The 'Death of the Newspaper' is a story more tired and worn out than this Brett Favre retired-unretired-reretired saga. It's the same old, same old; newspapers are getting worn down by body blows from the little guy. It's the old "anyone can start a blog and have a voice" rationale. That's certainly not wrong. While it's turned into a cliche, it's one I use frequently in any advice I give to fellow journalism students. But there's a side that sometimes gets overlooked in the newspaper downfall story. Is it possible the 'big guys'—the companies, teams and celebrities—are doing just as much damage to the mainstream media as the smalltime bloggers?ESPN's Bill Simmons recently wrote a column on the growing disconnect between the mainstream media and athletes. He harkens back to the "good ol' days" when athletes and sportswriters were almost friends then compares that to the almost bizarre (in comparison) world we live in today.
Control the access, provide your own filter, say nothing profound, play a part, derive the benefits. Nowadays, teams routinely break news on their websites. The Patriots announced each 2009 draft pick on Twitter. Curt Schilling retired from baseball on his blog. Hundreds of athletes keep in touch with fans digitally. We're getting close to a day when players save postgame quotes for their own blogs. Wanna know why I'm limping? Check out my website, sponsored by Bob's Discount Furniture!
It's an interesting phenomenon, newspapers are getting squeezed out from both sides. Is this a good thing? Probably not. But it is happening and everyone has to deal with it. As someone who has a journalism degree, I've been forced to re-plan a few things. Just like Simmons, I had dreams of being the traditional sportswriter. So what if the pay was low, I thought. I would have free season tickets to the Cubs and do exactly what I wanted for the rest of my life. Surely, you can't put an appropriate salary on that. But times have changed and so has the profession.
Simmons, one of the most popular sports columnists in the industry writes with a tone and sense of journalism ethics (he's a homer for Boston teams) very different from others throughout the profession. He also got to where he because ESPN hired him after he wrote a popular 'blog' (this was almost before sports blogs existed) on Boston sports. From there he worked his way up to the point where he would've hung out with Tom Brady the night the Patriots could've completed the perfect season. As I mentioned, his journalism ethics are a little out of whack.
So, let me get back to the original point. There are so many tools available to marketers that they can essentially bypass traditional public relations tools like stories distributed by the mainstream media and connect directly with the consumers they intend to target. As I mentioned, this isn't necessarily a good thing for consumers or society as a whole. It's not necessarily a bad thing either. I've never been a fan of the theory that there should always be a group of accredited to who get decide what's news and what isn't but it is not a bad thing to have a group of people who are trained at finding news and keeping people honest.
In the meantime, companies and others should use this drastically changing time to take advantage of the tools available. It's something I've said in almost every post but there's going to come a time when everyone is doing it and not that it's essential for you to be 'everyone' but it'd certainly be advantageous to be one of those companies that takes of advantages of these tools before everyone is doing it and cluttering these advanced marketing channels.
You may love reading the newspaper every morning but it wouldn't hurt your company to do your part in kicking them in the shins once in a while.