Public relations and journalism exist in an uneasy balancing act, a relationship where they both rely on each other as part of a communication ecosystem.
It used to be that journalism was the stronger player in the relationship, but now as a result of cuts to newsrooms, PR is becoming more dominant. And this relationship could undermine already limited trust in news.
Traditionally, one of the most important connections for PR practitioners has been those with journalism. PR professionals rely on their journalistic connections to help get their messages out, and journalists draw from PR to help find interesting stories, fill quotas and meet deadlines. In fact, according to the Canadian Public Relations Society, PR professionals tend to interact more with journalists than with any other professional group.
This relationship worked for many years because journalists had the upper hand. Journalists had a culture that made them wary of PR professionals, which helped to keep the PR industry in check. When interacting with PR practitioners, journalists would choose whether to pursue a story, and how much of the story suggested by the PR professional is actually worthy of column space or broadcast time. Journalists were likely to seek out different sides of an issue suggested by a PR professional, rather than just publishing a news release verbatim.
In return, the PR professionals could be reasonably confident the coverage would be trusted by the public. By choosing what to cover and how to cover it, journalism keeps PR accountable. If PR practitioners do anything to threaten their relationship with news outlets, they will not be able to work effectively.
However, in recent years, as a result of media consolidation and the rise of social media, the relationship between PR and journalism has shifted. While this shift seems to favour PR, in reality it has resulted in declining trust in news, and that’s bad for everyone. When the delicate balance between journalism and PR is upset, we end up with an information ecosystem that is less trustworthy because it is driven by organizational goals rather than the public interest.
For example, when important information like COVID-19 vaccine efficacy is presented to the public directly from news releases, important scientific facts can be minimized or left out of the portrayal of the issue. That can contribute to eroding public trust in both the news story and the organization covered by it. While PR plays a role in ensuring the trust between organizations and the publics, some PR practices can lead to the decline in trust in news.
Cash-strapped newsrooms are increasingly turning to PR to make up for falling revenues.(Shutterstock)
Other grey area PR tactics, like astroturfing, direct media attention to stories that journalists might not otherwise consider very newsworthy. Astroturfing entails using social media to create fake online grassroots support for an organization or issue. News outlets often cover a story that seems to be getting a lot of attention on social media. Unethical PR firms will often exploit this fact by buying likes, shares and engagements, creating fake hype for a specific product, person or organization that would otherwise not be covered at all.
Rethinking the relationship
Journalism isn’t perfect, but striking the balance between PR and journalism is beneficial for both parties. As this balance shifts in favour of public relations, it becomes harder for the public to trust news. That leads to more aggressive PR tactics, further eroding the public trust. Everyone loses.
Steps can be taken to rebalance the relationship between journalism and PR. Journalism must be strengthened, including local news, so that journalists have the resources to refuse sponsored content and push back against PR pitches. This means we all have a role to play in paying for the journalism we value, and new funding models should be developed to help provide resources to smaller and independent journalism in Canada and elsewhere.
To that end, entrepreneurship networks like indiegraf and other opportunities for independent journalism need to be supported by offering business training to journalism students, providing government resources to support journalism entrepreneurs and through our own habits.
Journalists who are brave enough to also become entrepreneurs by starting their own publications need us to pay for their content through Substack, Patreon or other subscription services. This will have a cascading impact as these journalist entrepreneurs create small businesses that can provide new job opportunities for other journalists and journalism students.
Finally, professional associations for PR practitioners like the Canadian Public Relations Society or the Public Relations Society of America need to do more to punish disreputable firms that use tactics like astroturfing to create fake influence. By strengthening journalism and putting limits on PR, we can reset the balance and create a healthier media ecosystem for everyone.
Publishers struggle to make advertising revenue despite record digital readership
UK newspapers face losing £50m in digital revenues as advertisers use “blacklist” technology to block ads from appearing next to all stories that mention the coronavirus pandemic.
When advertisers run digital campaigns they use keyword blacklists – stocked with trigger words such as “attack” and “death” – that automatically stop ads running in potentially problematic stories that feature them. Publishers say that words related to the pandemic – such as coronavirus and Covid-19 – are appearing on blacklists across the industry.
