discussion became truly hot. But we never agreed on whether professional journalists are needed or not.

From my point of view, I’ve hard to believe that Denmark’s newspaper is providing 70% of all original journalism reporting. And I don’t think the traditional media is the DNA of our democracy as public watchdogs. I do think, though, that the wisdom of the crowd are the “new watchdogs”. Or as the New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen says: “the more people who participate in the press, the stronger it will be.”

One of millions great example of that is Maria Hägglöfs trip with the subway a couple of days ago.The wagon she were sitting in caught fire, and people got scared. She began to report from the scene; shooting photos and videos, writing tweets, etc.

After some time professional journalists of all kind found her tweets and contacted her. And the story got coverage all over.

No big deal, just crowd source that it use to be, right? But what did surprise Maria was that none of these professional journalists actually brought anything new to the table. Maria wrote in her blog post:

“I would say that if journalists today weren’t so incredibly lazy, if they actually strive to do something more than what I’ve already done….”
“… today’s journalists often don’t do more than what citizens have already done via Twitter.”

Ironically, this happening took place on her way to one of the first unconferences about journalism in Sweden, where one of the topics were about who would pay for the  “professional journalism”.

“What happens when journalism is everywhere?” does Mathew Ingram wonder in his post in Gigaom. He writes:

“We are beginning to find out. And while it may be a frightening prospect if you are a traditional media company, there is a lot to be optimistic about if you are just interested in the news. A world where everyone is a journalist may be a bit more chaotic and a bit more complicated than the one we are used to, but it will also be a bit more free, and that is clearly a good thing.” Because: “Freedom of the press becomes a lot more important when everyone is the press — or rather, when the internet itself becomes the press.”

To be continued…

To add… a slice of media history 😉

How Tumblr is changing the PR industry

Well the original title from the Read Write Web is “How Tumblr is changing journalism”. But it doesn’t really matters. I think content curation activites, and related tools for that, already has, or for sure will change, the way we share stories with each other, as information junkies, as journalists. as PR communicators, as people.

A few month ago I wrote a post about “Why Marketers Should Care About Content Curation”. As a matter of fact I didn’t write it. I just curated another post by Derek Edmond from Search Engine Land with a similar headline “Why B2B Search Marketers Should Care About Content Curation”. And he wrote it from a SEO perspective:

“B2B search engine marketers realize new content creation is a critical tactic in an effective SEO strategy. But it is also realized, as illustrated in the Marketingsherpa chart below, the level of effort required to successfully develop new content may be significant, in comparison to other tactics. Therefore, with limited resources and immediate lead generation goals, it is not surprising when we find that new content generation falls behind other SEO initiatives on the priority list. Enter content curation. While not a substitute for new development, content curation can help B2B organizations provide important information to their market.”

Since Google launched the Panda I don’t know If this matters anymore? Because as you might know, Google Panda is the “filter designed by Google to spot low-quality content”, as Catch Pope from the Australien “Curated Content Agency” put it.

If you’re not sure what “low-quality content” is, maybe Amit Singhal, Google’s head of search, explanation on the official Google blog, make sense? He says:

“Below are some questions that one could use to assess the “quality” of a page or an article. These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves as we write algorithms that attempt to assess site quality. Think of it as our take at encoding what we think our users want.

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?”

And as you might see, some of these bullets seems to criticize the curated content; or at least some of the curated content seems to be “low-quality content”. And Google might punish your site for that, seen from a SEO perspective? But… I still think marketers (and others) should care about content curation, because that’s a great way to share interesting stories etc with your stakeholders, the people you care about. And not to forget – it’s not just about sharing, it’s about contribution and reflections as well.

Therefore I was not surprised when Richard MacManus recently wrote the article “How Tumblr is changing journalism” for Read Write Web.

As you might know Tumblr is a super easy and smooth blogging tool, but also a sharing tool, or a content curation tool. Becuase that’s pretty much how people are using it. Tumblr themselves says the tool “lets you effortlessly share anything”.

And I don’t know if the curation trend is one of the reasons why Tumblr, with it’s 12 billion page views per month, just hit knockout on WordPress, which is not a curation tool?

So I think it was just a question of time before the journalists, who are already experts on rewrites, would start using the tool (or others) “to power” their news websites, as Richard MacManus put it.

He mention the Tumblr-powered news service, ShortFormBlog, as an example.

“The concept behind ShortFormBlog is very simple: to publish really short posts throughout the day. The site publishes over 200 posts per week, an average of about 30 per day.”

Pretty successful as far as I know.

