It’s easy to forget but back in 2008 a lot of people were declaring that the media as we know it was dead - or dying. In fact, one enterprising Twitter user, Paul Armstrong, set up a special account (@themediaisdying) to chronicle the press’ alleged death spiral. Today it has nearly 25,000 followers.
Yet, a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral. The media, faced with the threat of extinction, used sheer will and innovation to turn things around. Today the fourth estate is arguably stronger than ever. This even as the global economy sputters.
Consider TV. The networks have all aggressively deployed an armada of “second screen” experiences for tablets and smart phones. These apps, which curate Twitter and Facebook streams in a single place, are encouraging live tune in by essentially creating a social show around the show.
They’re not alone. Stalwart newspapers like The Guardian and The Washington Post have created immersive news experiences inside Facebook. They’re even syndicating full text stories inside the social juggernaut.
The bet as paid off. In just two months since these social news platforms were unveiled The Guardian said it saw site traffic increase by more than a million page views a month. The Post, not to be outdone, has seen a sharp uptick in news readers under 35. And Yahoo is expanding their Facebook integration to many more properties.
Finally, blog-based upstarts like the Huffington Post, Politico and Engadget, all of which pioneered the use of short-form, rapid fire posts, are now expanding into long form content. This includes ebooks and tablet magazines.
There are countless other examples. The media is back in a big way. And this is having a significant impact on how businesses synchronize and prioritize where, when and how they tell their stories. This process, to borrow a term from Hollywood, is often called "transmedia storytelling."
Curious about the media’s reincarnation, in 2011 I set out on a journey to learn more. I visited media executives and reporters, technology vendors and social networks - all in a quest to identify some common best practices. Five new "rules" emerged.
In this scrapbook I share what I learned.
1. Insights on the Future of Media
By Steve Rubel, EVP, Edelman
Volume I - January 2012
2. Introduction
It’s easy to forget but back in 2008 a lot of people were
declaring that the media as we know it was dead - or dying.
In fact, one enterprising Twitter user, Paul Armstrong, set up
a special account (@themediaisdying) to chronicle the press’
alleged death spiral. Today it has nearly 25,000 followers.
Yet, a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral. The
media, faced with the threat of extinction, used sheer will and
innovation to turn things around. Today the fourth estate is
arguably stronger than ever. This even as the global economy
sputters.
Consider TV. The networks have all aggressively deployed an
armada of “second screen” experiences for tablets and smart
phones. These apps, which curate Twitter and Facebook
streams in a single place, are encouraging live tune in by
essentially creating a social show around the show.
They’re not alone. Stalwart newspapers like The Guardian and
The Washington Post have created immersive news experiences
inside Facebook. They’re even syndicating full text stories
inside the social juggernaut.
The bet has paid off. In just two months since these social
news platforms were unveiled The Guardian said it saw site
traffic increase by more than a million page views a month.
The Post, not to be outdone, has seen a sharp uptick in news
readers under 35. And Yahoo is expanding their Facebook
integration to many more properties.
@themediaisdying on Twitter (top), Get Glue social badges for TV shows (bottom) 2
3. Finally, blog-based upstarts like the Huffington Post, Politico and
Engadget, all of which pioneered the use of short-form, rapid
fire posts, are now expanding into long form content. This
includes ebooks and tablet magazines.
There are countless other examples. The media is back in a
big way. And this is having a significant impact on how
businesses synchronize and prioritize where, when and how
they tell their stories. This process, to borrow a term from
Hollywood, is often called "transmedia storytelling."
Curious about the media’s reincarnation, in 2011 I set out on
a journey to learn more. I visited media executives and
reporters, technology vendors and social networks - all in a
quest to identify some common best practices. Five new
"rules" emerged.
In this scrapbook I share what I learned.
###
3
4. I - Curate to Dominate
My journey to dissect a re-invigorated media began with Jim
Bankoff - CEO of Vox Media. When we met for coffee last
spring Vox was operating one site: the highly successful Sports
Blog Nation (SBN). Since then it has expanded into tech with a
new sister site, The Verge.
