Turning News Into Knowledge

It has already been a few weeks since the national conference for the Canadian Public Relations Society in Regina wrapped up.  The conference was very well organized, with a good mix of speakers from not-for-profit, public and private organizations.  Once again MediaMiser participated in the tradeshow, and while the attendance and traffic was a little light—it was well worth the interaction we had with existing customers and prospects.

Back to the speakers. No one was more engaging or entertaining than Peter Mansbridge, national correspondent for the CBC.   While you would expect him to be a confident speaker, he came across as one of the most comfortable public speakers I have ever heard.  He spoke for about 90 minutes, without notes, and was funny, humble, and most importantly interesting.  His topic of ‘What makes Canada, Canada”(or something like that) didn’t have a direct theme associated with public relations, but when you think about it we are in the business of sharing stories and Mr. Mansbridge delivered quirky and patriotic stories about some of his more compelling interviews from around the world; including a very memorable interview with President Obama at the White House.  He had the privilege of being the first foreign reporter to interview the President at the White House since he took office.

However, the point that really stuck out was his story about how he got his start in broadcasting. Again it doesn’t have anything in particular to do with the public relations industry, but I thought it was an important theme for anyone who has great ambitions in our craft or any other industry–don’t forget to go out of your comfort zone once in awhile.

Mr. Mansbridge didn’t finish high school and after a few jobs ended up working ground operations for an airline in Churchill, Manitoba. One day, very short-staffed, he was asked to jump on the intercom to announce flights and missing passengers, etc.  Apparently, just like his keynote, he came across as very comfortable and smooth on the microphone.  And luckily for him, a local CBC radio program director was listening for his gate.   A night program was without a radio host, and he was offered the job on the spot and without hesitation (or any real broadcasting experience) he jumped at the opportunity. Today, he is now one of the most respected and recognizable journalists in Canada.

It probably would have been very easy to come up with an excuse to avoid speaking on the microphone that day, but Mr. Mansbridge took on a small task outside of his job description…and the rest is history. So I’m going to challenge myself, every now and then, to step outside of my comfort zone and see what opportunities come my way.

Thanks CPRS Regina! And we look forward to attending next’s year conference in beautiful Saint John, New Brunswick.

Have you ever jotted down an idea for a blog—then let it swirl around in your brain for awhile to get your thoughts in order? I do this all the time and quite often never get around to writing the blog in the end.  I’m trying to find a cure for this laziness, I think it’s called Twitter.

This was just the case a few weeks back when I read the first half of a feature story in the August (print) edition ofVanity Fairabout Politico–a politically obsessed news organization that reports every whisper heard in Washington on-demand.

On the first go around I had only read page one of the feature and I was already thinking about the great blog post this story was going to make about how Politico could salvage the future of newspapers.  You see, the sub-headline read as follows

Four old-media veterans may have solved the future of news with the Politico Web site, whose audience of six million obsessives and insiders consumes–and feeds–a real-time download of power data. The twist? Politico’s print version is what’s helped make it profitable.

few paragraph’s into the story I was extremely intrigued.  Four mainstream print guys had bucked the institution, created their own gig, figured out what their audience craved, and were profitable…and get this: it was the print edition that was helping them roll in profits.

They had 100 staffers, 6.7 million unique monthly visitors for politico.com, and seemed to scoop all the mainstream media on a daily basis.  What was the secret to their success that they could share with the rest of the media world? I was curious to find out and blog about it—but got pulled away from the story with something more pressing.

A week later I finished reading the article, and to my dismay, there was no secret.  There were no profits. Just projections of perhaps breaking even according to the CEO.

‘it appears….according to C.E.O. Fred Ryan, that Politico, paying its staffers at nearly the level that The Washington Post pays (starting salaries for reporters at the Post are about $45,000 per year), has hit breakeven.’

