KETCHUM'S ONLINE MAGAZINE YEAR 2009    ISSUE 1

MEDIA MYTHS & REALITIES

 

Introduction

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The past year has been an especially trying one for traditional media outlets. In 2008, U.S. newspapers laid off or gave buyouts to more than 15,000 employees, and the Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy filing raised a real question as to whether some of the country’s most respected newspapers will survive. The New York Times’ financial situation was the subject of a recent Atlantic (formerly Atlantic Monthly) article questioning whether we will soon see the demise of the newspaper’s printed edition as we know it. And News Corp. announced “across the board” job cuts at its newspapers in the U.K. and Australia. Magazines have cut staffs, too, but largely on the Web.

More than ever, newspapers and magazines are struggling to hold on to both readers and advertisers, and print and local broadcast outlets continue trying to adapt business models for both a weakened economy and a rapidly changing media landscape.

Amid all the trouble, there is a bit of irony in the fact that people are more engaged with media than ever before. The industry’s challenge is that media is now ubiquitous and attention spans are limited. What’s more, consumers are no longer content to simply consume news stories; they want to help tell them. And they’re using their own blogs and social networking pages as well as the Web sites of established media brands to do just that.

As PR practitioners, the media industry’s challenges are ours, too. To communicate with the public, we must keep pace with all the ways consumers are using media. With this idea in mind, three years ago Ketchum launched Media Myths & Realities, an annual survey of media use in the U.S. and abroad. We conducted the 2008 research this past fall.

This year’s study again looks at how U.S. consumers use media relative to the ways in which communication professionals deliver their messages. It also examines media use in Brazil for the second year in a row, and for the first time, the survey includes consumers in the U.K. Ketchum’s collaboration with academia has been expanded beyond the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Strategic Public Relations Center, which launched the first Media Myths & Realities study with Ketchum in 2006 and has been an ongoing partner, to include the Media School at Bournemouth University in the U.K.

This issue of Perspectives focuses on the 2008 study and summarizes some top-line findings from each of the three countries surveyed. One of these is the seemingly universal significance of search engines, which rank high among consumers and influencers across the board.

We also include valuable insights from communication professionals both inside and outside of our agency on topics ranging from the influence of big media brands to how bloggers impacted the recent U.S. presidential election. In our “Roundtable,” other PR practitioners answer questions about how the survey findings line up next to the work that they do.

In short, this issue of Perspectives is filled with information and best practices on navigating today’s media environment, and we hope you find it useful. I’m interested to hear your views as well as your feedback.

E-mail me at ray.kotcher@ketchum.com.

Best regards,

Ray Kotcher
Senior Partner and Chief Executive Officer, Ketchum