It’s been quite a party, but the hangover is going to be a real doozie. Americans obsessed with the unpredictable election news have been gobbling up news in almost any format. And that has been masking the troubles facing our media. On the surface, the cable networks have been on a real tear. MSNBC had […]
The party’s over: Look for big media cuts after election
By Carl Carter, APR, AMM carl@newmediarules.com It’s been quite a party, but the hangover is going to be a real doozie. Americans obsessed with the unpredictable election news have been gobbling up news in almost any format. The cable networks have been on a real tear. Left-leaning MSNBC had its best month ever in October […]
No, your Memphis event isn’t news in Chicago
By Carl Carter, APR, AMM Here, with a few details changed, is a conversation I’ve had a few hundred times in recent years: Client: We need to get the media in New Orleans to cover this story. Me: Remind me, where’s the event? Client: Houston. Me: It’s not going to happen. It’s not a New […]
Four things reporters don’t have time for any more
By Carl Carter, APR Newsrooms have fired so many journalists that nobody can keep count any more, but as best I can tell, we have about half the reporters we had six years ago. And they’re having to do a lot more — not only writing, but publishing and promoting their stories. Try to imagine […]
How we lost our news, and how we can get it back (maybe)
Here’s a number for you to mull over: 22,100. That, as best anybody can tell, is the number of journalists who have disappeared from the payrolls of America’s newspapers. In 2007 — about the time I first started writing about the problems that were ahead for newspapers — we had 55,000 working newspaper journalists, according […]
You’re sending your press release to scared, overworked vagabonds. So make it easy for them.
By Carl Carter, APR The first time I saw the Miami Herald’s fabulous offices on Biscayne Bay, I was riding to an appointment with a client who had an interview there. I’d had my nose buried in an early-generation GPS gadget and almost missed it, when the client pointed at the famous location. “Think that […]
Why we don’t understand each other any more
Visiting with my old friend Dave Perry today at the Gumbo Gala set me to reflecting on the common experience we shared in the 1960s and 1970s. If you were growing up in Birmingham in the 1960s, you got your music on the radio. For most of us, that meant WSGN, when commercial radio had real […]
Two lessons from the Alabama governor’s disastrous press conference
Conventional PR wisdom says you answer charges when attacked. And when you’re a public figure in trouble, you hold a press conference and get all the bad news out so that the story doesn’t drag on. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley showed us yesterday why conventional wisdom is sometimes wrong. The governor, who was in hot […]
Why Peyton Manning’s having a press conference today and why you never should
Now and then, a client will call me wanting me to organize a press conference. I almost always talk them out of it? Why? After all, it’s going to get a big turnout for Peyton Manning. Sure it is. But here’s why: Because you’re not Peyton. If you think about it, even Manning’s presser is […]
Flying Blind: We lost our news coverage, and it’s worse than you think
Some of us have been writing and talking about the decline in news media for years, but a lot of people have joined the conversation late. So let’s step back a bit and see the big picture. Our news coverage at all levels is a shadow of its former self. All over the country, we have […]