Message From Michael -- September 17, 2007

NEWS IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

BLOG ME THIS, NEWSMAN

ARM WRESTLING ADVERTISERS

COCKTAIL CHATTER – GOD’S GOLF BALL



NEWS IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism has found major differences between the news presented on mainstream media news sites versus user generated sites. For example, taking one week in June, the study authors found that 10% of all the news on the mainstream media sites dealt with the war in Iraq. In the user generated sites, the war accounted for only one percent of the news. The project authors used three sites as examples of user generated sites – Reddit, Digg and Del.icio.us. They also did a comparison with the news.yahoo.com website. (There is no explanation why they didn’t use news.google.com.) Need another example? The immigration debate dominated the mainstream media news sites. On the three user generated sites, it came up only once as a top ten story. Instead, the user generated sites ‘news’ were more “lifestyle” focused stories.

Okay, now, you may have heard or read some of this, but dig a little deeper in the report (as your friendly neighborhood consultant did) and you find some more interesting data. For example, in the mainstream media, ten stories account for more than half (51%) of all the stories carried on the mainstream media websites. This is a fact noted in previous Project reports, that mainstream media tell you a lot about a little. In comparison, no single story dominated the user generated sites to the same extent. Okay, the iPhone controversy came close, but even it did not reach the same level of dominance. Instead, the user generated sites news agenda was “more diverse, yet also more fragmented and transitory” than that of their mainstream cousins. The other major point the authors make is that four out of ten (40%) of the stories on the user generated sites came from blogs with three out of ten (31%) coming from non-news, information sites such as YouTube, Technorati, or WebMD and only a quarter (25%) coming from more traditional news sites such as the BBC or Slate.

Some of the findings in the report may fall in the Homer Simpson “doh” category. For example, the user generated sites are all very U.S.-centric in their focus with nine out of ten stories being domestic. Yahoo which has a broader, global base had more foreign news coverage than the mainstream media. (Sunday, when I looked at news.yahoo.com, the ‘most popular’ story was about a gas-guzzling tax proposal in the U.K. In stark contrast, when I looked at news.google.com, the ‘most popular’ story was that there were nude pictures of the female star of the Disney television hit High School Musical.)

The report says the key area of interest was technology and science reports. Well, doh, these sites are dominated by tech-savvy individuals. That said, what was particularly interesting was the difference on news.yahoo.com, in particular, between what the editors picked versus the most recommended, the most e-mail and the most viewed. User-ranked stories tended to be more about health and medicine, lifestyle and crime. Its ‘most recommended’ page was more likely to be ‘news you can use’ articles; its most e-mailed page had those kinds of stories, butthis section was more diverse with big stories but also “oddball” stories; the ‘most viewed’ page was the “most sensational,” according to the report, with stories about celebrities and crime.

Footnote: The study authors make the point that the percentage of Americans who rely on user generated sites for news is only a fraction of the number who use mainstream news sites. But the big question, they say, is whether there will be further divergence over the coming years between user-driven sites and mainstream media sites. (I should note that the website MySpace has started a news website, and it says something that when you go to it, the so-called news stories only get one or two votes, despite the enormous size of the MySpace audience.)

Lessons to be Learned: Let me offer a thought about the findings. I would never recommend setting a news agenda based on such user generated preferences. But I would raise the question about defining your marketing agenda using the topics highlighted on the user generated sites.

BLOG ME THIS, NEWSMAN: So, you’ve now read that blogs accounted for more stories than traditional media on the user-generated sites. Here’s the other shoe dropping. According to a survey by market research firm BIGResearch, bloggers are considered more trustworthy by the American public than the media. Admittedly the numbers are small, but still significant with people 18-34 more likely to pick bloggers (8.5%) than the media (5%) and people 35-54 also picking bloggers (6.1%) over the media (3.8%). Only people over the age of 55 picked the media. If it’s any consolation, bloggers also scored higher in ‘trustworthiness’ than the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Senate. Only the President scored higher with one in seven (14.2%) of those over the age of 18 rating him “more trustworthy.” Possibly more disturbing is that roughly seven out of ten (69% to 72%) of those surveyed, regardless of age or gender, said, “I don’t trust any of the above.”

The Wall Street Journal in its Act One column talks about the growth of bloggers and a ‘blogging elite’ even though “the blog business model hasn’t been proven by a tough economy.” The article focuses on Washington, D.C., which is the fourth ‘bloggiest’ city in America, according to blog research site Outside In. The ‘bloggiest’ city – Boston, with 89 blog posts per 100,000 residents, closely followed by Philadelphia at 88, Pittsburgh at 53, Washington, D.C., at 51 and Portland at 49. The study authors, semi-tongue-in-cheek, say ‘blogginess’ is a reflection of “growth, civic activism and writerly population.”

ARM WRESTLING ADVERTISERS: Two separate reports, with two different sets of numbers, but the same basic conclusion. The Internet has officially beaten Radio in two out of three falls for advertising dollars. Market research firm eMarketer says the Internet will nudge out Radio by about a Billion dollars this year. But more critically, the Internet is growing while Radio is, in the words of the report, “anemic.” The same message from market research and consulting firm TNS Media Intelligence which says that in the first half of 2006, Radio led the Internet in a tight race in terms of advertising dollars, but now a year later, in the first half of 2007, the Internet took the lead, nudging past radio. But more importantly, while Radio is showing a slight decline, the Internet continues to show double-digit growth. Both reports are careful to note that the Internet advertising growth isn’t entirely at the expense of radio. The eMarketer report even goes further, urging advertisers to “combine the two to take advantage of the unique attributes of each.”

Okay, it’s trite, but I’ll use it anyway. I have some good news and some bad news for local TV Internet advertising. First, the bad news. Local online advertising, in the words of the eMarketer people, is a situation where the promise is greater than the reality. In other words, it’s not living up to expectations, and partly because of the intrusion of operations like Google and Yahoo. The good news is that local online advertising should “accelerate” as small and mid-size companies see its potential, and local Internet sites and services grow as well. Even better news, at least if you’re in television, is that local TV websites are finally beginning to pay off with one in four adults saying they’ve visited a local TV website in the past 30 days, according to a study from The Media Audit.

COCKTAIL CHATTER: One in three Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the September 11 attacks, according to a recent CBS/ New York Times poll, even though this myth was debunked by official sources, including the White House. On April 13, 1945, General Patton forced the residents of the German village Ohrdruf to view a nearby concentration camp that they claimed to know nothing about. The next day the mayor and his wife committed suicide. (From Polaris, the magazine of WWII subvets.) A Civil War buff has determined that, based on the actual battles cited, the pregnancy of the character Melanie in the classic novel Gone With The Wind, lasted 21 months. And this is not a factoid of any sort, but I found it so amusing that I had to include it. The editor of the Star and Beacon newspaper in 96, South Carolina, in an editorial urging people to walk with Christ, ends by saying, “it’s the least we can do with our lives here on ‘God’s golf ball’ before the Almighty putts us back into a black hole on the cosmic back nine.”