Understanding the Media

For most of us growing up, our morning routine included sitting down to breakfast with the newspaper delivered to the front door step. Our day most likely ended with watching the evening news on television. But with the proliferation of the Internet and new ways of communicating, all of that is changing. It’s also changing the way DPAs interact with journalists.

Understanding the state of news media today will allow DPAs to help journalists in efficient and timely ways. Remember, a relationship is strengthened when it’s mutually beneficial to both parties—the news organization and the Church.

State of the Industry

According to the 2009 State of the News Media Report by the Pew Project, newspaper ad revenues have fallen 23 percent in the last two years and circulation continues to drop. Some 2,400 full-time professional newsroom jobs were lost at American dailies in 2007 and 5,900 more in 2008. That amounts to daily newspapers losing about 17 percent of their news staffs since the start of 2001. 

Michael A. Chihak, executive director of the Communications Leadership Institute, said: “New technologies turned newspapering into a fragile sheet of glass, dropping it to the ground where it broke into dozens of pieces. Newspaper bosses tried putting it back together rather than recognizing each piece as a new opportunity. Now it’s too late.”

The situation isn’t much better for television news, which saw ad revenues drop, cost cutting across the board, and continued layoffs. To keep up with demand, television operations are looking at innovative models of news gathering, which most often translates into multimedia journalists.

For example, a reporter at the Associated Press—traditionally a print wire service—will now often ask to shoot video as well as photographs when researching a story. A blog by that same reporter might also be posted on the Internet to complement the print story, along with additional photographs.

Newspapers and television news will continue to transform as more and more people turn to other forms of electronic media, dubbed “new media,” for their information. According to Pew, a December 2008 poll found the number of Americans who said they got “most of their national and international news” online increased 67 percent in the last four years. The Internet is also greatly increasing the speed at which information travels and news is published.

In short, DPAs will be working increasingly with multimedia journalists in a changing media landscape. This changing landscape also creates an opportunity to form trusting relationships with journalists and provide them with fast, easy, digestible information to meet their constant deadlines.

Media Types

DPAs work primarily with local newspapers and television stations. The basic positions found in a newsroom are as follows

Newspapers

• Managing editors are responsible for the overall editorial supervision of the newsroom, determining what stories the newspaper covers and how.
• Reporters are responsible for the interviews, research, and writing of their stories. They either find their own stories or follow up on stories and leads given to them by an editor. Many newspaper reporters have specific beats assigned to them such as local government, education, business, and religion. Reporters are expected to develop expertise and contacts in their beats.
• Editors are responsible for editing a reporter’s story before it is printed in the newspaper, checking for spelling, grammar, style, and factual accuracy. The copy desk is responsible for writing the headlines for each story.

Television

• News directors are responsible for overall editorial supervision of the newsroom, determining what stories the station covers and how.
• Assignment editors are responsible for determining how station resources such as photographers, reporters, and live trucks are allocated in covering stories.
• Reporters are responsible for the interviews, research, and writing of their stories. They either find their own stories or follow up on stories and leads given to them by a news director or assignment editor. They often present the story live during a newscast. A reporter-narrated story, referred to as a “package,” is generally between 60 and 90 seconds in length. Most TV newsrooms assign reporters to specific beats, with the expectation that they develop expertise and contacts in those beats.
• Producers are responsible for organizing and creating both individual stories and entire newscasts.
• Line producers organize, edit, and write a newscast and oversee its live broadcast.
• Special projects producers prepare individual stories that air during a newscast.  Examples include investigative pieces, special series and franchise reports, such as health or consumer stories.

New Media 

New media allows almost any individual with Internet access to publish and broadcast. It enables individuals and groups to participate in public discussions and often influence the news media. Included in the category of new media are blogs and social networking Web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

These sites, which allow for immediate communication and relay of information among users, are emerging as a sort of ground-level resource for driving messages to audiences. Media outlets are now using these Web sites to instantly deliver breaking news alerts and developing details on stories to subscribers, outside the confines of a daily newspaper or a regularly scheduled newscast. Often it’s an individual—not a mainstream news outlet—that distributes the first information on a breaking news story.

Bloggers are the most common type of communicator associated with new media. A blog, short for “Web log,” is a type of Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function more as personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

New media is just that—new—and the roles and parameters of this kind of journalism are still being defined. It’s common for traditional journalists, such as print and broadcast reporters, to maintain blogs in which they discuss and analyze the news of the day. These blogs are sometimes used to break stories independent of the newspaper or broadcast for which they report.

But because of the open, unregulated nature of the Internet, some bloggers have little or no journalistic training. The typical rules of traditional journalism—balanced reporting, fact checking, accuracy, source attribution, objectivity, and so on—generally don’t apply online. Much of what appears on blogs would be better characterized as opinion or analysis, not news. But blogs have become increasingly pervasive and they wield considerable power in the national discussion of current events and issues. That means much of what is “reported” on blogs is finding its way into the mainstream media.