I didn't know what to expect that warm April day. But what I
discovered is that vertical curators like SBN may soon play a
larger role in how we consume content than many of us may
realize. This has ramifications for both journalists and
communicators.
Sports is one of the largest and oldest online interest verticals.
The category is dominated by large brands - sites like
ESPN.com and Yahoo Sports, which rose to prominence
during the 1990s.
Suddenly, however, the edges are fraying. First, athletes and
teams are becoming their own media channels. Beyond that,
new curators are moving in and disrupting the business. SBN,
for example, rolls up the best independent blog voices
covering individual teams into a carefully curated network.
The Bleacher Report, meanwhile, takes a more open, crowd-
Jim Ban
sourced approach. Today it's the 12th largest sports site, koff, Vox
Media
according to comScore.
Both SBN and Bleacher Report are demonstrating that there's a
huge opportunity for new media brands to emerge that focus
on separating art from junk. This is all a result of too much
content and not enough time.
4
5. Sports media, however, is filled with analysis - an editorial
asset that is always in high demand. But what about breaking
news, which is more of a commodity these days? Can a
curator win in news too?
According to the 3.3 million people who follow the MSNBC-
owned @breakingnews account on Twitter - the sub-140-
character answer is "yes." That's where we pick up the story.
To learn more, I sought out fellow Hofstra University alum
Lauren McCullough. She recently joined @breakingnews
from AP as a Senior Editor.
I was surprised to hear from Lauren just how much MSNBC
has bolstered the Breaking News brand, which it acquired
from an enterprising Twitter user a couple of years back.
MSNBC has turned it into a 24/7 news operation that
curates links faster than anyone else. In addition to its
substantial Twitter footprint, MSNBC has pushed the brand
aggressively into Facebook, Google+ and via its own web site
(breakingnews.com) and mobile apps.
The @breakingnews team aims to find and credit the original
source of a story. This can be difficult. So the team has set up
a way for other reporters to tip them when they have a scoop
via a simple hashtag. This also gives the source additional
exposure for their stories.
Curation, I learned, doesn't need to be a business. It can be a
Lauren M feature too.
cCullough, M
SNBC
5
6. One of the notable trends to emerge in the last couple of Curation is a buzzword these days - so it's murky still what its
years is that journalists are finding meaningful content roles true potential may be. On the one hand, an emerging group of
beyond the media. In 2010, the BBC's Richard Sambrook, curators like Flipboard, MediaGazer and TechMeme are
for example, joined Edelman (my employer) as our Chief successfully mixing human and social algorithmic editors.
Content Officer. He's not alone. Facebook hired Columbia Former Time Inc. journalist Josh Quittner joined Flipboard as
Journalism School grad and wunderkind reporter Vadim its editor. Techmeme and MediaGazer too have editors.
Lavrusik to help journalists use the platform to engage their
audiences. Tumblr earlier had hired Mark Coatney from On the other hand, Staci Kramer, editor of PaidContent.org,
Newsweek for the same purpose. helped me see that there's a difference between curation
(editorializing) and aggregation (compiling) - which is what some
Another individual in a similar role is Daniel Roth, who last of these sites do.
year joined LinkedIn as its Executive Editor. But what makes
Roth unique, as I discovered when we met for coffee last Still, what's clear is that a new layer is emerging where humans,
November at New York's Ace Hotel, is that he is a curator. specifically editors, help us separate art from junk in the vast sea
of digital content. And this will be a recurring trend in the years
LinkedIn Today - the network's news platform and Roth's ahead.
focus - is quickly becoming a go-to source for business news
across many of key verticals. Need proof ? Consider that ###
LinkedIn is routinely one of the top sources of traffic to biz
news sites.