As the story unfolds we find out the online advertising wasn’t strong enough to keep it afloat, so a print version with almost verbatim copy is being produced as a freebie. The additional ad revenue from print is bringing in just enough to help keep it going.   Unfortunately, despite how much politico’s love Politico, they had not as I hoped figured out a secret business model for media to thrive.   All of their ideas have already been tried by mainstream media in attempts to survive:

• • Pay journalists peanuts. Check.
  • Build up our online audience. Check.
  • Help journalists become trusted brands. Check.
  • Scoop the competition. Check.
  • Try a freebie print version supported by ads. Check.

I’m definitely being a little unfair to Politico; building an online audience of 6.7 million people with a century mark of employees is a great success story.  But the sub-headline of the story had promised me so much more—it had sparked a good idea for the blog and I thought I knew what the message would be.  And there’s the saving grace and an actual link back to media analysis. You can never judge an article by just the headline or even the first few paragraphs.  To properly assess an article the full story needs be taken into account, and inherently that is problem with automated sentiment analysis the way it is being done today. It can take words and phrases out of context (or in this case in context) and not properly relay the right information to decision makers in an analysis report.

Over the years we’ve relied on our analysts to provide clients with a human touch–including toning and sentiment analysis. I’m a big believer in automation – and I think there are strides being made to increase accuracy and insights – but any proper media analysis program needs to have human intervention at various checkpoints to ensure the information being shared can be trusted and acted upon.  Otherwise you might just think that the solution to the newspaper industry’s woes have been solved…I’m still waiting, but hopeful.

This past week we undertook an interesting analysis centered around a word rarely used, often mispronounced and most certainly misspelled: ‘prorogue’.  Yes, you guessed it, the analysis was all about the partisan hoopla in Canada among our political parties.

We undertook an analysis of coverage about the possibility of a Coalition government being formed in Canadian parliament, as a result of a non-confidence motion being entertained in the House. The results of our analysis were picked up by PR Week.

Needless to say it was an interesting exercise to see which major dailies supported the Coalition or the existing Conservative minority government. We focused mostly on the tone of the coverage, regional breakdowns and terms used. The tone was done by our media analysts on an individual story basis, then the data was further crunched using our software MediaMiser Enterprise.

Here are some of the general highlights:

- 526 articles analyzed;

- 20% of articles were supportive in tone of the Coalition; 

- 48% of articles were balanced in coverage; 

- 32% of articles were critical of the Coalition; 

- Almost half of the coverage in the National Post was critical of the Coalition; 

- Coverage in the Calgary Herald reached 60% critical;

- The Toronto Star was most supportive of the Coalition with 16 articles supporting it;

 - The most balanced of all the dailies analyzed was the Globe & Mail, which had equal support for and against.

However, when you look at the data in our system by drilling down further into the results some interested trends appeared:

- Using our Prominence tool to isolate front page coverage, the Globe & Mail only had supportive coverage of the Coalition;

- A regional breakdown highlighted extreme variances in tone, with Western Canada overwhelmingly against, Ontario slightly supportive, and Quebec(English-only) was balanced; 

- The term ‘party funding’ — which essentially started the feud — was only mentioned 14 times…while our favourite term ‘prorogue’ was used 86 times.

I think one of the keys when looking at an analysis like this is the ability to look further underneath the hood for additional insight, and not rely only on the overall tone scores.  

As I continue to work with a variety of companies in the media measurement space, I’m always amazed at how differently each project evolves.

This keeps things interesting, and the inevitable tough and unique questions that arise really keep you on your toes. But it also exemplifies why one chart or one formula can’t be counted on to provide answers for every situation.

Recently a client asked me whether it mattered that his organization had reached a greater number of media outlets – but fewer readers – than its main competitor. Cumulatively, the competitor had reached more readers, but with multiple hits in the same paper they were basically hitting the same reader multiple times.

Consider this example:

Company X

Media Hits: 50

Circulation: 4,000,000

Number of Unique Publications: 40

Competitor Y

Media Hits: 50

Circulation: 5,000,000

Number of Unique Publications: 15

In this example we weren’t dealing with any additional variables such as the variances in tone or the merits of dailies vs. community newspapers, so my explanation to the client was that since his organization (and the competitor) were both very well known already, that his organization had essentially won. Since the objective was to raise awareness about a known organization and issue, by reaching more unique readers it provided him with the upper hand.

