Of course not. But it also shouldn’t be excluded entirely.

In my opinion, good media analysis combines statistical data with empirical data. It uses both methods where they make sense, and in most cases that combination communicates an accurate picture of the situation.

In his blog posting, The stupidity of metrics, David Churbuck takes issue with the practice of measurement. More specifically, the practice of trying to measure subjective information.

Although I agree with David’s point that some people have a tendency to get tunnel vision when measuring statistical data, I disagree with his suggestion that reporting on statistical information is a futile exercise.

Furthermore, for those of us who actively engage in media analysis and develop tools to help make it more meaningful, I can attest that one of the main roles of media analysis tools is help identify issues or trends more effectively, so we can be more effective on the empirical side.

In David’s blog, he uses a metaphor of a plane accident to highlight the danger of relying on instruments as opposed to simply looking out the window of your cockpit to survey the situation. Fair enough.

However, there is a reason why airplanes have instruments. Sometimes conditions don’t allow you to visually navigate your aircraft. To use David’s analogy of flying an aircraft, when you need know where your going at 40,000 feet, sometimes your instruments are the only thing you have. And when you are analyzing media, sometimes you need to look at it from the “40,000 foot” point of view.

When it comes to media analysis, you really have to know what you’re trying to measure before you start collecting information, and you need to have a process measuring it. This might seem like common sense. However, many people will just start collecting information, without a proper plan in place, because they feel they can develop and implement a plan later. The problem is that without a proper plan, you’ll quickly get overwhelmed with information and won’t know where to start.

Many people think you need to know all the issues before you start, and that the best way to get a handle on the issues is to first collect the information. The reality is you don’t need to know all the issues right from the start. With a good plan in place and a well thought out process, you can adjust for new issues later. Your plan will help you develop processes for identifying new issues and making adjustments where necessary.

That said, you do need some knowledge of the issues upfront. This lets you more easily formulate patterns and identify new issues, and allows for the planning required to develop your measurement standards.

When it comes to measurement standards for your analysis, consistency is the key. You need to make sure you’re comparing ‘apples to apples’. Again, planning upfront is the key. By making sure you know where your key indicators (such as audience size, categorization, document types, etc.) are coming from, you will be better able to properly understand the data. But even if your key indicators are not perfect, the key is consistency.

That’s what will provide the insight needed to effectively communicate what’s going on, and that’s what good analysis is really about. However, without proper planning, your analysis could lack consistency, which could jeopardize your ability to identify what is truly important.

And as an added bonus, proper planning will also cut down on your workload if done properly, helping you to truly work smarter, not harder.

I also see information the same way — especially the news and how it affects organizations. Many people will simply check Google News once in a while or read the newspaper to find out what’s going on. Others will use a news service and monitor the news with set keywords and actually try to keep the decision-makers informed about what’s going on.

However, many organizations lack a plan and routine to keep information flowing in a steady, manageable stream to help ensure decision-makers and other team members are adequately informed. Information and intelligence are essential for businesses to operate, and, like garbage collection, are time-sensitive. If garbage sits for too long, it stinks and clutters the streets impeding movement, eventually grinding things to a halt. If information sits for too long, opportunities are lost and an organization could end up headed in the wrong direction.

So even though an organization might be collecting and and analyzing media coverage, the information still needs to be properly disseminated and communicated in a timely fashion.

The only way to ensure this is to create processes and routines for managing your media coverage, just as cities develop plans to move garbage.

People within an organization can’t simply be presented with monthly or quarterly reports. Yes, like scheduled recycling days, monthly and quarterly reports are essential to understanding what is going on. But there still needs to be a steady flow of information and it needs to be filtered and monitored on a daily basis. In this day and age, with the prevalence of intranets, extranets, and most importantly, email, there are no excuses for people not being kept informed on a daily basis. In the business world, it’s all about taking advantage of opportunity and avoiding missteps.

The same way your city has recycling bins, trash cans, regular pickups, special pickups, etc., to keep things moving, organizations need daily processes and routine to keep the information flowing so they can properly function and grow.

