Journalists of the future, we need you! (Um, now . . . )

By Paul Furiga

As someone who’s spent three decades in and around journalism, what happens to the business and profession is of more than passing interest to me.

It’s not just that I run a public relations agency and that some share of our work will always be interwoven with that of journalists. It’s not that I have many friends who still carry a notebook every day and report the news as it happens (though I do). And it’s not that I am nostalgic about the days when you could actually yell, “Get me rewrite!” and it meant something (OK, maybe I am a little).

No, I care about the future health of journalism because, despite what everybody says, there’s never been a better time to be a journalist. And there’s never been a time when we’ve needed journalists more.

Sometimes, I just want to climb the nearest building and shout (well, today I guess I would Tweet): “Journalists of the future, we need you! Now.”

Here’s why I am bullish on journalism when so many others are not:

• The crash of the newspaper industry is the crash of the traditional classified and display advertising industry, not the end of the human biological need for information and the desire to argue/debate/entertain/gossip/inform in common with each other based upon what we collectively consider “news.”
• The crash of the newspaper industry is, in addition to the collapse of the print advertising model (thank youCraigslist, srsly) the collapse of an antiquated delivery model that makes no sense in the 21st century. Trucking around dead trees and expending tremendous amounts of fossil fuels to do so is stupid.
• The crash of the network TV model is more about the explosion of choice than it is about the end of the need for instant, authoritative reporting. I am not nostalgic for a video world in which I have only three choices for content (ah, 1977!).

Here’s why we need the journalists of the future — now:

• Today’s young journalists natively understand that the Internet has created a need for news reporting that is both instant and rich in multimedia. The division of labor between print, broadcast and online is purely artificial today. We need a journalist who can report his or her own story, upload and edit the video, cut the audio and post the blog. This is what young journalists do.
• Pick your scary statistic, today’s explosion of information is not making us smarter, it is making us more confused. More than ever, we need trained professionals who help us make sense of the sea of information that is drowning us. This is what good journalists have always done.
• We’re already behind the curve. The shrinking time span between the development of technology and its implementation is a global phenomenon that affects journalism as much as other fields. There’s no reason, in any field, that students should be trained to use the tools of the last decade (or the last century) to solve the problems of tomorrow. It’s about time journalism joined the 21st century in this regard.

Here’s why the journalists of the future should want to be journalists:

• While it’s true that journalists of the future may not work in big buildings with printing presses in the basement churning through tons of paper, it’s also true that journalists of the future don’t need those tons of paper to be successful.
• A journalistic voice worthy of being heard no longer has to climb through the Byzantine ranks of small-market newspapers, radio or television to reach a broader audience. Thanks to the Internet, journalism can be direct to consumer!
• While journalists of the future may not have the financial and brand resources of the old print and broadcast dynasties as a platform for success, they also no longer have the limits on their ownership, control and success that working for those big, old, traditional media outlets would impose on them.

I am not naïve. I do not believe this is an easy transition or that the rewards for new journalists will be easy to attain. I do believe they will be worth it, for journalists, and for our increasingly global society.

So here’s the bottom line, one that I share with dozens of bright young people who network with me every year about a potential career in journalism: Journalists of the future, we need you!

And the good news for the rest of us is that, despite what the naysayers may believe, the real journalists of the future need us, too. Their passion and their persistence — their biological imperative to participate in that sharing of news I described earlier — will compel them to become journalists. And we will all be the better for it.

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Paul Furiga is president and CEO of WordWrite Communications.

April 28 2010 | Communications and Media and Public Relations and Storytelling and social media | 5 Comments »

An opportunity for transparent storytelling from the Steelers and NFL

By Deanna Ferrari

At WordWrite, we see a lesson in transparent, authentic storytelling with our hometown football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. How the Santonio Holmes and Ben Roethlisberger cases play out for the NFL can provide the rest of us with lessons on what it means to be open and authentic in sharing our own stories (good or bad) in the public eye.

Holmes, a wide receiver and Super Bowl XLIII MVP, has been traded to the New York Jets for a fifth round pick in the upcoming draft, and will be suspended for four games for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy. Quarterback Roethlisberger has avoided charges after he was accused of sexual assault – the second time Roethlisberger has been in the news for such an allegation. Now Roethleisberger’s fate rests with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the Steelers.

With these two incidents, the Steelers and the NFL have an opportunity to tell a story on player accountability – on and off the field. It’s nothing new for a sports star to get in trouble with the law, or to be accused, and it’s also nothing new for a team or league to do something — or nothing — about it.

Too many people make the mistaken assumption that public relations is all about what you say. That’s only part of the story. Perhaps the most important part of your story is what you do — walking the walk. How will the NFL and Steelers do in walking the walk? We will be able to tell pretty quickly, just as we have been able to do with so many players in recent years, including Holmes.

That’s because, with social media, there is something new for us to measure the walking of the walk. Social media gives fans a chance to show their appreciation or frustration about their favorite players and teams. And unfortunately for too many players, social media gives them a chance to tell their story openly. Holmes chose to take a poor route on his Twitter account, telling one fan to kill himself. He later took the tweet down, but it is still saved out there on the Internet, for all to see. It’s one of those curious conundrums of the Internet: Instantaneous yet permanent. Surely Holmes wanted to remove that tweet after he sent it; too late, it’s now out there forever.

It could have been different. With his Twitter account, Holmes could have expressed his apologies immediately after the March 7 incident in which he was accused of throwing a drink in a woman’s face. He could have said he wanted to get help. Or, he simply could have been transparent and authentic. Instead, he tweeted inappropriate subject matter, including what many immediately interpreted as a drug reference.

With Roethlisberger, we will see what the NFL and Steelers do. As a PR pro, my recommendation would be to suspend Roethlisberger for a few games for violating the league’s personal-conduct policy in the Georgia incident. That would be a great demonstration that the NFL policy is just as real for Super Bowl quarterbacks as it is for anyone else.

Perhaps Roethlisberger should go to a few classes on alcohol abuse and visit schools to talk about the dangers of drinking. Perhaps TV cameras should follow him as he visits and interview him. That would be a walking of the walk.

I don’t believe Roethlisberger has a Twitter account, but if the fans believe that Big Ben is living an authentic story that says he’s sorry for putting himself in these kinds of situations, then tweets about him and to him could turn from negative to positive. If fans see him taking steps to improve his actions, chances are they will allow him to go back to what he does best: playing football.

Whatever the outcome in both cases, this is a great opportunity for transparency and the telling and living of an authentic story within the NFL. The combination of two player incidents in a short period of time makes news. When the team involved is a Super Bowl dynasty run by a family famous for little tolerance of bad behavior, it’s even more of a news item. There’s room here for an authentic and compelling story. Will the NFL and Steelers deliver?

Whatever happens with Holmes and Roethlisberger will set a tone for the 2010 NFL season and a new decade.

As a PR professional, I take these episodes as lessons for our own work with clients at WordWrite. If something does go wrong, we know that if we take the appropriate steps with them after an incident happens, we can turn the tone around immediately. All it takes is preparation and transparency.

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Deanna Ferrari is an account executive for WordWrite Communications

April 13 2010 | Public Relations and Storytelling and social media | No Comments »