Are Newspapers Becoming VCRs?

My dog and I have become paper trained. Call me old fashioned, but I still get the print version of the daily newspaper. Each day I engage in a trivial, but memorable tribal dance with the delivery person. Timing is everything in this archaic ritual, and simple nuances in the unseen interchange between us nag at me all morning like a food particle stuck between my molars. His/her job is to precisely toss the daily rag into a ten foot diameter invisible circle on my driveway at approximately the same time each morning. My job is to retrieve it in a sweeping motion that consumes exactly the amount of time it takes a Golden Retriever to relieve herself on the front lawn. If he fails to hit the mark I notice. If I fail to awaken at the appointed hour my dog notices and becomes an insistent telepathic alarm clock at my bedside.

Since I’m really not that fond of newspapers or reporters (along with lawyers, legislators, and radio talk show hosts) it has struck me as quite odd that when there is a disturbance in the force and my newspaper is not where it’s supposed to be I get inordinately upset. I stand there bewildered and unsettled in my gym shorts and T-shirt wondering why this 50¢ entitlement is not where it’s supposed to be! I call to complain and demand that the circulation staff makes it right.

Hailey

When that happens, my dog also notices that the time-space continuum is out of balance and she decides to sniff around for a few extra minutes in a vain attempt to find my newspaper. All the while I am awkwardly hoping that my super-commuting neighbors don’t come out to witness what I might look like as a bedmate. I feel their eyes on me as the seconds tick by. How bad is my bed head hairdo? At least the newspaper provides me some cover and a credible excuse for standing half naked in my driveway at dawn. Sans newspaper, they probably can’t figure out if I’m coming or going.

This morning, I dutifully traipsed out to the driveway at sunrise, inwardly smiling with smug satisfaction that my trusty newspaper was “in the zone.” Game on.

So, with my morning coffee I'm reading in The Sacramento Bee about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos buying the venerable Washington Post for $240 million. The Graham Family finally gave up the ownership ghost after 80 years in the business making Bezos a sole owner with no Board of Directors or stockholders. This follows by a week an announcement that the owner of the Boston Red Sox had purchased The Boston Globe for pennies on the dollar of what it was worth a decade ago.

Question: Are newspapers now becoming the retro playthings for the super-rich just like professional sports teams?

Answer: Probably not. Pro Sports is a multi-billion enterprise on the rise and newspapers can’t turn a profit in a collapsing industry. But maybe they make a kitschy hobby for the hipster one percent.

As I read on, it dawned on me that I already heard about everything related to the Bezos/Post affair from watching the nightly news and catching news items on Internet sources. This news story was so yesterday. Isn't it ironic that one of the people contributing to the 44% decline in Post revenue over the last five years now owns the paper he was putting out of business? That feels like a very hostile takeover to me. Amazon (Bezos) very effectively kindled the fire in people to get their news online (pun intended).

Question: How can the print media stay alive in an Era of Instantaneous Reporting by citizen journalists?

Answer: Maybe by being the master of the content and not a slave to the delivery system the press can keep its edge and relevance.

Seniors are about the only ones actually reading print newspapers anymore (remember now, 60 is the new 50).  They read the obituaries to see if they're in them.  The Pew Center reported two years ago that on any given day in America only about 34% of the adults actually read the daily newspaper. That means if you get hammered by the press, there’s a three-in-one chance nobody knows about it.

For older folks, cars on freeways seem to careen past them at break-neck speeds, so they often self-regulate traffic by locking into 65 MPH in the fast lane to gain a sense of control. It’s the geezer factor in commuting that drives us nuts. With respect to news consumption the same holds true. Seniors are trying to drive in a media market fast lane using a slow-paced device that cannot hit light speed. Newspapers don’t have the horse power to keep up with the Internet traffic. Newspapers are not even 1G in a 5G-Force world.

However, for communicators we are still in that transitional gray area where we cannot decide to drop print materials altogether in favor of e-communications. Old folks (and traditionalists like me) like to get our fingers smudged from the ink on what we read. We also turn out to vote at five times the rate of our offspring.

So if content is key, maybe Mr. Bezos can make good on his initial statement that The Washington Post will not change. It will still be a diligent sentinel for truth and accuracy in a sea of shameless hit-piece sensationalist “news reporting.” I hope that standard can stay intact when the pressure of the marketplace shakes confidence in his $240 million gamble.

Newspapers need to take a lesson from the VCR. We all had them 15 years ago. Now they are relics of a bygone era. They are unplugged gathering dust in the garage. Many of us still cling to libraries of the clunky oversized VHS tapes (mostly Disney classics for our grandkids). Soon those physical relics will become little used collectibles too. But Hollywood is still making movies and TV shows. They control the content and adapted nicely to each new generation of media that came along to show their stories (DVD, BluRay, streaming, Netflix, etc). Maybe newspapers should learn a lesson here. Be the reliable story teller. Be the trusted "wire service" for their community.

Newspapers can decide to stay as VCRs or they can become the reference point for the Internet conversations of the future by presenting an accurate, timely, credible, and objective accounting of the news. Don’t become perspective-driven tabloids to keep up with the Internet Joneses; they can’t win on speed and quantity, so win on quality. The newspaper business should be an honorable profession where getting it right matters more than getting it fast.

