Last week the latest National Readership Survey (NRS) figures were released, detailing how many of us Joe publics pick up and read a newspaper or news online every day. Despite being one set of figures, different media outlets managed to report the news with different angles. And quite self-serving angles at that.

Take for example The Telegraph’s opening line “More people read The Telegraph online and in print every day than any other quality daily, new independent figures reveal”.

Seems quite straightforward, survey shows more people read The Telegraph than any other paper – if you discount non-quality types like The Sun. The paper backs this up by stating “The first study to combine print and web readership has found that 1,946,000 people read The Telegraph every day, compared to 1,346,000 for The Times”.

All sounds good, until you read The Guardian’s piece on the same survey results. “The Guardian had the biggest combined print and online monthly readership of British national quality titles in the year to the end of March, according to the latest National Readership Survey (NRS) figures.”

But that sounds like The Guardian is saying it is the most read quality paper. It’s report has figures too, “The Guardian and guardian.co.uk’s readerships combined gave an average monthly readership of 8.95 million in the 12-month period, ahead of the Daily Telegraph/Telegraph.co.uk audience of 8.82 million”.

Ah, there is it you see. The Telegraph is measuring on the largest number of daily readers, whereas The Guardian has gone for average monthly readers over a year. So it’s sort of comparing one day to one year…very sort of. I’m more inclined towards The Guardian’s stats, as measuring over the last year seems like a better indication of readership levels. In reality there’s no way to be certain which of these papers’ is the more widely read. The only thing we’re sure of it The Indy is well and truly in fourth place, lagging behind even The Times despite its full fat paywall.   

@simonhill

So Yahoo! has a new chief executive. Or another new chief executive if you prefer. The fifth inside a year is Marissa Mayer who, you may have heard, an ex-Google employee – as of Monday.

Can Mayer breathe new life into Yahoo!’s increasingly bleak future? To be blunt with you, I have no idea. I guess if there is a person in the world who could do it, it would be one of the three people who invented Google AdWords (yeah, she’s one of those). On the other hand, you can’t polish a…failing dot.com darling.

Forget the arguments on Yahoo!’s future for a second, because there’s an interesting point on media coverage of this appointment to end all appointments. After an initial storm of news stories late Monday / early Tuesday, a few ‘think pieces’ have been appeared with the more considered viewpoints of tech writers.

Specifically, The Guardian and The Telegraph took opposing views on the appointment and Mayer’s future.  

The Guardian was full of chipper enthusiasm, calling Mayer “a Savvy boss” who is “one of the few executives able to turn Yahoo around”. Much of the write up focus on her past, with quotes from former colleagues and details of her working practises. At Google she went to 70 meetings a week, don’t you know. Even Schmidty waxed lyrical about her – to Glamour magazine of all things.

Comparatively, The Telegraph took a more forward looking view – and quite a dim one at that. Digital Media Editor Emma Barnett reports Mayer has “has taken on mission impossible” and deduces her “relatively easy” choice to depart Google was due to being pushed out of the power circle that, The Guardian would have you believe, loved her to pieces. The article also chronicles Yahoo!’s poor record on pretty much every business decision since 1999, concluding “Mayer, despite her huge following in Silicon Valley and brilliant reputation in consumer technology, has just gleefully accepted one of the Internet’s most high profile poisoned chalices.”

The poisoned chalice lined is also replicated in a second Telegraph article by media, telecoms and tech editor by Katherine Rushton. A strange term to use, given that even a poisoned chalice is meant to at least appear to be good at first – not something many would call Yahoo! right now.

So the media is uncertain of her future, and Yahoo!’s for that matter. If nothing else, in a few months we can all discuss [the brilliant job she has done turning the company around / who on earth is brave enough to be chief exec number 6] – delete as appropriate.

@simonhill

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report has revealed there’s something of a mix future for online news journalism and paid content.

Three-quarters of Brits read news everyday – which is low

According to the survey findings, based on a poll of 6,000 people from the UK, US, Germany, France and Denmark (so when I say ‘rest of the world’ that’s sort of not at all true), around three quarters of us Brits access news every day. ‘Access news’ meaning either watching TV, listening to radio, reading it online or in good old fashioned inky finger newspapers.  