LinkedIn's Roth (L), Tumblr's Coatney
(M) and Facebook's Lavrusik (R). 6
7. II - Data Mine and Time
Math: I don't know about you, but for me it's a four-letter
word. I had always suspected the same truism held
throughout the journalism world. After all, the field is filled
with liberal arts graduates. However, that's not what I
discovered. It turns out that quite a lot of what we see in the
media today is at least shaped by data mining and timing.
Lurking behind the scenes at many media companies is an
emerging field of data journalists. This group not only knows
how to mine the numbers, but also how to turn them into
data-driven insights that influence (but don't dictate) editorial
decisions.
Drake Martinet, Associate Editor at Dow Jones' All Things D
tech site, is basically a real-life version of the Robert Redford
character in The Horse Whisperer - except with data. He pours
over mountains of information and provides actionable
insights to colleagues. The key, Martinet says, is to speak in
verbs, not nouns.
Timing, meanwhile, is the name of the game at the Huffington
Post - now part of AOL. The site has a traffic and trends
team, I learned during my visit there, that spots topics that
are hot on social networks and search engines and then writes
stories about those it deems newsworthy. This not only leads
to solid reporting, but also a pretty good way to capture
relevant inbound traffic too.
7
8. The HuffPo is not alone in using data to inform their timing. All of this may soon become more automated. Already
Several media brands, including the Economist, are working technology is becoming mature enough where machines can
with SocialFlow to more effectively optimize when their actually write more formulaic stories with little or no human
headlines are seeded into Twitter. The Business Insider, involvement. This includes filing post-game wrap-ups and
meanwhile, uses Newsbeat to dig through their data and earnings reports. According to The New York Times, a startup
make much of it public via their Engage-o-Meter. called Narrative Science has partnered with The Big Ten
Network to do just that.
Although I haven't polled media companies directly, I
suspect most prefer to keep these strategies close to the vest. Machines will never replace humans. However, journalism is
However, the above examples show that increasingly being increasingly shaped by machines
editorial decisions are being at least guided by data, even as
news still rules. ###
It's also worth noting that there are other startups emerging
that are arming the media with technology that enables it to
unearth such insights.
One such company is Storyful, which is stacked with
refugees from the news business and advisors like Joe
Webster, who like McCullough, also worked at the AP.
Storyful (not to be confused with Storify) filters through
thousands of tweets to find primary sources who are close to
big, newsy topics. This includes on-the-ground sources in
inhospitable places and also third party experts closer to
home.
Storyful, Webster shared with me when we met in October,
saves journalists time by rolling up sources into private
Twitter lists. The end result is that the start-up's media
Storyful (above) and its
customers are not only more informed about they news they
evangelist, Joe Webster
cover, but they are faster at it too.
(below)
8
9. III - Keep Stories Alive
One of the notable ways that the media has evolved in the
last several years is in how it has been forced to adjust to the
new economics of attention. It has arguably adapted more
quickly than some corporations.
The universal truth is that quality content is no longer scarce.
It's abundant. The public's time and appetite for information,
however, remains somewhat finite. Therefore every media
brand is facing increased competition for the same eyeballs.
This has spawned a massive and escalating war for page
views.
This is where we pickup the story. What I discovered last year
Scoble (L) and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
is that attention warfare weapons today go way beyond
obvious devices like information graphics, slideshows and
"listicles." Some media brands, it seems, are going to great
lengths to keep their stories alive longer than others.
Seeking answers, in October I hit up one of the wisest people
I know: Robert Scoble - a leading tech influencer and
Rackspace's corporate storyteller. His advice to me was to
keep an eye on "verbs."
A few days prior to our breakfast Facebook had unveiled a
new way for major media companies to build social news
experiences on their platform. What's notable is that these
send a cascade of social actions to the newsfeed - verbs that
go beyond "like" to include "read," "watch" and "listen."
Scoble's view, which I questioned then, was that this move
would dramatically re-shape how we discover content.
9
10. Scoble shoots 50% from the tech pundit free-throw line. This
time he maybe right.