So now we’re waiting for the trend to really take off in marketers and PR staff’s newsroom.

As a matter of fact, IBM were using Tumblr when they already in November, 2008, launched the Smarter Planet project to help people grasp IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative. The site “uses frequently updated, “microblogging” entries to illustrate how the Smarter Planet vision is unfolding across IBM and across the world.”

Content creators highlighted in Google search. But the byline status quo is still a fact.

Journalists are making a pilgrimage on the social web to “brand” themselves. Well, I know that expression might not be fair. But I talking about their efforts to make themselves visible and accessible. A place where they can publish their stories, meet their audience, get ideas for stories and a platform for research and collaborative work. The traditional blog was one of the first moves in this direction, and still is one of the most popular. Now days most of the (up to dated) journalists have their profiles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, and others, of more or less the same reason as mentioned.

Expressen Journalist Emanuel Karlsten's profesional Facebook page

The biggest of these players discovered their needs and wants and launched specific solutions for them. For an example we’ve got Journalists on Facebook, and Twitter for Newsrooms.

But what do they do in their own media? What happened to their byline’s? Status quo, right?

Expressen journalist Emanuel Karlsten's poor byline

Gary Love wrote  in NewMediaJournalism.com on July 10, 2004:

“Bylines began to appear in newspapers in the 1920’s and 30’s to facilitate objectivity and accountability, but also allowed particular writers to achieve a certain level of celebrity. They are a central component in modern newspapers and have been a part of online news articles from the beginning.”

Gary says that bylines have four distinct functions in newspapers and online:

• Entry point for the reader.
• Credit for the author
• Context for the story
• Accountability for the publication

Regarding the “accountability” Gary says:

By placing the reporter’s name at the top on an article, it suggests a specific person wrote and takes credit for the content printed below it. That person bears the blame or approval for the article and can be contacted to issue clarifications or corrections. The inclusion of email addresses within the byline is a strong signal of a reporter taking accountability, giving readers direct access to the writer.

And he express this as a duty.

After looked in to 60 different news sites, his conclusion is that the vast majority simply replicate the format used in their print edition. Almost all had the name and publication, with many also including the position at the paper. Some tacked on the original date of the publication and a handfull enhanced the byline with an email. There was only example that included any further information (phone, copyright, web page, or original publication page).

This was seven years ago!! And the byline is still in status quo! Isn’t that totally incomprehensible?

If you check the word “byline” at Wikipedia, you got the same poor description.

The byline on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name, and often the position, of the writer of the article. Bylines are traditionally placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines (notably Reader’s Digest) place bylines at the bottom of the page, to leave more room for graphical elements around the headline. A byline can also include a brief article summary, introducing the writer by name.

Jennifer Gaie Hellum, wrote the blog post – “Social media spring cleaning: 50 tasks (or 7 short lists) for maintaining your personal brand” – in “Brand me a journalist” earlier this year.

“When I talk to journalism students about managing their personal brands, they often are overwhelmed by the maintenance of their online profiles and portfolios. Students as well as working journalists are constantly producing new content and/or acquiring new skills that should be reflected in their online identities.  Whether you do it weekly, monthly or seasonly, it’s important to have a routine for updating profiles, building networks, adding content and clarifying your brand.

So now that it’s officially spring, set aside time this week to do some personal branding spring cleaning. Start with one account and see how much has changed since you last updated your content. If you’re feeling ambitious and want to tackle one list each day, your digital footprint will be up to date in a week.”

I would like to take that advice one step further and ask you journalist to do “some personal branding cleaning” in your online media. Start with your byline’s. It might be one of the best spots to meet your audience, get ideas for stories and a platform for research and collaborative work”.

At last – don’t forget to tag your stories with the author and link to preferable profile into the code.

Sagar Kamdar, Product Manager Search recently wrote the post: “Highlighting content creators in search results”
where he says:
“Many of you create great content on the web, and we work hard to make that content discoverable on Google. Today, we will start highlighting the people creating this content in Google.com search results.”

And it works pretty much like this:

“To identify the author of an article, Google checks for a connection between the content page (such as an article), an author page, and a Google Profile. A content page can be any piece of content with an author: a news article, blog post, short story… An author page is a page about a specific author, on the same domain as the content page.
A Google Profile is Google’s version of an author page. It’s how you present yourself to the web and to Google. Use your profile to manage the information—such as your bio, contact details, and links to other sites by or about you—that people see. When you link your Google Profile to your author pages (or to sites you write for), you’re telling Google that all of these pages represent you. If your content appears in search results, your photo (including a link to your Google Profile) can appear next to it. Content you’ve identified as yours will also be listed on the +1 tab of your Google Profile. To easily link to your Google Profile, add the Profile button to your site. “

When did you pitch a friend lately?

