Circle of Fellows #131: The Evolving Media Landscape and What It Means for Media Relations

Well, I'll jump in.

My feeling is that we've lost a whole segment of I'll call it local media, small town papers, small town dailies and weeklies, supplements with local news in the large papers.

So I'm not exactly sure where people go for that news.

I know there are online sites that provide local news, but I just think we've lost a whole tier of connectivity to connect citizens with government, with business, with things to do.

I don't think that people are going to the web to these new sites.

They're just browsing and and finding what they can anywhere, kind of hit or miss.

I agree, Ned.

It's been a huge loss to see the decrease in the small-town papers because one of the best things I found with my media relations work was connecting those editors with local people on the issues that I was trying to promote.

And being able to provide local content, local contacts, And that local context was really critical to the success because you don't want to always just having coming from head office or the principal city because sometimes there are resentments that all the news gets funneled one way.

And it also meant that people could see in different areas how the story could play out depending on that regional context.

Yeah, I would agree on the community news reporting element of things.

We had a tragic event here just in my community, which is not a small town, this week.

And what I noticed was that in the absence of hyperlocal reporting, so in other words, metro-wide reporting was existing, that nuances around the community that I live in went missing.

So, you know, the name of the shopping centre where the tragedy happened, the, you know, even the way that streets were referenced and businesses were referenced.

those kinds of things became slight inaccuracies that added up to a broader sense of, you know, if you're in that community kind of go, okay, well, this doesn't feel, this doesn't pass the sniff test, um, right through to, uh, you know, important things like traffic reports and, um, and, and those kinds of things, a local, I'm sure as, as in many markets, uh, uh, We had the news a couple of weeks ago of several local radio stations shutting down that are all serving local markets.

And so that amalgamation and consolidation continues to really shape the way our communities and where communities show up and the way we show up with each other.

I was going to bring up that point, Jennifer, and it was five Rogers stations across Canada were shut down.

And one of them was the Kitchener station, which is right next door to where I live and has a huge impact on this entire area because it was a major radio station.

And the outcry locally was huge.

So many of the community members were so upset that this station had closed down because it had been around forever.

for a very long time and had a very long history in the area.

And everybody was outraged.

And this goes to how the business model has changed for so many of these, for the media and how that corporately is changing journalism, right? And that the reason these, I mean, it was so coincidental that this happened is The day after, Rogers announced that they were buying back a lot of the stock and taking over the Rogers Entertainment and sports franchises.

And so, well, look at that.

They do this one day, and the next day, all of these stations are being closed.