This has meant that while national and regional newspaper publishers are gaining record numbers of digital readers seeking to keep up to date about the pandemic, publishers are struggling to make ad revenue from their interest.
Advertisers’ blacklist technology is also indiscriminate meaning that even positive or innocuous pieces such as those on the Joe Wicks YouTube PE phenomenon, family activities for the housebound, or articles recommending TV shows, films and books to read in isolation are also shorn of adverts.
“While we have seen a huge surge in demand from readers for trusted, accurate reporting, advertising ‘blacklists’ are preventing adverts from appearing alongside online stories with the word coronavirus in them,” said Tracy De Groose, executive chair of Newsworks, the campaigning body for the UK newspaper industry.
“If the pandemic lasts for another three months the total loss across our news brands is expected to be £50m, threatening our ability to fund the quality journalism that is vital to ensure that the UK public is accurately informed during the crisis.”
The UK’s national and regional newspaper publishers have put their rivalries to one side and published an open letter calling on advertisers to rethink the addition of coronavirus-related words to blacklists.
In the industry letter scheduled to be published on Wednesday, De Groose says: “We understand many marketing budgets are under real pressure now. All we ask is that when you launch your next campaign you check you’re not unknowingly blocking trusted news brands from your plans.”
Publishers also feel they are not being treated fairly as other platforms flooded with coronavirus content, such as social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, are not treated in the same way by advertisers.
“The same advertisers [blocking ads on newspaper sites] are running campaigns on radio and social media, where all the chat is about the virus, which is inconsistent, to say the least,” says Nick Hewat, commercial director at Guardian News & Media, publisher of the Guardian and the Observer.
“Publishers are the only ones who are punished, in an advertising sense, for reporting and distributing the news that society desperately needs. The system needs an overhaul, the technology needs improving.”
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Feature Image Credit: Newspapers have gained record readership online but that isn’t translating into revenue. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP
As Spanish legacy newspapers embrace digital subscriptions, Journalist Fellow Eduardo Suárez looks at how they can succeed.
Flower shops are a risky business proposition. Many get a big portion of their revenue on two single occasions: Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day. The product they sell is not perceived as essential. They need to be as close as they can to their best customers and this requires paying expensive rents to be in high-end neighbourhoods. Then there’s the inventory problem: flowers start to die the moment you cut them. Within three weeks, they’re rotting in your fridge.
The founders of American start-up H. Bloom solved these problems by creating a subscription business. They targeted hotels, restaurants and other businesses and offered them weekly flower delivery, installation and maintenance for a recurring fee. Four years after its launch, H. Bloom had nearly 1,000 clients and more than $7 million in sales.
Flower shops are not that different from news organisations. Both have to deal with similar problems: perishable inventory, seasonality, a product that is not perceived as essential, a lumpy demand. Subscriptions can provide a solution to some of those problems. Setting them up, however, requires a particular mindset and expertise. As a Journalist Fellow at the Reuters Institute, I looked at how different newspapers are dealing with the different aspects of this transformation right now.
Subscriptions: why now
There are at least three reasons for the rise of the subscription economy.
The first one is the rise of broadband Internet around the world, which makes it easier to build digital services for a sizable market.
The second is the rise of the access generation, millennials and post-millennials who value access over assets and see any physical possessions as unnecessary baggage. As Tien Tzuo puts it in Subscribed, these younger customers want “the ride, not the car. The milk, not the cow. The new Kanye music, not the new Kanye record.” They like convenience and personalisation, and expect companies to provide them with a reliable service. These are the customers behind the rise of Zipcar, Netflix and Spotify.
The third factor is the ability to analyze customer behaviour in real-time. “Today businesses are closer to their customers than ever before,” says John Warrillow in The Automatic Customer. “All those customer interactions are being fed into mathematical models, which are run by computers that are now capable of storing and processing billions of data points in seconds.” These interactions can create a virtuous cycle. Subscription companies can watch how their customers use their service and tweak it accordingly. There’s no need for surveys or focus groups.