I really dislike the word “pitch” in the context of PR. To such a degree that I might soon escape from the the entire PR business. And I’ve got almost the same feeling for the phrase “target group”. But – still – this is precisely the phrases that are some of the most frequently used in this business. And I’m truly shocked about that.

According to Wikipedia – the pitch is a part of “selling technique”; it is “a line of talk that attempts to persuade someone or something, with a planned sales presentation strategy of a product or service designed to initiate and close a sale of the product or service.” In the PR business we’re seldom dealing with products and services but the more information.

Oh, yes, I do understand we all would like to tell boastful stories that’s important for us, to the people that are valuable for us as influential people. Therefore we’re trying to “pitch” our story to these people we use to call “target group”.

But – hey – PR’s is all about relations, because excellent relations will give us great outcome, right? And I thought we’ve learned that it’s quite impossible to establish good relations with your audience by persuading? I thought PR was all about listening, understanding and serving? Focus shouldn’t be what we would like to say, but what we think they would like to hear.

And, from my point of view, it doesn’t matter if your audience is your customers or journalists. They need more or less the same approach in this matter. Everybody does.

I had a small chat with a marketer recently. She asked me: “What would you do with these new people that recently started to follow us (our business, news stream) as followers?

I said: “I think you should treat them in the same way in the virtual space as you would do in the physical space: Get to know them better! Try to figure out their needs and wants. Imagine you have a breakfast seminar and a guy showed up as a registered participant. What would you say to this guy? I would say: “Welcome! I’m so glad you could come. You’re journalist, right? (Listen to his answer) Interesting… What can I do for you? (Listen to his answer)… And so on. When you come to know him better, treat him as a friend. Serve him. Because I don’t think you look at your friends as “target groups” and I don’t think you’re trying to pitch them either?”

It makes me think of when I use to ask communicators who did visit their newsrooms. Guess what? They don’t know! They don’t even know how many they are. Think about that for awhile. If your newsroom was your breakfast seminar, you might would have a great breakfast, excellent speakers, informative whitepapers, etc – but you wouldn’t know who’s been there, and how many they were. You was not even there yourself!

But – as mentioned – pitching and target groups talk, is still hot topic in many discussions in different kind of PR groups in various of social networks. Within a couple of PR professional groups on LinkedIn, there are questions like:

“E-MAIL PITCHING: Given journalists’ overcrowded inboxes, does e-mail pitching work anymore? What are your secrets to achieving success with e-mail pitches?” and “Age-old PR dilemma … contact media by phone first or by email first….”

These discussions is all about how to pitch, not if you should pitch at all.

As an answer on the second question above; most of the members did say they use to pitch journalist by phone, or at least follow up their email pitches by phone. Only one of the answers came from a journalist, who said: “Email please…And don’t call to see if the writer got the email. If every pr person called to followup on every news release we would never have time to write a story!”

A couple of days after I’ve been following these discussions, I read an article (in swedish) by a journalist and friend of mine, who said:

“I have come to hate the phone. Not its functions, but it’s ringing and disturbing features.”

Jerry Silfwer, a PR consultant, but also a blogger, just wrote a post: “How not to pitch”. He says:

“Don’t be afraid to pitch me. Please do, I don’t mind. But make sure you email me as an individual and make sure that you’re not blasting me as a part of some obscure list somewhere.”

He gives us some examples what a pitcher forgot regarding av really bad pitch he got earlier:

• What’s in it for me as a PR blogger? I need to be told that clearly.
• Browsing your case studies is not a reward for anyone but your company.
• Clarity. Why pitch me to participate (note: the pitch was regarding a survey) but not to blog about it?
• How did you get hold of my address? In what email list am I in right now?
• I have hundreds of other emails calling out for my attention. Why should I bother about this, when it isn’t even a personal email?
• Don’t be so sure that 5-10 minutes is short for me and don’t thank me for participating before I’ve participated (note: the pitch said: “It only takes about 5-10 minutes to complete…”)

Honestly – I don’t think Jerry would like pitches as he says; I think he would like to be understood, treated with respect and served with great ideas for stories, but not as one of the target group. And from my point of view – that’s not a pitch.

