Publisher’s note: The CDN business contributor, Frank Catalano, recently participated in a regional chamber of commerce in Bellingham on public communication strategies by business owners. Here is a summary of his message and his strategies.
What is the role of a business journalist – for a company?
I understand the role of the business journalist for the reader since I started Write for Cascadia Daily News Almost three years ago: to let you know what a special business is doing and how you could find it interesting, useful or both. Tips like openings and closures. An in-depth profile with a moment I-Didnow-That “AHA”. An explanation of a complicated economic subject, such as prices, real estate vacant posts or median price changes, putting the latest developments in a broader context.
But why should a business that are approached for a story accepted to talk to me?
A need to educate
This is a good question, and the one I proposed to approach late January discussion Hosted by the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Two decades ago, just before social networks and modern smartphones saturated our daily life (Facebook became available for the public at the end of 2006, and the first iPhone was launched a year later), the answer was more easy. Advertising costs money. The media coverage was free. Better to reach an audience through the media, if a business could draw its attention.
Now, however, the awareness options are less binary and more than one continuum. Thanks largely to the Internet and the prevalence of social media, companies do not need to pay to increase their visibility and maintain control of their message. If they want to spend money, a wider and more gastronomic range of options exist – Pay -Pour publications place for friendly and sponsored online “influencers” – which can help pass the word. These points of sale can also look a lot like public journalism, even if it is often a facade.
To be talked about with a company with a journalist these days could not only take convincing, but it could study.
Both are what I had in mind that in the morning in January, in front of around 40 participants in person and far from the Bellingham Chamber program, “how to get involved with local media – from trade relationships to self -publishing”.
What a business journalist is
It helped start with a definition. A journalist is someone who reports interest in his audience. That the company does not pay. And who integrates what the company does or says in its own story, that which the journalist is looking for and develops.
Flags that a business is not dealing with a journalist? The point of sale proposes to let the company examine or modify the story before it appears (a good journalist is careful, takes detailed notes and follows to verify the facts but never transforms the company into author of history). They ask the company to pay fees (this can be “expenses”, in the case of purely promotional outlets which could otherwise resemble journalism). They will not say to the company on what story they work (stories can change as the facts arrive, but all the stories begin with the journalist having an idea of what the angle deserves to be prosecuted ).
Put another way: follow the money. If the company pays something for history, it is not journalism.
Now, does that mean that it is an error for a company to speak with a promotional influencer, a payment outlet or a non-journalist who agrees to share the news for free?
No. This is not an error if the point of sale is frank on what they offer (and do not claim to be a journalist). If the point of sale reaches the desired public of a company and it is an adjustment, it may be worth concluding an agreement. In a previous life, I was director of marketing for the company of the technology industry – we evaluated all the options and worked with journalists and promoters. But I quickly closed anyone who distorted what he was doing. Local companies should do the same.
Advantages of journalists’ commitment
So why speak with a business journalist like me, if alternatives who are more under the control of the business grew?
Simply, to reach the public that a company cannot already reach directly: people who are not aware of a business or who do not follow it closely. Commitment can give a company a chance to be part of a greater history, trendy pieces on industry developments to gusts of what similar companies can do. And, perhaps, offer the possibility of creating or consolidating the reputation of a business as an expert in his field.
Journalists are not there to promote a business, but this can be a secondary halo effect depending on the news.
Good reasons also exist not to get involved with a journalist. More fundamentally – and it hurts to say that – if a company does not trust or does not respect the relationships of this individual journalist because, for example, the facts were systematically bad in previous stories, or quotes were out of context, and nothing has been corrected. (We, journalists, are human. We make mistakes. But we are also responsible for correcting errors to maintain credibility with our audience.)
A second good reason is that a business is not ready to speak of a subject when a journalist calls. The other speaker of the event in Bellingham’s room, Patti Goethals Rowlson Bellingham Pr & CommunicationsUnderlined the importance of companies that learn to create a message and to understand its value of news, especially when it is they who raise awareness of journalists and not only to respond to the requests of journalists. And then decide if they want to present news, pay the distribution or in a way public the news, such as on websites, blogs or newsletters by e-mail.
Not a single off
However, I would like to believe that the relationship is not always a single body of the company that spoke to me or I to the company of a discreet development. It is a conversation in progress.
The advantage for you, the reader, of this exchange is clear. I am not paid by the company, so I do not represent the company. I work to verify the complaints that a company could make. I stamp the media and the puffier. I strive to provide a context. You ideally (still) finish with new information that is useful, interesting or both.
Companies also benefit from this. They reach a larger or more recent audience than they can by themselves. The one they have not paid to reach. But they must abandon control to obtain this scope.
Even if the continuum between traditional journalism at one end and the right advertisement to the other is more congested and confusing than in the pre-social media, the pre-scartphone era two decades ago, nobody benefits if The distinctions are not frank and clear. None of the most recent or hybrid options is intrinsically bad. They are just different.
But each company, and each reader, must understand the role of the commercial journalist in the current media environment. This is why I was happy to participate in the educational program of Bellingham’s room. And that is also why, of course, companies should speak to me.
Frank Catalano writes on business and related subjects for CDN; join it to Frankcatalano@cascadiadaily.com.