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Courage to be Dan Rather

This post is for all you under 40 PR/comm types out there. When I was growing up, the Vietnam War played nightly on Walter Cronkite. Then, Watergate was the top story that consumed the national discussion. Through it all, Dan Rather was on location or in the anchor chair. Remember this was before cell phones and the internet gave us a 24/7 news cycle and people actually stopped what they were doing to watch the evening news.

For those of you who live and die by the feed on your cell phones, this was important because what happened on the evening news was a shared experience. It’s how we were updated on that day’s news, then we read the details in the next days’ newspaper (remember newspapers?). No Twitter postings* from un-vetted “news sources” or opinion leaders who might or might not have all the facts. It was widely regarded as objective reporting from trained journalists.

So why care? Do yourself a favor and watch the documentary Rather. Go ahead and make fun of Dan Rather for his good looks, his stupid sign off (Courage), or his epic mistake and departure from CBS…but this was the peak of TV journalism. And the guy is 92 and still in the game posting coherent comments on Twitter and other platforms. I love a second act.

Watergate, Woodward/Bernstein, and the aftermath made me want to be a journalist. Dan Rather’s documentary shows how TV journalism was before cell phones made everyone an alleged reporter. Watch it.

*I will NEVER call Twitter “X” because it’s just stupid.

This post was NOT written by ChatGPT

Over the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT. I even asked it to write this article about how journalists could use ChatGPT and it spewed out 437 words on how it was a tool that could sift through vast amounts of information to uncover the truth. It even created fake story lines about make-believe journalists who used it to report stories that never happened. In short, a fairy tale.

Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT learn grammar, syntax, semantics, and even some level of reasoning and context to mimic human speech and communications. They suck up existing information on the internet and regurgitate it according to the question you pose.

And we all know information on the internet is true, don’t we?

If there’s a data void, ChatGPT will usually not answer a question by saying it does not know the answer, but it will make up an answer. Unless you are extremely specific—I asked it “what is the future of land use in Cooperstown, Wisconsin” and it did reply As of my last update, I don’t have access to information about the specific future developments or plans for land use in Cooperstown, WI.

The reality is most journalists are in the business of reporting new information (hence the term “news”). If they’re local reporters, chances are the internet data dump does not have the latest info on the workings of a local school board or a common council or a court proceeding.

So will ChatGPT supplant local journalism? The reality is scooping information off the internet cannot be trusted. We will still need reporters and editors to vet information, double check sources, or to present the human impact of the news.

Just ask ChatGPT—it’ll tell you that AI models “may not be able to fully replace local news.” At least that much is true.

Print media: to profit or non-profit?

Legacy media is changing faster than you can say “OK, Boomer.”

I’m old enough to remember when the shift from paper journalism to televised journalism signaled the death of the printed newspaper, which didn’t really happen. It changed how editors made news decisions, but didn’t obliterate print. I remember a TV news director telling me early in my career that we were tasked with explaining what is happening right now and the paper would fill in the details.

Now, many broadcast and social sites have more news gathering resources at their disposal than print platforms.

Many of my friends who have 20, 30, even 40 years as print journalists have already turned to the dark side of PR and marketing. I say dark side because many experienced journalists would turn their nose up at these career moves and regarded them as selling out. As print newsrooms across the country are gutted, the concept of “selling out” looks attractive when it comes with a dependable paycheck and benefits.

So what’s next for a medium that has been around since Gutenberg pressed ink into vellum?

Models of a non-profit approach to print journalism are being deployed in several communities. Much like public radio, these platforms use a hybrid of donations and advertising generated revenue to underwrite their efforts. (I get it, advertising is really sponsorships but it’s essentially the same.) One such example is the American Journalism Project which makes grants to non-profit organizations that are launching mission-based newsrooms with a focus on local reporting. https://www.theajp.org/why-local-news/

Most major news gathering outlets focus on national or international topics. Reporting on school boards, city councils, highway departments, or planning commissions is boring stuff. Unfortunately these are the topics that directly affect our daily lives. As we’ve seen with recent protests at school board meetings, these are the organizations that impact our kids and our communities.

What would happen if this level of reporting dissolves? It means that we either take the initiative to attend those plan commission meetings as interested citizens, or we look for journalists to be our eyes and ears.

Take a minute and look at what the American Journalism Project is doing–and remember that a free press is really no longer free.

Be resolved: really communicate with media

Most of you will forecast sales, expenses, product introductions, and budgets for 2016, but let me ask you to spend some time on your communications planning. Most of the businesses I have worked with want more favorable or more impactful relationships with the press, yet they are often victims of their own (bad) habits. If public relations is part of your marketing objectives in the coming year, take a moment to review this list of New Year’s resolutions for communicating successfully with the media.

Resolve to create clear messages. Communicate in plain language that is easily understood by everyone, not just corporate leadership. Use language that is concrete rather than abstract thoughts and business speak that cloaks the real meaning. Rather than saying “We are committed to our employees…” try “Our benefits package and internal promotions show we invest in our employees.” Put more meat in your message and commit yourself to creating emails and press releases that present factual information supported by your in-house experts. Above all, eliminate jargon and business cliches that only have meaning for industry insiders or your operations team and communicate how your products and services will impact your customer’s life.

Resolve to end wordsmithing. In the interest of full disclosure, I hate that term. If you typically revise a press release ten times, you’re over complicating the process (see above). In most cases, journalists will not copy and paste your press release or email directly into their stories. That press release you labored over will be paraphrased, rewritten, or even used only for reference, so edit for clarity not pontification.

Resolve to end spin. Spin is dead thanks to the transparency of the internet.

Good journalists can sniff out spin and get to the truth of an issue simply by doing a Google search, so don’t throw a towel over the truth.