Court of newspapers – condemn before acquit – too bad

It’s pretty hard to be famous when the media has found indication of criminal act of that person. I of course refer to Ola Lindholm and that he eventually has been taken cocaine. I feel sorry for Ola. I’ve got no idea if he has taken cocaine or not, but even if he had, I still think Expressens behavior is beneath contempt.
Oh, yes, I know, Expressens mission and duty is to present what really has happened. The truth and nothing but the truth. And I appreciate and do respect that. But I dislike when these kind of newspapers angle their stories to such a degree that even if they stick to the truth, you don’t interpret them that way. You would probably got the wrong picture in the bitter end. The sensational picture.
If these media tried to really really understand what has happened, and describe that, instead of just chase sensations, they would have sold less copies, but we would have a much more human and interesting world.

Our court of law use to acquit before condemn, but for these media is the other way round, and that’s too bad.

Please read Ola’s post, the article of Expressen and Expressens editor in chief’s comments to Ola’s posting (all of them in swedish though). What do you think?

Facebook vs Twitter as journalistic tool?

Since I wrote the posting below partly about the brand new Facebook page “Journalists on facebook” and finished that part with the sentence: “I’m pretty sure that many journalist now will take the oppertunity to use this possiblity, to get more out of their daily work.” There’s been a lot of buzz regarding Facebook vs Twitter as a journalistic tool.

Justin Osofsky, Director of Media Partnerships at Facebook, says that the page has been created: “to serve as an ongoing resource for the growing number of reporters using Facebook to find sources, interact with readers, and advance stories. And that “the Page will provide journalists with best practices for integrating the latest Facebook products with their work and connecting with the Facebook audience of more than 500 million people.”

I believe he’s spot on, but… I do respect the critics. Among other I got an e-mail from Daniel at Newsy.com who recommended me to see the video about the topic Facebook vs Twitter as a journalist tool.

The news anchor Jim Flink at Newsy, says:
“So, could Facebook challenge Twitter in the battle for reporters’ hearts? One blogger says – probably not:
“Twitter allows you to order the account you follow into lists so you can have all the information about one subject on the same feed while Facebook imposes on you the feed of every journalists you will follow, no matter the subject they are working on or they are specialized in.”

Gigom’s Mathew Ingram suggests the company might have to alter its image a bit to make this work.
“…many users still likely think of Facebook as a place to socialize rather than be informed — a place to play games … not necessarily a place where journalists are active. Those things may not be mutually exclusive, but it’s going to take some work to make them feel like they belong together.”

I do agree. But my point of view is that both services has some left to prove to be kick ass tools for journalists, and their audience in particular.

I would say that the biggest headache right now for both this services, within this matter, is that most people has only one newsstream (or wall) for all their interests, topics, networks, etc (discussion in groups excluded). And most of the people is as a matter of fact interested in several topics and member of many communities. Do you really want the latest news from the revolution in Egypt on the same wall as where my cousins birthday party shows up? I don’t. And these lists feature is too… time-consuming. The same applies for Twitter. Ranking system, like Facebook Edgerank, might make the updates more relevant, but doesn’t solve this problem.

Personally, I love my Google RSS Reader with an extensive but careful selection of sources (social networks included)  in combination with Flipboard.

B t w – what happened to the service “LinkedIn for Journalists”? What I can see is pretty much no more… Or it ended up as a tiny group.  And LinkedIn Today…? Well – we won’t start our days with that kind of news aggregator, do we?

To be continued.

Brittisk press ointresserad av omvärlden?

Har omvärlden blivit ointressant för brittisk press? Eller är det britterna själva som tappat intresse för internationella nyheter, som gör att brittisk press inte rapporterar därifrån längre? Något har i alla fall hänt, åtminstone om man får tro Media Standard Trusts rapport om hur utlandsbevakningen tillika rapporteringen har utvecklats hos de fyra största dagstidningarna i Storbrittanien (Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph och Guardian). Det är ingen rolig bild. Sedan glansdagarna år 1979 då exempelvis Daily Mirror avslöjade Pol Pot regimens förskräckliga framfart i Kambodja, så har utlandsrapporteringen minskat med nära 40%; från 502 – 308 artiklar om omvärlden mellan åren 1979 – 2009.

Front page of the Daily Mirror, 12th September 1979

Antalet artiklar om omvärlden skönk från 502 till 308 år 1979-2009 första veckan i mars.

Man kan tänka sig att skälet till nedgången är att det gått lite knackigt för pressen under senaste 30 åren. Icke! Kraftigt ökning både vad det gäller antal sidor och antal artiklar vittnar om att det snarare är så att britterna inte längre efterfrågar nyheter från omvärlden; eller åtminstone inte berätta att betala vad de kostar?

Eller är det någon som har någon annan teori?