I would argue in a different scenario where a company is relatively unknown, that it would be quite valuable to hit the same readers over and over again, as long as the media outlet was a credible target.

The key for this client in the future will be to determine at the outset what the goals and objectives are for each campaign, and ensure that the same rationale is used should the competitor manage to beat them out – and not fall into the trap of changing the rules so that they win every time.

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!

We’ve added a new item to our PR glossary at www.mediamiser.com.

This one details the strengths and limitations of assorted types of media. Take a look, and let us know what you think!

Statistics Canada has just released a study on media consumption in Canada titled Keeping up with the times: Canadians and their news media diet. While you can certainly take issue with some of the findings since the data comes from a survey in 2003, I think what the study does highlight is the importance of news to Canadians and our tendency to rely on multiple news sources.

While we are bombarded and force-fed advertising messages, often against our will, the news is something that we specifically seek out. It has a much higher degree of credibility and authenticity.

Some of the highlights of the study:

- 89 per cent of Canadians followed news and current affairs frequently (daily or several times a week);

- among the frequent users group 83 per cent depended on more than one media source;

- television ranked as the #1 source of news among frequent users of the news, with 91 per cent, followed by newspapers (70 per cent), radio (53 per cent), internet (30 per cent), and magazines (23 per cent), although I’m guessing more recent data will see the internet leap-frog radio and battle newspapers soon for the #2 spot;

- frequent users born outside of Canada were more likely to use the internet as a news source;

- news junkies were more politically engaged in non-voting activities (demonstrations, public meetings, volunteering for a political party, etc.); and

- in the demographics category, the study found that the frequent users group is more likely to be comprised of married men with incomes of $60,000 or more.

So while there’s not a lot of new or surprising information there, the study illustrates the important role the news plays in the media mix in Canada, and gives you an idea of the valuable insights that can be gained by analyzing the news.

Last week, NHL general managers scrambled to make some last minute tweaks to their hockey clubs in advance of the trading deadline on February 27^th. Some teams were ‘buyers’ looking to shore up for a long Stanley Cup run, while other teams were ‘sellers’ looking to trade in some of their current talent for future prospects/success. And while every team had a different role to fill, it would seem that they were all looking for, or had found, some ‘grit.’

In an analysis of all major daily newspapers in Canada, the word ‘grit’ was found in 662 articles in relation to NHL trades in the days leading up to and following the trade deadline — Feb. 24 to Feb. 28. And a similar search in Google News during that same period revealed another 231 articles. Being a close follower of the NHL, I’m surprised that so many general managers have ‘found’ players with grit…considering that it is such a hard commodity to find (confession: I cheer for my hometown Ottawa Senators who have been accused of lacking grit in playoff run after playoff run). But, I guess when pressed by the media it’s an easy fall-back for GM’s to say that their newest acquisition has that intangible grit. This spring in the chase for Lord Stanley’s Cup we’ll find out who really found what they were looking for.

The astronomical dollar figures aside, I’m really starting to think Google’s acquisition of YouTube makes sense. More and more, I find myself searching for information on YouTube as I would normally do in Google. Don’t ask me why, but the other night my wife and I were having a conversation about that somewhat infamous scene from the movie Three Men and a Baby which featured a boy ‘ghost’. She had never seen it, so I went to YouTube and found it immediately. It made me realize that YouTube has now become top of mind when I’m looking for information, much like Google became about five years ago.

Interesting story last week about the world’s oldest newspaper, which has decided to go with an on-line version only. Sweden’s Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, founded in 1645, became a web-only publication on January 1.

Mind you, the paper edition had a very humble circulation of approximately 1,000, but it’s still noteworthy given its history. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a majority of the tier two dailies here in Canada forego their paper editions within the next five years. However, I think our national papers and other leading daily newspapers will be around for a long time to come.  

Thoughts?