Turning News Into Knowledge

I love headlines. They are among the most intriguing aspects of media analysis. Working with the news on a daily basis provides you with access to some eye-catching and hilarious headlines. I mean, how can you not read a story titled Man wrestles leopard in undies?

Apparently the mayor of Ottawa is also quite interested in headlines. He recently held a presser to announce he may sue the city’s biggest daily paper over allegations that he offered a federal job to another mayoral candidate if that candidtate dropped out of the race.

I found it quite fascinating that it was specifically the headline – E-mails from Larry O’Brien offer mayoral candidate help to get federal post – that really set things off. Headlines are by nature designed to attract attention, so I guess job well done. But in this case, when, in my opinion, the facts in the story don’t back up the headline, it raises a common question about the motivation of the media: Is it ok to stretch the truth to sell more papers? I’ll definitely be watching this story as it progresses.

From a media analysis perspective, headlines can be tough to handle when evaluating the tone or sentiment of the story. There are many cases where the headline does not match up at all with the tone or sentiment of the story itself. I’m working on a future post that will cover off some interesting examples of how contrary the headlines can be to the supporting story, and examples of how the same wire story can have outrageously different headlines from one publication to the next. Stay tuned!

Many professional communicators are starting to talk about ROI or Return On Investment in regards to measuring their communications activities.

I came across a blog posting at Intelligent Measurement that questions the value of assigning an advertising equivalency to news coverage.

Advertising equivalency is essentially putting a dollar value to media coverage. Its value is generally calculated by comparing the size of the article to paid advertising of the relatively the same size and placement. Or in the case of broadcast, the length and time of the mention in comparison to an advertising spot.

The blog posting, The problem with ROI, would like to see more of an emphasis on brand and reputation issues.

Fair enough.

But it’s important to remember that when it comes to good analysis there is no silver bullet. There is no one technique that will communicate what exactly is going on or how your communications efforts are being perceived.

Some organizations have tried to correlate stock prices or sales to news coverage, and, similar to advertising equivalency, this practice has it detractors. Can you correlate stock prices or sales to news coverage? The answer is: Sometimes yes and sometimes no.

That may sound like a cop-out, but in reality it’s the most truthful answer and exemplifies why you need more than tools when it comes to media analysis. You need knowledgeable people who understand the issues to tell you what’s going on.

Good media analysis is about providing insight, and telling a story that accurately communicates to your organization what is going on and how information is being perceived. It’s about being able to read the tea leaves, and it’s important to use all means that are valuable to you to do so.

We have a saying at MediaMiser: Garbage in, equals garbage out. The key to successful and meaningful media analysis – both manual and automated – is ensuring you’re not tabulating unwanted information.

Granted, you’re less likely to include “garbage” when you’re performing your analysis manually, but it can still happen. And as mentioned in a previous blog posting, the biggest problem with manual media analysis is not that you’re getting too much information, it’s that you’re not getting enough, due in large part to the time and expense of finding and processing the data.

As for automated media analysis, this problem can be solved by simply refining your parameters and being vigilant.

A former colleague of mine once said, “A fool with a tool is still a fool.”

Enough said.

The other day I saw a commercial for 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to the sci-fi horror movie 28 Days Later.

I’m not a big fan of the zombie genre, but I enjoyed 28 Days Later enough that I took note when I saw the trailer for the sequel.

I sought out some online coverage of the new movie, and found a review by Kevin Williamson from Sun Media. The headline – 28 Weeks Later highly infectious - was a big reason why I read this review.

The review gave the movie a 3.5 out of 5, and said it was generally worth seeing. But I still wasn’t completely convinced.

Motivated by the review, I sought out more reviews from rottentomatoes.com. I love this site. It essentially provides quotes and summaries from the more mainstream media, as well as a good or bad rating for each movie. The good and the bad are then weighted and averaged, giving you a percentage out of 100. 28 Weeks Later has received a 74 per cent rating so far. Not too bad. Furthermore, rottentomatoes.com lets visitors to the site leave their own impressions, and some people did leave feedback I found useful.

  A scene from ’28 Weeks Later’.

At this point I was still undecided: was this a must-see in the theatre, or could it wait until it came out on DVD? My mind was made up when I searched various blogs and came across a posting at giantmag.com. The headline for the post was ‘This Weekend’s Best Movie Bet: 28 Weeks Later’, and had a full-featured trailer from Youtube that was more in-depth then what I had previously seen on TV.

Some of the scenes looked truly terrifying, and as I mentioned I’m not a huge zombie fan, but this movie looked like a quality film that was worth seeing in the theatre.

So what does this have to do with Turning News Into Knowledge, or understanding the nature of media?

In this case, I was touched by each different medium. Every time I read or watched something, it encouraged me to dig deeper at some other source for more information. I think it’s a great example of how and why traditional media is being augmented by new and social media, such as blogs and specialized sites like rottentomatoes.com.

That said, it should not be forgotten that I was originally made aware of 28 Weeks Later by traditional media.

Furthermore, the various headlines, ratings, and trailers had an immediate effect to how I was influenced.