18% av Internetanvändarna köpt nyheter på webben

65% av Internetanvändarna i USA har betalat för innehåll från webben. 18% av dessa nyhetsrelaterat material. Detta enligt en undersökning av The Pew Internet Project där drygt 1.000 amerikanare intervjuats per telefon under oktober och november 2010. 755 av dem använde Internet och blev representativa för undersökningen ifråga.

Värt att nämna är att Internetanvändarna som köpt innehåll från webben, har betalat i snitt 10 dollar per månad för det (några extremanvändare undantagna). Vad de 18% har betalat för det nyhetsrelaterade materialet framgår inte. Men jag antar att det inte överstiger ovan nämnda 10 dollar. Snarare tvärtom.

Intressant är ockås att de som köpt nyheter framför allt är höginkomsttagare med en lön på mer än 75.000 dollar per år. Mer än dubbelt så många av sistnämnda hade köpt nyhetsrelaterat material från webben i jämförelse med de som “bara” tjänar mellan under 49.999 dollar per år. Med nyhetsrelaterat material menas en dagstidning, annan tidning, artikel eller rapport.

Rapporten är inte särskilt unik, men ändå intressant, då den ånyo ger oss indikationer på vilken viljan är att betala för nyhetsrelaterat material från webben, och att just detta är något som media fortfarande försöker förstå och testar. Huruvida 18% av Internetanvändarna är mycket eller lite låter jag vara osagt. Men undersökningen ger mig ingen anledning att ändra min tro att media lär få fortsatt problem med att ta betalt för sina redaktionella alster, så att det lämnar ett litet bidrag till fortsatt verksamhet.  Konkurrensen av billigare (läs gratis) och/eller minst lika bra, om inte bättre (ny) media, är fortfarande för stor. Men 18% är ändå 18% och jag är säker på att många tolkar detta som (ytterligare) bevis för att det faktiskt går att ta betalt för nyheter på nätet.

Från mediadatabas till nätverk

Efter att ha föreläst vid sex frukostseminarier i Stockholm, Göteborg och Oslo för sammanlagt hundratals kommunikatörer, så är det ett par frågor som sticker ut ur mängden och som de flesta av åhörarna tycks vilja få svar på:

Hur ska jag lyckas identifiera och kommunicera med hela den nya och brokiga skara människor som har inflytande på mitt företags marknad?

Jag svarade att det kanske de varken kan eller bör göra, åtminstone inte hela skaran, då det finns risk för att de då tar sig vatten över huvudet. Men jag rekommenderade följande:

Gör ditt företag extremt tillgängligt och transparent. Se till att all information om förtaget och dess verksamhet når ut i alla relevanta sammanhang, där din målgrupp förväntar sig att den ska finnas, inte minst när de söker efter den. Lyssna på din omgivning, hjälp den, och skapa förutsättningar till självhjälp. Och fokusera dig på den exklusiva skara som har störst inflytande på din marknad.

Beroende på vilken verksamhet deras företag bedriver är en hel del av de sistnämnda sannolikt journalister, men bli inte förvånad om majoriteten av dem återfinns bland deras kunder, branschkollegor, anställda, partners, återförsäljare, leverantörer, m fl.

Ben Cotton på PR-byrån Edelman Digital i London skrev nyligen ett blogginlägg där han tipsar oss om tio gratis verktyg för att finna inflytelserika människor. Gissa en gång om något av tipsen omfattar någon mediedatabas i traditionell bemärkelse? NOT. Tjänsterna är av typen sök och nätverk med webben som spelplan. Och fler tips av liknande slag finns. Jag gillar dem alla, även om några inte funkar i Sverige. Men om jag känner typen Ben rätt, så organiserar han dessa människor i något CRM-liknande system för bearbetning. I bästa fall med några sociala plug in’s. Det gillar jag inte. Jag förordar nätverket framför CRM’et. Dessutom så tycker jag att Ben förbiser en viktig faktor; att den som ger är också den som får. Det räcker inte med att hitta dem, du måste bidra med något. Ben snuddar förvisso vid frågan, när han poängterar vikten av att bara prata med dem som är engagerade och intresserade av dig. Men vaddå “prata”? Utöver Ben m fl’s tips så skulle jag vilja lyfta fram kraften i att förse målgruppen med verkligt värde; intressant och relevant information, tips, hjälp, nyheter, med utgångspunkt ifrån vad du lärt av den. Materialet driver trafik. Bland trafiken finns fans. Några av dem är dina viktigaste opinionsbildare. Vig en del av ditt professionella liv åt att serva dem. Och – gör det i ett nätverk.