That doesn’t mean you need to reveal proprietary information, financial or strategic plans, or employees’ personal information—but you should present reliable information. A good friend of mine is an excellent, experienced reporter who will go the extra mile to re-state or paraphrase information just to get to the core of an issue, and she is rightfully proud of her ability to identify spin.

Resolve to tailor your messages. What you say to a business journalist may be very different from your message to a broadcast reporter. Understand the differences in financial media, trade press, social media and broadcast media and present information accordingly. Doing so will allow you to present different facets of a story to reporters and, hopefully, get more of your message out to your target audience. Not every press interaction needs to focus on your product or service—find a sliver of content that you think might interest a specific medium and contact that journalist.

Resolve to treat journalists like real people. Just like you, they’re doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. Provide thorough, vetted information and interviews with interesting experts who can add dimension to an issue. Understand their deadlines and provide information they can use in a follow-up report. Follow the reporters on social media and comment on their stories—maybe even say thank you. However, if a reporter gets information wrong or presents a misleading story, it is fair to contact them and discuss the issue. Most journalists want to present accurate information and will update a report on a website or run a clarification.

Resolve to read/follow media outlets. Now you’re asking “how can I fit one more thing into my day?” If your business is considering a public relations or community relations program, it’s a good idea to read the media outlets you wish to target. I know this sounds obvious, but many businesses don’t follow their industry trades or associations. Stay on top of news feeds, trends, and look at the stories covered in print, on websites, and on social media to determine if you also have information that’s worthwhile for the reporters and editors.

Business communications are no longer in a push environment where companies issue dozens of press releases and push information out to the media. Today we operate in a pull environment where compelling stories and two-way conversations engage the media in informative and impactful stories. Clarity, brevity and authenticity are the cornerstones of communicating with the press and building relevancy with journalists in the new year.

If you’re interested, find me at mkathrynschmidt@gmail.com.

I’ll give you a minute-15 for that story

A journalist friend and I were watching the TV news and after a chirpy, happy report the comment was, “Well, the plow doesn’t go into the ground very deep.” I snorted into my micro-brew and chewed on the evolution of news.

My first news director tossed the state budget at me and told me to find three good stories we could cover that week. These were the days before the internet, even before computers. We had to read through pages of coma-inducing text to find interesting nuggets, prepare a brief on the story with pro and con sources and propose visuals to film. Did you notice I said film instead of video? Look it up on Wikipedia.

My first producer had a rule: 1:15 for any story (including the anchor’s lead in). I would come back to the newsroom begging for an extra 10-seconds and he would look up at me from his manual typewriter and say “Did anyone die?” No I would answer. “Big. You have 1:15 and don’t go over.” It forced brevity.

When I started in TV news, all reporters needed to understand the legislative process, how the state house worked, how the city council proposed ordinances and how the county board intersected with the council. We needed a functional knowledge of the courts and an excellent knowledge of journalist’s rights in the courtroom.

Most of today’s local reporters don’t do a deep dive in civics—and I’m not certain it’s their fault. Local news departments are chasing content for a shrinking news hole. Cable stations tip the scale in the opposite direction airing mind-numbing interviews that present opinion as fact. And all of us want more news about the weather.

I’d like to blame “Entertainment Tonight.” We are bombed by celebrity news, live shots, and stories that don’t last longer than a sneeze. Our nation of terminally ADD citizens looks for clarity in 140 words, but some issues can’t be explained in a tweet. Budgets and legislation WILL affect your life, but do you blame the media then never search out the facts for yourself?

If you want an issue or an event covered, you may be working with a reporter who has done little research and has to cover multiple stories in one day.

With luck, one of those stories might get 1:30, but cut down to :40 for the late news. Can you communicate the benefit of your product or service in two minutes let alone 40 seconds? Think about how long a local news story will be when it’s in finished form and challenge yourself to communicate with brevity and impact. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to be creative.

If you’re interested, find me at mkathrynschmidt@gmail.com.

Why stormageddon is a bust

It’s tempting to blame the national weather hysteria on Al Gore or the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” but there’s a less fictional cause. Local news markets have been engulfed in the weather as news vortex for years, but now the national networks are catching up.

Why? Because when the companies that own local TV stations pay for expensive research, the results show one of the top reasons why people watch TV news is weather. They want to know if storms will disrupt the work week, vacation plans or the Friday golf game. So any weather event, no matter how insignificant, instantly becomes a live shot.

One of the best sources of credible information in the changing media landscape is the Pew Research Center on Journalism & the Media. Checking one of their most recent reports shows that between 2005 and 2013…

“…the airtime devoted to weather, traffic and sports had risen from 32% of the local newscast studied to 40% —a 25% increase. Indeed, Pew Research’s examination of 48 evening and morning newscasts in late 2012 and early 2013 found that 20 of them led with a weather report or story.”

Just another symptom of the nanny state—citizens can’t be trusted to source information on their own, so we will barrage them with the obvious. My favorite are the national morning “news” programs that feature a breathless, over-the-top reporter lamenting cars in a ditch, or zero visibility, or the chore of plowing. Obviously a reporter/producer team that has never been west of Philly.

The true tragedy is not that hyper reporters over-deliver the obvious—all of us have lost something far more dear. We have lost the opportunity to learn about stories that have more lasting impact in favor of 5 minutes of live shots from weather non-stories. Certainly proposed congressional legislation is “boring,” but truly creative journalists can find a way to make a budget or committee action compelling.

If you don’t like what you see, don’t remain silent and flip the channel. Send an email to your local news director or station manager/owner and tell him or her what you want to learn from their programs. If enough of you do that, you might save us from stormageddon.