Not a bad stat, but compared to the Germans we’re lagging behind. 90% of our Deutschland friends are accessing news on a daily basis. We’re also lagging behind the Denmark, the US and France.

Source: Reuters, via BBC News Online

Celebs vs politicians

But maybe it’s about the quality of news read, rather than quantity? Actually, no.

According to the BBC’s abridged reporting of the survey, us Brits are far more into celeb news (that is gossip, film and music) than political news. 21% of readers in the UK are hungry for celeb-centric stories, compared to 16% in the US, 14% in France and Germany and a miniscule 9% in Denmark (although to be far, I can’t name a Danish celeb).

The BBC attributes (blames) this on sites like Mail Online, Holy Moly and Female First.

In comparison, 37% of UK readers were interested in political news. This sounds good, until you compared it to the US’s 63%.         

Future is bright for online journalism and the social media savvy

The upside to this, from the future of journalism perspective, is UK users are more likely to find news online than anywhere else – 82% of those snap-shotted in the survey had read online news in the last week.

More good news for online comes in the social media usage and discovery stats. On average, 20% of readers are now likely to find a story through social media sites (Facebook and Twitter named specifically). For younger readers, those tweet posting / status updating whipper-snappers, this goes up to a whopping 43%. More exciting still, social media collectively surpasses search engines as a source – take that Google News.

Mixed results for paid content

Sadly, one of the lowest numbers in the entire report is the percentage of UK readers willing to pay for news online: just 4%. It’s not much better elsewhere, the highest figure came from Denmark and barely broke into double figures at 12%.

Its better news for those who’ve looked into a tablet app as well as a website – 21% of tablet owners have paid for news. As always this is always a slightly skewed statistic. Tablet owners tend to be at the upper end of the affluent scale, so have more dosh to splash on digital content. I’m not sure Mail Online readers will be queuing up to pay for a tablet app ticker of celebs posing at the Wimbledon final. Never say never though. 

So while there’s money to be made and online eyeballs to be grabbed, the ball is still in the media innovators’ corner to secure the future value of news journalism. The full report can be read for free online here.

@simonhill

Nope, not an early dig at Christmas this one. ‘CRAPPs’ in this instance stands for Communicative Relations Awards from PR Professionals - but of course you guessed that already.

Yep, the CRAPPs are back again this year to celebrate the ‘special relationship’ between the journalists and PRs of the world. Nominations are open for a range of diverse categories, including ‘the journalist that makes you [PRs] feel warm and furry on the inside’, ‘most approachable daily newspaper’ and ‘least [ahem] Twitterer’. Not one for David Cameron that last one.  

Jokes side, there is a serious undertone to the jovial nature of the CRAPPs. The relationship between PRs and journalists is an important one on both sides, and probably the reason the inaugural awards attracted some 12,000 nominations and attention from notable publications including The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and even yours truly.

Nominations are open for the next 15 days, at which point a shortlist for voting will be opened. So throw your favourite (and least favourite) industry colleagues into the mix and keep an eye for the shortlist in a few weeks.

There’s a great post flying about Twitter today between PRs and journalists by Stuart Dredge - highlighting some of the poor practice going on in the tech media/PR world.

This kind of post crops up now and again, but it’s always worth highlighting a few common errors some PRs make that give us all a bad name. Stuart’s post can be read in full here, check out the comments too.

There’s also been a few suggestions today for a PR version of the post, which has already been kicked off in a follow up piece. From my perspective as a PR, there are few things journalists do that annoy me. The most important, and helpful, thing a journalist can do for a PR is give feedback on a pitch, client’s business or release and explain, when it’s not relevant, why. This is easier said than done, especially with a bulging inbox that is battered with an endless string of releases, but without honest feedback clients will always insist releases are sent and the cycle will never end.

As I say, easier said than done - I seriously doubt any journalist out there could realistically take the time to reply to every release that hits their inbox. Everyone needs to eat and sleep. This is why it is so important PRs read and target writers with news and pitches based on their beat, and what they have covered in the past.

Somewhere between well targeted pitches and solid feedback, we’ll cut down on the level of irrelevant stories. If you’re a PR and you don’t read your target titles, you need to start - or change job. If nothing else, pick up the phone and ask. If you get a no, move on. That’s why any feedback, even a no, is (or should be) as valuable to a PR as a reply saying ‘I’ll run this today’.