A few newspapers adopted digital subscriptions in the first years of this century. Most of these efforts failed. There are many reasons why subscriptions didn’t work at the time. Payment systems were clunky. Digital advertising was still attractive for general newspapers. People weren’t used to paying for services online. Smartphones and tablets didn’t exist yet.
Things started to change after the Great Recession. The FT introduced a flexible pay model in 2007. The Times and The Sunday Times adopted a hard paywall in 2010. The New York Times launched a metered model in March 2011. In the last few years, many newspapers have followed this path in different flavours. Freemium and metered models have flourished in European countries as diverse as Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland and France.
The paper I publish today explores what news companies with reader revenue models are doing through structured interviews with 26 media executives from 15 news organisations. Some of these outlets run digital subscriptions. Others have reader revenue models with a less transactional value proposition. Most of them are based in Spain and the United Kingdom. Some are based in other European countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Italy and France.
The paper doesn’t analyze either the virtues of different pay models or the price of the offerings of every particular newspaper. Its main goal is to explain the strategies news outlets are applying to deal with the profound changes required by a subscription business in the hope that some could be used by other news organisations elsewhere.
Why Spain and the UK
Most of the news organisations featured in this paper are based in Spain and the United Kingdom. These media markets have a few things in common. Both have similar percentages of people willing to pay for news according to the Digital News Report: 10% in Spain, 9% in the UK. Newspapers operating in both countries share the blessing (also the curse) to publish its content in a global language. Unlike the Nordic countries, they don’t have the competitive advantage of a language almost no one speaks outside their market. The Internet provides them with an open field where they compete with outlets based on the other side of the Atlantic. They can pursue traffic overseas.
Spain and Britain have very different media landscapes. Tabloids and digital-only news organisations are mostly free in the United Kingdom and operate under the shadow of the BBC. Most national broadsheets and magazines, however, have been running pay models for a few years. The Financial Times, The Times and The Sunday Times operate with hard paywalls. The Telegraph runs a freemium model. The Guardian combines memberships and contributions with several subscription options. News start-up Tortoise is exploring a promising model through newsletters, sponsorships and events.
Spain is on the other side of the spectrum. Digital-born newspaper eldiario.es had more than 35,000 paying members in January 2020 and several regional newspapers are running digital subscriptions. But not a single national legacy news organisation was running a substantial pay model in July 2019. This is changing. El Mundolaunched a freemium subscription model in October 2019. El País is launching a metered paywall in the first quarter of 2020. Other outlets are expected to follow suit in the next few months.
As this transformation unfolds, it’s worth looking at strategies news organisations are using on five aspects of the subscription process: things to do before launch, value proposition, pricing, acquisition and churn. Here are twelve themes that came out of my interviews.
1. Pay models require a different kind of organisation.
Successful subscription companies break silos and create cross-functional teams. Marketing, technology and editorial work closely and obsess about customers’ needs. The FT, for example, bridges the gap between marketing and editorial with a weekly meeting. “We want to know what they’re about to do so we can turn that into both existing customer engagement opportunities and acquisition opportunities rather than waiting for the news to hit,” says Marie Goddard, head of customer marketing.
The best media executives make sure everyone knows the metrics that matter. Facebook likes, page views, and unique users are now valued mostly as means towards an end —acquisition and retention of paying subscribers. Frequency, recency and time spent mean readers are getting value from your site. The goal of every news outlet should be to get more people to enjoy its content more often during more time. Loyalty is the first step towards a subscription. Occasional readers never subscribe.
2. Every newspaper must learn to tell its own story.
There will always be outlets offering free access to their news content. Any company with a pay model must explain why readers should support its work. This appeal should be crafted carefully. It must take into account the mission of the organisation as well as its ownership, its history and its constraints.
After launching its membership model, people at The Guardian noticed many readers saw the newspaper had 150 million readers and assumed they were making a lot of money. So they realised they had to explain how advertising revenue was dropping and why they needed their readers’ support. “As journalists, we have always been telling the stories of other people. Now we also have to tell our own,” says Amanda Michel.