Facebook late last year revealed that the media companies
that jumped into create social news experiences actually saw
a dramatic increase in readers... to their web sites. The
Guardian is recording an additional one million page views
per month. The Washington Post, meanwhile, has seen an influx
in coveted under-35 readers. And Yahoo is getting so much
new traffic from Facebook that they expanded their
relationship to dozens more sites.
Social networks are a media engagement elixir. This is true
for once-static magazines too.
A few weeks later at Mashable Media Conference I learned
how TV Guide has turned its tablet apps into a personalized,
live social water cooler for more than 5 million people. These Buddy Media CEO M
ichael Lazerow (above).
apps are sometimes called "second screen" experiences. They
are meant to be used while watching TV.
At the same conference, Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy
Media, revealed how the media companies that add a simple
sharing option to common interactions on their web sites
(like completing a poll) will cascade "verbs" into Facebook.
This directly leads to a 12.98% increase in site traffic.
Lazerow has done the math!
Add this all up and what I learned is that the media is
leveraging the power of social networking to help keep their
stories alive longer. They've gone beyond just pumping out
links to creating fully integrated experiences that are
personalized through the lens of your friends.
### 10
11. IV - Roll in the Deep
Los Angeles is not widely viewed as the pantheon of deep
thought. However, it is where the future of media is
increasingly being defined. That's where we pick up my quest
for knowledge - at USC Annenberg, which I visited twice last
year.
The future of media is not just about short-attention fare like
tweets, but also a renaissance in long-form, vertical content
too. To quote pop star Adele, the press is "rolling in the
deep."
This realization started with Geoff Boucher from the LA
Times, who I met at a USC event last spring. Boucher is a 20-
plus-year veteran of the paper who once covered a string of
gang murders that rocked the city in the early 1990s. Today
he is a journalistic hero of sorts; a pioneer.
Boucher always had a geek streak running through his veins. Boucher (L) with Steven Spielberg (R)
In 2008 he channeled his love for words and wookies to
convince the LA Times to launch Hero Complex - a blog Let's start with the rule-breakers that have transformed
covering the worlds of comic books, graphical novels and journalism over the last five years. The Huffington Post and Politico
science fiction. The site has been a huge hit. have both launched successful ebooks. Engadget, meanwhile, is
taking this a step further with the launch of its own tablet
There are examples of a resurgence in long-form content magazine.
everywhere - and not just in places where you would expect.
The old guard too is keeping up. After the death of Apple CEO
Steve Jobs both Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Fortune repackaged
articles from their archives and made them available as paid
ebooks on Amazon's Kindle platform.
11
12. What's more, as people spend more time reading on tablets, sites
that help users consume longer fare, such as Instapaper,
ReadItLater and Scribd, have all blossomed.
These discoveries led me back to school. Specifically, I sought
out USC's Dr. Henry Jenkins, who many consider the founding
father of "transmedia storytelling." (He first identified the trend
back in 2003 while at MIT.)
Dr. Jenkins, now an advisor at the USC Annenberg Innovation
Lab, shared how there are now two kinds of content that we
engage with in our day.
First, there's "spreadable media" - short-attention span content
that we snack on. This includes tweets, headlines, status updates
and more.
Then there's "drill-able media." This is longer form content that
provides analysis, depth and context. This format, once the
domain of professional content creators, are now more
democratic and open to all to create. Dr. Jenkins cites fan-
created wikis chronicling the Lost series as an example.
Dr. Jenkins believes that the latter group offers what he calls
"adaptive comprehension" around what we see spreading across
our screens. Most of his research is focused on how pop culture
is evolving along these two planes. However, the above examples
illustrate, how deep content is undergoing a renaissance.
###
USC Annenberg (above) is now home to Dr. Henry
Jenkins, who first coined the phrase "transmedia
storytelling."