One final point - despite some of the comments, Stuart’s post should not be read as an ‘us and them’ style piece by PRs. If you’re a PR and can’t see the value of it, read it again.

Tom Rosenstiel, the director of the Pew Research Centre’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, penned an interesting piece on The Washington Post website last week. He explores the five ‘myths’ surrounding the future of journalism. Here’s an abridged version, courtesy of Roy Greenslade from The Guardian:   

1. The traditional news media are losing their audience

No. Mainstream media organisations have not lost their readers and viewers despite people migrating online. Of the 25 most popular US news websites, all but two are “legacy” media sources, such as the New York Times or CNN, or the aggregators of traditional media, such as Google or Yahoo.

So the crisis facing traditional media is not about audience, but about revenue.

2. Online news will be fine as soon as the advertising revenue catches up

Such hopes are misplaced. In 2010, US web advertising surpassed print advertising, reaching $26bn. But only a small fraction of that, perhaps less than a fifth, went to news organisations.

The US newspaper industry took in $22.8bn last year in print ad revenue but only $3bn in web-based revenue.

3. Content will always be king

Not really. The key to media in the 21st century may be who has the most knowledge of audience behaviour, not who produces the most popular content.

Understanding what sites people visit, what content they view, what products they buy and even their geographic coordinates will allow advertisers to better target individual consumers. And more of that knowledge will reside with technology companies rather than with content producers.

4. Newspapers around the world are on the decline

Print circulation worldwide was up more than 5% in the past five years, and the number of papers is growing. Print media are thriving in the developing world and suffering in rich nations.

The forces tied to a thriving print newspaper industry include growing literacy, expanding population, economic development and low broadband penetration.

In India, for example, the population is growing and becoming more literate, but a substantial portion is not yet online.

5. The solution is to focus on local news

Well, the problem with “hyperlocal” content is its limited appeal. No mass market, too few advertisers, too little income.

How to produce local content remains a mystery. Can you put paywalls around it? Can you build a “pro-am” model, in which professional journalists work with low-paid amateurs to produce a comprehensive report?

So far, no one has really cracked the code for producing profitable local news online.

Source

SEO, it’s important. PRs have this fact drummed into them on a regularly basis nowadays, like an American military Sergeant singing one of those upbeat jogging tunes.

 
More often than not, when we talk of SEO the end goal is to get a client’s website higher up in search rankings. If you’re flogging boxes used in house moves, you want your site to come up near the top when someone searches for ‘moving boxes’. A good start is ensuring your website copy mentions the word ‘box’, rather than ‘innovative packaging solution for relocation initiatives’ - or something equally verbose.

That’s the basics, but there’s also a lot to be done with ‘SEOing’ content. Getting your preferred keywords in a press release, for example, greatly improves the chances these words will appear in online news. If they do so on a national site or highly targeted vertical, individuals searching for such keywords should get some exposure to your brand. Chuck a site link in there and you’ll get a nice traffic spike and a boost in your page rank (or equivalent) to boot. Also, if multiple authoritative news sites are covering your brand or company using the same or similar keywords, and said keywords are also within your website content, Google is going to quickly figure out what you’re about.

If you doubt the importance of SEOing content, this Paid Content piece sheds some light. It’s not just those on the PR side. Media types also employee SEO, especially with headlines in this case, to take advantage of current search trends and grab some traffic. Telegraph.co.uk has apparently been seeing some good traffic in the run up to and around Christmas following a piece on top voucher codes (seems people want a bargain at Christmas time, who knew?).

This success underlines the high importance of regularly refreshing keywords. Popularity of search terms and key words fluctuate on a daily basis; Google Insight can show you just how much. So if you’re using out-dated keywords, all the SEO effort counts not one jot.

So, ensuring your PR content contains top notch, current keywords in the body of text, and headlines especially, you should be on the road to some improved site traffic and general search engine praise. Hurrah!    

 What The Times Paywall Could Mean for Public Relations Practitioners
 
There has a been a heck of a lot of discussion, analysis and comment since Monday when News Corporation announced official subscriber figures for the, relatively new, Times and Sunday Times websites.

Read More