Journalists should explain how they do what they do. Media executives should be as transparent as possible in their financial reports. Newspapers could benefit from presenting themselves within a broader social narrative. A conversation with their readers could help frame a narrative that is clear and attractive. Anything a news brand does should be aligned with its editorial mission. Paying readers are less forgiving than occasional users. Clickbait can destroy trust.
3. Subscription companies must obsess about their core audience.
Most of the reader revenue of every newspaper with a pay model comes from a small percentage of their readers. These are the ones most attached to the brand and most likely to subscribe. Media executives should look at the behaviour of these readers. Their goal should be to learn what their news habits are, how they structure their news diet, what they’re looking for when they come. News organisations should learn as much as possible about this group and should think of strategies to grow it. Their future depends on this.
4. The best newspapers focus on their digital products.
Most of the legacy outlets covered by this paper still get most of their revenue from print. Their top priority, however, is improving their digital properties. This is not an easy task. Loyal readers are not uniform. Their consumption patterns could be all over the map. Quality often means different things to different people. Every channel requires a different language and different skills.
The best companies invest their resources on the platforms that are popular among their core users and adapt their processes and priorities to their needs. This could mean producing audio versions of your best stories, as Danish digital magazine Zetland has done very successfully, or creating niche editorial products for audiences that are underserved. A great example is The Times’s Crime Club newsletter. It gives reviews, free ebooks and event tickets to crime fiction fans. It’s the most successful newsletter at The Times with a 70% open rate.
5. Good user experience is essential to succeed.
News organisations are realising that content is just one of the aspects of their value proposition. User experience is almost as important, especially on a mobile phone. A great editorial product can fail as a result of poor user experience. On the other hand, great user experience could be a great selling point for a news organisation.
The Guardian lets everyone read every article on its website, but makes readers pay to read some of those articles or a daily edition in its premium apps. The most successful news organisations think thoroughly about loading time, packaging and presentation. Younger audiences are used to the high standards set by digital platforms. They don’t accept pop-up windows or invasive ads.
6. Readers appreciate a product they can finish.
In a world dominated by endless news feeds, finite editions are having a comeback as a way to foster loyalty among subscribers and recreate the news habits of the past. Older readers still love to read the electronic versions of print editions. Younger audiences gravitate towards daily podcasts, niche newsletters or news digests bundled into cheaper subscriptions.
Readers love the sense of achievement that comes from finishing a daily edition. News organisations are betting on the renewed appeal of editions as a way to recreate the news habits of the past. This trend is behind daily podcasts such as The Economist’s The Intelligence and The Guardian’s Today in Focus. It’s also what’s fuelling the rise of newsletters as a way to engage with the audience without depending on algorithms.
Journalists should remember their job is not so much publishing everything as editing what is important. Their work shouldn’t be guided by outdated processes but by the routines of their current audience.
7. Print shouldn’t be the focus but it could help.
A print product could be overwhelming or pointless for a portion of your digital audience. But print can still be an asset today. Newspapers face a strategic dilemma: most of their growth comes from digital, but most of their revenue still comes from print.
The most successful companies adapt their content to the language of every channel where its loyal readers spend their time and print is a channel too. The Guardian uses price hikes to transform anonymous buyers into print subscribers and repackages some of its articles into a new glossy weekly magazine. The Economist creates most of its daily picks from articles already published in the print edition of the magazine.
8. The best subscription companies experiment with pricing.
Newspapers have produced a single product and sold it for a single price for the last couple of centuries. Digital subscriptions require a different mindset, much more open to experimenting with bundles and price points. Discounts and free trials may be in your toolbox. But you should make it very clear to your readers they enter into a paid relationship. Otherwise, you will attract people who won’t stay for long. Hard data, not gut feelings should guide your decisions.
Any changes on pricing should be made after reviewing the behaviour of the people most likely to subscribe. Newspapers are partnering with other news organisations. Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter offers bundles with The New York Times and with a few local newspapers. Spanish newspaper eldiario.es offers bundles with a couple of magazines too.
