“And, that’s the way it is.”
Walter Cronkite’s legendary sign off.
But, that’s the way it WAS.
We delivered the news. Viewers consumed it.
We lectured. They listened.
Now, the audience has choices. And lots of them. They can scroll through Twitter and Facebook and get their news when they want to in a matter of minutes or have it delivered to their inbox first thing in the morning, instead of waiting for the 5pm news.
In order to be relevant, we have to be in relevant places. We have to go to where the audience is. And, we have to ENGAGE.
Engagement isn’t a trend relegated to influencers on Instagram.
It’s what every business needs to survive, including news outlets. ESPECIALLY news outlets, who are trying to build, or in some cases, rebuild audience loyalty and trust.
And, quite frankly, news outlets, fall short in this area and I was reminded of that this week, as I was scrolling through Twitter.
Re-tweeting links isn’t enough.
Updating Facebook feeds isn’t enough.
Many journalists look at digital as being “stupid,’ and quite frankly, a chore, an aggravation and an annoyance.
As a former local TV news producer, I remember when they first started coming to us in the newsroom and asking us to provide material for social media. The veterans didn’t take too kindly to it. I include myself in that. We didn’t get it.
But, change was knocking on the door, and we were too arrogant and set in our ways to allow it in.
Now, the door has been kicked in.
How we connect is changing and we have to change with it. We can’t just lecture. We have to listen. It needs to be a two-way conversation. It needs to be more inclusive and, most of all, relevant.
In order to be relevant, you have to show up in relevant places.
Go where your audience is. You want Millennials? You want GEN Z? You HAVE to, at the very least, be on Instagram. If newsrooms want to reach younger audiences, they should also include them in the process. Last year, The University of Missouri had its first-ever Instagram local news summer fellowship, a project from Instagram and the Reynolds Journalism Institute at Mizzou.
Smart.
Why? Because…
- One billion people use Instagram every month.
- 500 Million use Instagram Stories every day.
- 200 Million Instagram users visit at least one business profile daily.
Today, I went to go look at the Instagram pages of some local TV news outlets. Not one of them had any original Stories they’d created and they hadn’t posted in their feed since 9/11.
That was 5 days ago.
In the last five days:
- Hurricane Sally hit our shores
- People as far east as New York felt the effects of wildfires still raging in California
- The World Health Organization recorded its highest single-day increase in global infections since the pandemic began
- President Trump participated in a Town Hall meeting
- Apple took on Peloton with Apple Fitness+
- Not to mention the soap opera of Oracle’s TikTok bid…
There really is nothing more expensive than a missed opportunity. And, that’s a lot of missed opportunity.
“If your halfhearted efforts to engage your audience amount to robotically re-tweeting story links or slapping a general “Tell Us Your Thoughts” box at the end of the story or pleading with your viewers to simply blabber on about whatever they reckon, you might as well start looking for another line of work. Authentic engaged journalism requires a human touch.”
-Jake Batsell/Engaged Journalism: Connecting With Digitally Empowered News Audiences
Journalism is about people.
I was lucky enough to work on a morning show, where we were more concerned with putting a smile on the face of a cancer patient than we were an Emmy.
After producing television for more than 20 years, I can tell you with conviction that my biggest accomplishment was 50 “LIVE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD” shows. Fifty LIVE 5-hour broadcasts that started before the advent of wireless cameras.
There were a lot of live trucks, a lot of cable, a lot of different locations that were plotted out like a military operation. We didn’t stay in one spot like most live broadcasts. When we said “LIVE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD,” we meant it. We were everywhere.
It was an engineering feat. But, the biggest feat of all was that we had gone to where the audience was, acknowledging where they lived, how they lived and what was important to them.
We had done a show in Ferguson, Missouri before the summer of 2014. We had gotten to know a lot of Ferguson’s residents and business owners, including Natalie Dubose from Natalie’s Cakes & More— who had just opened her business that summer.
We had built a relationship. And, I’ll never forget waiting for her in the lobby in the early morning hours when video of her tear-stained face went viral. Two years later, we were back again in Ferguson live in her neighborhood again.
We put a lot of stock in Nielsen ratings and ad revenue. But, when is the last time we measured our purpose, our impact?
We assign stories, interview, write and shoot the story and move onto the next day. Problem with that is, we move on, but maybe the world doesn’t. Asking questions and actually reading the answers can give life to a story we thought was done and over. We created the 24-hour news cycle. In other words, we are guilty of putting stories to bed way before their bedtime.
I don’t believe local journalism needs saving. It needs reviving. Throw out the old playbook. We need to rethink the way we tell stories and where we’re telling them.
The Washington Post gets it. That’s why they have their own TikTok guy, Dave Jorgenson, who’s one of TikTok’s most surprising breakout successes. He’s using the short form videos to entertain and inform at the same time. You might not see some of his younger TikTok followers ever holding a Washington Post newspaper, but you will see Dave in their hands, on their screens.
FOX 46 Good Day Charlotte Meteorologist, Nick Kosir, gets it. He’s danced his way to 1.6 million followers on Instagram.
Amanda Jaeger at THV11 in Little Rock gets it. She and her mesmerizing “anchor voice” has one million followers on TikTok.
“It’s not a fad—you know you have to do it,” said Meredith Artley, managing editor of CNN Digital. “The days of news organizations’ doing a story on whatever format and pushing it out there, those days are over. They’re done. The organizations that get that are the ones that are going to win.”
As Jake Batsell tells in his book Engaged Journalism: Connecting With Digitally Empowered News Audiences, he was surprised to learn Walter Cronkite never started to proactively meet with his audience until after he left the news desk.
Batsell had tentatively titled his book “Ready to Engage,” until he was told by a newsroom veteran:
“I think you’re being too kind. I think it’s Engage or Die.”