Maybe Jeff Bezos has the wherewithal and long range vision to transform the daily newspaper into something that people read with a sense of enthusiasm and dedication. My Golden Retriever sure hopes so because our daily ritual is important to both of us in so many ways.

 
© 2013 by Thomas K. DeLapp

Tiger & Toyota: At-Risk Reputation Management

Tiger Woods is the number one golfer in the world. Toyota is the biggest car company. They each set the standard for excellence in their respective fields. They each enjoyed enviable blue chip reputations. They each dominated their industries and in both cases millions, if not billions of dollars were on the line as they performed.

Yet, within a few months of each other both are now facing unprecedented crises in public confidence. Will it be a permanent fall from grace or just a temporary setback?

As I watch these parallel situations unfold, I can’t help but reflect on what we as school communicators can learn from the Tiger & Toyota scandals. Here are some observations:

Denial is not an option; where there’s smoke there’s surely going to be a firestorm
There were plenty of warning signs that Tiger and Toyota had problems and that it was only a matter of time before the lid would blow. There were mutterings about on-tour trysts by the legendary golfer and internal memos now reveal that Toyota was in denial for months about the real cause of its sticking gas pedals. Instead of decisively confronting those warning signs, both chose to hope they would stay confidential. The lesson here: in today’s microscopic society public figures must presume that their inner most actions will eventually become public. The real question is how that will occur, not whether it will. The number one rule of PR: Do A Good Job! They should have done a good job to clean up their acts and not blindly hope they could keep their poor performance under wraps.

Break your own bad news instead of letting others break it over your head
A delayed response enables and empowers others to frame your message and the resulting commentary. Many will question whether Tiger should have made a huge public apology. Where was the CEO of Toyota during the first few days after the gas pedal recall? Neither came forward to set the record straight. The public needed and wanted a public face to reassure us. In the absence of one, every tabloid, shock jock and self-appointed expert filled the gap.

I recall several years ago when a Southwest Airlines jet overshot the end of the Burbank Airport runway and parked itself a few yards into Hollywood Way. Within 30 minutes, SWA CEO Herb Kelleher was on TV assuming responsibility, telling us they would thoroughly investigate what happened so it wouldn’t happen again, and reassuring us that it was still safe to fly Southwest. Today, Southwest Airlines is the only profitable airline in the country and has retained its rock solid reputation. I fly a lot and my airline of choice is still Southwest.

When you think it’s bottomed out, be prepared to dig a little deeper
You always want yours to be a one-day story. These both seem to be unraveling as soap opera sagas. The traditional and non-traditional news outlets love unfolding human drama. They’re in a feeding frenzy on a steady diet of controversy that extends the coverage and keeps the spotlight glaring with every new angle. The reputations of both Tiger and Toyota have been bleeding out over days and weeks instead of hours. The reason: daily announcements with more and juicier details coming to light . . . so stayed tuned. The lesson here is to get the worst behind you quickly so you can concentrate on damage control and reputation repair. Your goal is to not be the butt of the opening monologue jokes on Jay Leno or David Letterman for more than a day.

In today’s mixed media environment the story takes on a life of its own
In both cases, the public personas thought they could control the message by limiting the message. In the era of citizen-journalists and personality-driven news, every pundit, blogger, commentator, and columnist adds fuel to the firestorm. If you don’t fill the informational vacuum, others will. The story goes viral quickly and you cannot even know far it reaches and gets distorted.

Swift decisive action may be the only way to staunch the bleeding
Tiger benched himself from the PGA tour ostensibly to deal with his sex addiction and salvage his marriage. Toyota shut down the production line ostensibly to focus on repairing the cars it had already sold. In both cases, they did not want to further risk losing consumer confidence by operating their “business as usual.” If Tiger had continued to play golf, but do it poorly because he had lost his concentration then he would have lost the very foundation of his reputation. I have been a loyal 25-year Toyota customer with three of their vehicles parked in my garage. Their top brass need to make sure I can trust what comes off the production line or their reputation for excellence will give way to lingering doubts. I applaud both decisions to shut down. Sometimes when your computer is acting up the best solution is just to re-boot. That’s exactly what Tiger and Toyota decided to do . . . Re-boot their Reputations.

Do something really great to improve the after-taste
Tiger’s first tournament victory will go a long way toward restoring his place in history. The number of Tour wins instead of the number of girlfriends is how he needs to be measured in the history books. Show us you are great for the right reasons Tiger. I'm rooting for you. Toyota missed the chance to use the second highest rated media event, The Super Bowl, to tell its true story. It is only now airing nostalgic reputation-building commercials on TV. The car maker needs to use TV coverage on the highest-rated world stage . . . The Olympic Games . . . as the venue to re-shape and reinforce its reputation. Getting the facts out is one thing, but we all remember stories. Toyota needs satisfied customers to tell its story once again to the world. You can’t tell us you’re safe or great Toyota; you need other believable people to tell us you still are.

There is a big difference between being famous and having a solid reputation. Anyone can be famous, but probably for the wrong reasons. Octo-Mom, the gate-crashing Salahis, and other one-hit wonders come and go with their 15 minutes of fame. Our public schools need to cultivate a deep and pervasive reputation for excellence and they need to nurture, protect and manage that reputation well. School districts are counting on their chief communicators to grow the organization’s reputation especially at the moments of truth when they appear in the white hot glare of the public spotlight.