public relations

Why stormageddon is a bust

snowmageddonIt’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.

TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT

The happy morning news anchors greeted me with this headline: “Shots fired in Green Bay.” Now that’ll make you sit up. Where? Who? Was it a school? I flipped to another station and got the grave headline: “Shooting on campus.” Which campus? Spousal Unit tuned the kitchen radio into the all-news station but all we got was “Shooting in Green Bay.”

The anchors reported that information was still coming in, police reports were not updated, reporters were en route to the scene, more information would be available shortly, we’ll keep you informed, and on and on…

Several hours later I learned the “shooting” was actually three shots fired. The incident was not on a school campus but on the east side of the city near the University campus. As for the immediacy, it happened overnight.

The producers and writers did their jobs well this morning. The headline “Shots fired in Green Bay” made my heart beat faster. Had they used the more accurate headline “Shots fired near University overnight,” I would have realized the incident was not ongoing,

When there’s breaking news at your business or organization, keep this in mind.

It might be a dumpster fire but it could be reported like this: “Rescue units and a tanker truck were called out overnight to a fire at XYZ Company…”

Is this wrong or misleading? Nope—and I would do the same thing if I were still working in a newsroom.

You owe it to yourself, your employees and your customers to learn how news is communicated and why reporters and editors do what they do. Before you see it posted on Facebook.

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

What does that “www” thing mean?

1990s-problemHi, my name is Mary and I’m addicted to social media. The first step toward recovery is to admit your problem and I should have seen this coming about 100 posts ago. At least once a week someone tells me social media is a pointless waste of time. Some clients can’t imagine why anyone would spend time on a screen. Spousal Unit moaned in disgust when he found out I was taking pictures of myself and posting them to Facebook and Twitter to stave off boredom in the deer stand during a hunting season. Now, my hunting posts on Facebook are eagerly anticipated by clients and friends alike. Here’s what I have to say to them.

My 75-year old father has a Facebook page. That either makes him a hip adaptor or it makes Facebook terminally un-cool, but you can’t ignore it.

I’m showing my age, but as a TV reporter in the 80s, we laughed at the idea of 24-hour news on a cable network. What would they cover? In the early days of the internet, employers and clients told me no one would ever get product information on a screen much less write and send letters over a computer.

The idea behind social media is to connect, participate, discuss. No restrictions and opinions interpreted as news. Is it perfect? Nothing is perfect and I’ve found that people who make questionable decisions in other parts of their lives will do the same thing on social media. But like they say, you can pick your friends.