Look what’s happening to Britain’s regional news media.
Local and regional newspapers are contracting: the Birmingham Post and Bath Chronicle have moved from daily to weekly; the Western Daily Press and Western Morning News are merging; local and regional newspapers are much thinner these days!
That thinning has seen the removal, in many cases, of the business pages.
This trend is not limited to newspapers: local radio providers (both BBC and commercial stations) are also cutting back on business coverage, while ITV is busy getting out of regional news delivery – including its business coverage.
Meanwhile, the South West mirrors other major regions in the growth of new region-wide business magazines and online services.
What does that mean for regional businesses?
• You have to tailor your news stories to appeal to the general-news pages and regional broadcasters’ bulletins (ie, focus on jobs, home-prices, and all the things that ring bells for the average reader/listener/viewer);
• Get to grips with the emerging regional business publications and websites;
• Recognise that you can have far greater impact by achieving coverage in the growing number of online business websites;
• Exploit the very issue that is crippling Britain’s regional news media: you can communicate direct with your target audience via e-publications and exploitation of social media (eg, LinkedIn).
A final thought: five years ago, most regional news media had sponsorship partnerships with various private-sector businesses – more recently, those media have become used to an open cheque-book from their RDA and Business Link. That funding source, I have to believe, will now cease in the run-up to the General Election – re-opening the opportunities for real businesses to restore a relationship with their regional media.
While it has been great for our regional news media to grab these big-spend sponsorships from RDAs and Business Link, it has resulted in:
• A tsunami of pro-Business Link and RDA coverage – most of which is a big turn-off for real business-readers;
• The disappearance of real business-partners for the regional media;
• A dangerous suppression of the regional media’s independence to hold RDAs and Business Links to account.
Let’s be honest: Business Link spends vast sums of our tax-payer money to provide nothing of real value to business: their “business advisers” would not be doing that job, at that salary, if they were any good at running a business!
And, while the RDAs have been great at delivering the valuable job, formerly provided by the English Partnerships agency (ie, engineering public sector investment to attract the private sector into new workspace developments), they have been a complete waste of our tax-payers’ money in building vast empires to embrace a host of vague aspirations.
It’s time for business leaders, and business-owners, to speak out and take part in our political future.
That is Britain’s biggest problem: our politicians know nothing about business, and our business owners have no interest in politics.
The 19th Century was very different: our Parliament featured members who knew about business!
Friday, 19 March 2010
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
What is PR worth to you?
Portugal’s cork industry has decided to invest £19 million in PR to promote cork as a better alternative to metal screw-caps on wine bottles.
The UK Government is now promising a cut of £650 million in its spending on marketing and consultancy expenditure.
How do those figures fit with your own PR budget?
I know how they fit with the budgets we manage for our clients – some of the South West’s biggest names in corporate, professional, and business services.
Let’s agree that, like bonuses for bankers, these figures are just “unreal”!
During the height of Maggie Thatcher’s privatisation drive, several PR firms made a “killing” by charging a fortune for full-page adverts in the FT and simplistic calls to “Tell Sid”.
Throughout the past decade, dominated by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Westminster-focused “Spin-doctors” have commanded ludicrous fees, just as questionable as MP expenses for moat-cleaning, home-flipping, and dodgy-dossiers!
But please don’t judge your hard-working, business-focused PR consultants on these extreme episodes.
We charge less than lawyers, we focus on your business-aims, and we deliver results that can be measured to prove the value of your investment.
You only have to ask any of our clients about this claim (or view our testimonials - www.sturgessvandamme.co.uk/content/testimonials )
On average, our clients have an annual PR budget of £30,000: a fraction of the sums spent by the Government – or the Portuguese cork industry. But they get results that vastly exceed that fee level.
Does that reflect your own PR expenditure?
The UK Government is now promising a cut of £650 million in its spending on marketing and consultancy expenditure.
How do those figures fit with your own PR budget?
I know how they fit with the budgets we manage for our clients – some of the South West’s biggest names in corporate, professional, and business services.
Let’s agree that, like bonuses for bankers, these figures are just “unreal”!
During the height of Maggie Thatcher’s privatisation drive, several PR firms made a “killing” by charging a fortune for full-page adverts in the FT and simplistic calls to “Tell Sid”.
Throughout the past decade, dominated by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Westminster-focused “Spin-doctors” have commanded ludicrous fees, just as questionable as MP expenses for moat-cleaning, home-flipping, and dodgy-dossiers!
But please don’t judge your hard-working, business-focused PR consultants on these extreme episodes.
We charge less than lawyers, we focus on your business-aims, and we deliver results that can be measured to prove the value of your investment.
You only have to ask any of our clients about this claim (or view our testimonials - www.sturgessvandamme.co.uk/content/testimonials )
On average, our clients have an annual PR budget of £30,000: a fraction of the sums spent by the Government – or the Portuguese cork industry. But they get results that vastly exceed that fee level.
Does that reflect your own PR expenditure?
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
WATCH OUT FOR NEWSPAPER GAME-KEEPERS BECOMING PR-POACHERS!
Regional newspapers are struggling: advertising and sponsorship revenues have taken a dive in the recession, while they all struggle to “monetise” their online offerings.
But regional newspaper publishers have bigger journalistic staffs than any regional PR firm.
So Neil Benson (Editorial Director at Trinity Mirror) suggested to the latest Society of Editors’ conference that regional newspaper publishers should be launching PR agency businesses to “save their flagging revenues”.