12
13. Boucher's work at the LA Times with Hero Complex is one
V - Covet thy Superstars example but there are many others. ESPN, for example, last
year created Grantland - a platform for Bill Simmons and a
The media business has more in common with professional group of writers to further expand their passion for sports
team sports than many realize. and movies. The New York Times, meanwhile, has allowed
writers like Brian Stelter to flourish as "beat hubs" who can
Media brands are like teams. We are loyal to certain ones span platforms. Stelter, acknowledged at the Mashable
and, sometimes, despise others that conflict with our Media Conference that having a personal brand lets him
worldview. I haven't met anyone who loves both MSNBC "punch above his weight." He also showed us a thing or two
and Fox News equally or for that matter the Yankees and the in how to use Tumblr for reporting, which he did in the
Red Sox. You can't. They're polar opposites. wake of the Joplin, Missouri tornadoes.
Columnists and commentators have long resembled The sporting parallels don't end there. For every company
franchise players who perform well at their craft, help the loyalist like Stelter and Simmons there are countless of
team win and "fill the seats." They are names like Friedman, others who turn to free agency. This includes the likes of
O'Dowd, Kurtz, Lupica, King and Stern. They pre-date the Michael Arrington (formerly with TechCrunch) and Jim
digital era and are all associated with the teams they play for, Romensko (formerly with Poynter) who left and launched
just like icons from the sports world - Magic, Jordan, Kobe, new sites.
Jeter, Montana, Beckham, Rooney, Brady and Gretzky.
The drama over star journalists at times resembles the
Where once only a few journalists could become true hoopla that preceded ESPN's 2010 airing of "The Decision"
personal brands (a phrase some despise), what I found in - where NBA superstar Lebron James revealed he was
spending time with the media is that in the digital age things leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat. The
are different. Many young reporters come into the business world of tech journalism, in particular, has been rocked by
either with a personal brand or the intent to create one. similar drama. A number of personal brands have ventured
They know that it will not only help them in their careers, out on their own. While others have jumped to new outlets
but also can create massive value for their employers - as like The Verge.
measured in traffic.
This isn't necessarily a new trend. However, what I
This emerging group, I found, is fearless. They break all the discovered over the course of my conversations with
unwritten rules. Yet, they always remain respectful of who different journalists is that everyone now - even the die-hard
pays their bills. In exchange, they are increasingly being ink-stained crowd - recognizes they are part of the war for
rewarded with room to innovate. page views. They must adapt to be heard.
13
14. They have lots of help. Many national and even local media
companies are now hiring cross-trained reporters who can do
it all - report, live blog, tweet and even create video
themselves.
Some, like New York Times business reporter Tanzina Vega,
bring these skills to their day-to-day beat coverage. Vega last
fall shared with me at a small gathering of journalists that
she often files video with her stories.
Others, like Anjali Mullany at the New York Daily News,
remain behind the scenes. She helps reporters at the News
incorporate live blogging and tweeting into their workflow.
Scribes also are getting help from the social networks too.
Tumblr and Facebook, as I wrote earlier, both have dedicated
ex-journalists on staff. They are equipping individual
reporters and entire media organizations to engage audiences
directly on these sites.
In the digital age, journalism remains true to its core.
Brian Stelter’s Tu
However, above it all, hangs the almighty pressure to increase mblr on Joplin
page views. And this is creating more pressure on journalists
to become personal brands.
###
14
15. Credits
Steve Rubel is EVP, Global Strategy and Insights for Edelman - the
world's largest independent PR firm. In his role, he helps teams and
clients understand the future of media and develop integrated
strategies. Rubel shares links and insights on the future of media on
Twitter (@steverubel) and via The Clip Report on Tumblr at
steverubel.me. He can be reached at steverubel@gmail.com.
(The opinions expressed within this ebook are his and do not
necessarily reflect those of Edelman or its clients.)
Photo credits: lenahan, jdlasica, theredproject, scobleizer, trainman, mashable,
r80o, sambrook, popculturegeek, joi. Icons by graphicnode.