9. Open vs closed is not the right framework.
The difference between membership and subscription models is more blurred than ever before. Some news organisations with a membership model run very hard paywalls while newspapers with subscriptions allow sampling opportunities through free trials, social and search.
Open news organisations are more closed than you think, and vice versa. The Guardian runs a successful subscription business. The FT ran an open WhatsApp channel and still publishes audio and video content for free. The most successful news outlets are not attached to their models. They tweak them according to the behaviour of their audience and experiment with bundles and revenue streams. The shape of your paywall must be just one of the elements of your value proposition. Newsletters, podcasts, audiobooks, trips, discounts and events must be added to the mix.
10. Journalism is a great acquisition strategy.
Every news organisation covered by this report experiment with search and social channels. But everyone says that nothing beats journalism as an acquisition tool. Memberships and subscriptions are not impulse sales. People start paying after engaging with a news organisation regularly for a long time. Creating news habits is the best way to get subscribers and reduce churn.
Journalists working at the newsroom of eldiario.es.
Readers often convert after reading long-form pieces and investigations that force politicians to resign. Quality and consistency are important for every subscription company but also for newspapers with a less transactional value proposition. News sites should perfect the way they ask for the support of their audience. They should test different messages and try to answer with them any questions they could have.
11. Friction is your enemy.
Subscribing or donating to a news outlet should be as easy as possible. Newspapers should take a page from technology start-ups and adopt frictionless payment systems. Anyone should be able to subscribe in a few seconds. Anyone should be able to cancel its subscription without making a phone call.
Creating a seamless payment system is especially difficult for global news organisations, whose managers have to deal with different platforms and different regulations. You won’t reduce your churn rate unless you get your customers into reliable payment systems. Many cancellations are the result of credit cards’ expiration dates.
12. Churn is much more important than acquisition.
Getting thousands of subscribers who leave a few months after they join is not a sustainable path for any news organisation. This is why acquisition and churn strategies should be run by the same team. Dirty acquisition channels bring in the wrong kind of customers and produce high churn rates.
Good subscription companies design great onboarding experiences and encourage their readers to make the most of their subscription in the first few days. They also segment their users by demographics and by the time they joined. Creating habits matters much more than showing any particular piece of content. Retention often correlates with frequency and time spent.
Marie Goddard, head of customer marketing at the FT, says that embedding habits in new subscribers is much more useful than showing them articles. “It’s not about showing them content because content is short-lived,” she says. “It’s about showing them how to sign up to a newsletter, how to choose the right newsletters or how to download our mobile app. If you use the app, you are very likely to be engaged with the FT. So we flipped from content discovery to thinking about the nudges we need to get them to access our content in their way.”
Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald was the highest-reaching title with 5.18m
News media audiences grew by 2% in 2017 for the second consecutive year, according to the latest emma (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia) data for December 2017 released this week.
In December 2017, 16.9 million people, or 90% of the population (aged 14+), read news media across all platforms.
Almost three quarters of the population (74%, or 13.8 million people) consumed news media on digital devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops.
Newspapers alone were read by 12.8 million people, or 68% of the population in December.
National news media was read by 2.5 million, or 13%, of the population. Metro newspapers were read by 10.6 million people, or 56% of consumers, over the same period.
Regional and community news media brands were read by 6.5 million people, or 35% of the population during December. A total of 3.1 million people (or 17% aged 14+), read regional newspapers, while community newspapers were read by 3.5 million (or 19% aged 14+).
“Since 2015 we have seen more than half a million additional Australians turning to news media, consuming premium content they know they can trust. The great majority of major news brands have seen readership growth in print and digital audiences in 2017. In contrast, Australian’s social media usage is now in year-on-year decline, consistent with negative audience growth in Canada and the US,” NewsMediaWorks CEO Peter Miller said.
The Sydney Morning Herald is Australia’s highest-reaching title across all platforms with 5.18 million readers. The Daily Telegraph followed, reaching 4.18 million readers and the Herald Sun on 4.1 million (see table below).