Benson pointed out that the best PR firms are run and staffed by former journalists: that’s certainly true of Sturgess Van Damme.
His idea? Newspaper publishers could provide an arms-length fee-earning PR business –
• Working with local authorities to provide hyperlocal websites;
• Extending the use of news-video to providing paid-for video services to PR clients and advertisers;
His idea has legs!
Local councils are now spending £millions of tax-payers’ money on newspapers to replace the lost coverage of council news, while regional businesses are struggling to find an outlet for their news as local newspaper shrink their coverage.
The Financial Times is offering subscription rates that provide access to FT journalists for the production of company PR material and attendance at company events. We can now expect to see the most visionary regional newspaper publishers adopting this move into PR.
Why not?
This could be a vital life-line to preserving our regional newspapers: but it must not compromise their editorial independence. I like to read a newspaper revelation on our Regional Development Agency, even though that RDA is the newspaper’s biggest sponsor!
But regional newspaper publishers have bigger journalistic staffs than any regional PR firm.
So Neil Benson (Editorial Director at Trinity Mirror) suggested to the latest Society of Editors’ conference that regional newspaper publishers should be launching PR agency businesses to “save their flagging revenues”.
Benson pointed out that the best PR firms are run and staffed by former journalists: that’s certainly true of Sturgess Van Damme.
His idea? Newspaper publishers could provide an arms-length fee-earning PR business –
• Working with local authorities to provide hyperlocal websites;
• Extending the use of news-video to providing paid-for video services to PR clients and advertisers;
His idea has legs!
Local councils are now spending £millions of tax-payers’ money on newspapers to replace the lost coverage of council news, while regional businesses are struggling to find an outlet for their news as local newspaper shrink their coverage.
The Financial Times is offering subscription rates that provide access to FT journalists for the production of company PR material and attendance at company events. We can now expect to see the most visionary regional newspaper publishers adopting this move into PR.
Why not?
This could be a vital life-line to preserving our regional newspapers: but it must not compromise their editorial independence. I like to read a newspaper revelation on our Regional Development Agency, even though that RDA is the newspaper’s biggest sponsor!
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Print media's short comings highlighted as Chron misses scoop.
I’ve just read a story on the Hold The Front Page website which brilliantly highlights the effectiveness of local news reporting, but sadly also underlines the limitations of newspapers in this digital age.
From a reliable source editorial staff at The Bath Chronicle learned that the grim discovery of human remains found in a bin liner at the side of the M5 were those of 25-year-old Melanie Hall who went missing during a night out in the city more than a decade ago.
Ghoulish though it may be, this is the kind of stuff local news editors and journalists dream of: a missing person, a 13-year mystery, a grisly find at the side of the road and, crucially, a solid link back to your local news patch.
The journalists did what all good reporters should do in this situation: they quickly put together background pieces about Melanie’s disappearance, a timeline of her last known movements, revived old interviews with her family and wrote a hard-hitting front page splash.
Great work all round, but just one problem.
They didn’t get official confirmation that the remains were Melanie’s until after their editorial deadline had been and gone. So, rather than splash on undoubtedly one of Bath’s biggest stories of the year, they had to go with a far weaker story.
To their credit once the editorial team received the confirmation they needed they managed to secure a print slot for a 5,000-run, four page special…but you can’t help feeling the moment had passed.
Within seconds of the official announcement that the human remains were Melanie’s the story was leading all the rolling broadcast news networks as well as being all over cyberspace.
You could argue The Chronicle was just as much a part of that coverage as anyone else, having updated its website within minutes of the announcement, but, as we all know, that won’t help it to sell papers.
The Bath Chronicle is an excellent local paper, full of well-written news and views reflecting the area it covers. In the last year, however, it has had to go from being a daily paper to a weekly one, and if it misses many more scoops such as this, (and the laws of probability says it undoubtedly will) how much longer will Bath people continue paying for it?
From a reliable source editorial staff at The Bath Chronicle learned that the grim discovery of human remains found in a bin liner at the side of the M5 were those of 25-year-old Melanie Hall who went missing during a night out in the city more than a decade ago.
Ghoulish though it may be, this is the kind of stuff local news editors and journalists dream of: a missing person, a 13-year mystery, a grisly find at the side of the road and, crucially, a solid link back to your local news patch.
The journalists did what all good reporters should do in this situation: they quickly put together background pieces about Melanie’s disappearance, a timeline of her last known movements, revived old interviews with her family and wrote a hard-hitting front page splash.
Great work all round, but just one problem.
They didn’t get official confirmation that the remains were Melanie’s until after their editorial deadline had been and gone. So, rather than splash on undoubtedly one of Bath’s biggest stories of the year, they had to go with a far weaker story.
To their credit once the editorial team received the confirmation they needed they managed to secure a print slot for a 5,000-run, four page special…but you can’t help feeling the moment had passed.
Within seconds of the official announcement that the human remains were Melanie’s the story was leading all the rolling broadcast news networks as well as being all over cyberspace.
You could argue The Chronicle was just as much a part of that coverage as anyone else, having updated its website within minutes of the announcement, but, as we all know, that won’t help it to sell papers.
The Bath Chronicle is an excellent local paper, full of well-written news and views reflecting the area it covers. In the last year, however, it has had to go from being a daily paper to a weekly one, and if it misses many more scoops such as this, (and the laws of probability says it undoubtedly will) how much longer will Bath people continue paying for it?
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