If you’re a customer of MediaMiser, you should have already received your Christmas card and gift. We hope you enjoyed it. We put a lot of thought and effort into it.

However, every year seems to be the same for us when choosing gifts: Panic and rush!!! The main reason has to do with figuring out what is appropriate and meaningful.

That said, next year will be different. We’ve learned the errors of our ways and we plan to put our technology to work monitoring media and blogs to help come up with cool and meaningful gift ideas for 2008. This is one our New Year’s resolutions.

In fact, we came across a December 12, 2007 article in the Ottawa Sun talking about this very issue and providing advice on what is appropriate and what is not. The good news was, according the AP article, our idea did turn out to be thoughtful and appropriate.

By the way, for those looking for ideas for next year, we decided to give our customers 20Qs.

Happy holidays!

That’s nearly eight million Canadians. And of those accounts, 85 per cent were added in the past year-and-a-half, and half the users were over the age of 30.

According to the article, “some U.S. research estimates that nearly half of all Americans surfing the Internet now visit either MySpace or Facebook.”

I’m sure advertisers and market researchers already know this and are planning to exploit this phenomenon.

That said, it will be interesting to see how corporations and governments try to monitor and analyze social media such as Facebook and MySpace, since they likely won’t be added as a friend and therefore shutout.

Hey, mistakes happen. Just ask Craig Silverman. Craig has a web site that posts errors and omissions from various news outlets. He recently wrote a book about this subject called Regret the Error.

His web site also lists some great resources and research materials regarding his work in this area.

We regret the error. It’s a phrase that appears in newspapers almost daily; the standard notice that something went wrong in the reporting, editing or printing of an article.

The bottom-line is, everyone’s human and facts have to be checked. Just because something is in print, doesn’t mean it’s true.

A lot of the presentation had to do with providing positive conditions for enabling strategic thought within an organization and leading by example.

However, the presentation also made it clear that media monitoring and analysis play important roles when it comes to developing a strategic organization — especially when it comes to crisis management.

A truly strategic person or organization should proactively monitor and analyze potentially explosive issues in their industry and try to understand how to properly deal with issues, so they can develop a contingency plan ahead of time.

Furthermore, why ‘reinvent the wheel’ when it comes to developing a contingency plan? Why not learn from someone else’s plan and adopt what works?

This is a big part of being truly strategic — being proactive as opposed to reactive and having a well thought out plan.

From an operational perspective, is your marketing and/or communications group involved in one-way or two-way communications?

When an issue arises - good or bad - that could impact your organization, do you capture that information and share it with the appropriate people. Can you recognize the important issues facing your organization, and the internal groups that are affected?

Good communicators are not just an organization’s PA system; they are the eyes and ears. They are the radar.

For this reason and more, communications departments should not be isolated from other groups within an organization. There needs to be a clear and regular line of communication between all groups.

Again, it’s not just about speaking at people. Good communicators need to listen and try to understand the issues that affect people.

For example, if a communications group understands the sales issues facing its organization, and shares that information with the sales group, then the sales group will will better be able to know what to listen and watch for.

The communications group might be able to contribute directly to the organization’s bottom line by alerting the sales team of an issue or real-life example that can aid a sale or even save a client.

Once you start understanding the issues that affect your organization through listening and understanding, you can take this concept to the next level through in-depth media analysis and even provide strategic insight.

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.

There are so many factors that can and should be taken into account when determining the tone of a story or a group of stories, that you are really doing a disservice to your entire analysis program if you’re simplifying it that much.

If you asked someone’s opinion of a movie or restaurant, would you want to hear “it was good” or “it was bad”, or would you prefer to know what they thought of it on a scale of 1 to 10?

The latter is obviously more desirable, and provides you with more insight into just how good or how bad it was.

If someone told you a restaurant was OK, he or she had no real complaints and the place was relatively inexpensive, you might see value in it. Conversely, if someone told you the restaurant was OK, but on the expensive side, you may very well stay home or choose another restaurant. And if someone could provide you with exactly what they liked and didn’t like, that’s even better.

The same can be said when it comes to media analysis. The more detailed the information, and the more factors that are taken into account when determining tone, the more informed your decisions can be.