…is bright. Yes, really.
In our daily lives we are bombarded with “news”. We have our 24 hour “news” requiring a rush to be first, forget checking the accuracy. If that wasn’t enough, we also have the “puffery” of the “news” on celebrity culture, “reality” TV etc dumbing down expectations. Who’d be a real journalist ?
And yet….
A commonly used “netarati” phrase is “eyeballs follow content”. However, as we are seeing in all forms of media, nobody has yet found the magic bullet to convert eyeballs into dollars when it comes to news content. Where, then, can journalists convert there content to dollars right now until the news media universe settles into alignment ? Simple. Corporate websites.
Consumers are increasingly googling new contacts and businesses we interact with. This need to “validate” is increasingly driving us all to clamour for information that is both timely and accurate, ie that we can rely upon to be current and true.
The most common failing of corporate websites I see these days is not their “look” or their layout, but their content. They hire marketers, web designers and developers, but who then writes their story, as well as keeping it current ? All too often that responsibility falls upon someone in the company themselves, but it is rare to find that employee who has the skills to research, analyse and report what matters in the “story” of the business.
Journalists are trained in the who, what, when, where, why and how. More simply put, they collect, verify, report. Journalists are used to working to deadlines (so can keep things current) and to the process of gathering the relevant information and writing the “story”.
Connect the thinking. Organisations need to hire journalists to interview them and write their content. Journalists, apply your skills to doing this.
This is already happening with the largest organisations (and their agencies), but rarely below that scale. If you are a freelance journalist in a small town though, recognise that this scales down. Every small and local business has to have their personality captured on their site. For this they need a local journalist to visit them and “interview” them, then “report” on it via their website content.
Whether you are the person with the story or the teller of the story, take this opportunity to connect the dots.
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Cool, but… Selling journalistic services to corporations and the trolls who run them almost always means a priority is placed on profit, rather than truth and the good of society. Profit-driven news media has always been a problem, and always will be. Look how much better PBS news is over Fox or CNN. The quest for money squashes the quest for honest meaningful reporting.
Guy…. for such a positive and optimistic person, that was a bit negative.
By corporate I don’t just mean the “big, bad, ugly” multinationals, but also the small businesses in all our home towns. They all need to tell their story.
As to priority on profit rather than truth, the good news is that information is becoming so increasingly transparent that we, as consumers of that information, are developing much more finely honed “b.s. detectors”.
Many businesses are quickly realising that truthfulness leads to profit as long as you have a positive story to tell that resonates with your customers. Of course if you don’t you can try to hire a journalist to spin your story, but that takes us back to the b.s. detectors.