There’s a lot of valuable data for corporate communicators to consider in the 2009 State of the News Media Report on American Journalism published by PEW Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The report quantifies and analyzes America’s print, television, audio, and online news consumption. Special sections this year analyze election coverage, citizen-based media, and “new ventures.” (Arizonans, note that Arizonaguardian.com is featured in the new ventures section. )

Some points of interest, among many offered in the report include:

• PEW’s survey of Online News Association members indicates that 54% of members surveyed believe journalism is headed in the wrong direction, with only 39% very confident and 43% somewhat confident that a profitable online business model can be identified.
• The number of people either relying on the Web for news or considering it as a major source for news – as one might expect – increased over the past year. This, coupled with the recession, has further diminished already fading ad revenues based on legacy business models.
• The ubiquitous Web vision is playing out. Mainstream onlines have enhanced their content, and more subject-specific news sites have emerged to make online news even more appealing to the masses. (See PEW’s “New Ventures” section for subject-specific examples.)
• With a nod to digital evolution, the Radio section of the report is now referred to as “Audio,” and goes on to call Audio’s future one of “intriguing fragmentation.”
• Micro-blogs, namely Twitter, get special focus within the Online section of the report, with the November 2008 Mumbai hotel raids cited as an example of Twitter’s immediacy and ability to break and share news. 

It’s citizen journalism – via micro-blogs, blogs, and otherwise – that I currently find most fascinating. Citizen journalism is forcing redefinition and/or tightened focus of roles within professional communications. Anyone who is willing can now have a voice via the Web, so professionals need to more clearly add value to the communications process while also harnessing the best of what audience-generated content has to offer.

Some mediums are ignoring or sidestepping this, while others choose to embrace and leverage it. CNN’s iReport is a nice example of the latter. I like that iReport delineates between which audience-generated stories are used by CNN entities, which you’ll find here, and which are not. iReport also encourages reporting aptitude by offering story, photo, video and audio tips to users. Of course there are integrated Facebook and Twitter feeds, and also a weekly news program on CNN highlighting the most interesting iReports.

CNN’s approach is a subtle way of formalizing and activating what is otherwise informal word-of-mouth and community discussion; citizen journalists generally cite just one or no sources, per PEW’s data. And I’m not saying blogs, online communities, an individual’s Tweets, or geographic iReports are less valuable than mainstream news. They’re increasingly what makes the world of information turn ’round, so helping these individual news accounts find their proper fit aids everyone and expands the variety of our knowledgebase.

What’s your opinion of online news growth in relation to the ‘accelerated reduction’ of print publications? Has citizen journalism piqued your interest in Web news, or soured it? Any examples you can share?

What a year of numbers for social media and the Web. Take Twitter for example. Approximately 70% of its nearly five million users registered for the service in 2008 according to HubSpot’s Q4 2008 State of the Twittersphere report. This is but one of many quantitative gems that cap an impressive year of social media growth. The following stats represent a slice of the past year’s activity that I found most impressive.

Google Search - As if there were any doubt, Google continued to hold the top search engine spot with 63.5% of traffic. More impressive to me – although also expected at some point – was Google’s YouTube individually surpassing Yahoo and Microsoft according to the comScore Expanded Search Query Report as referenced on ZDNet’s Between The Lines blog (also thanks to Brent Leary for Tweeting it.)

Google Chrome - Another boon for Google was its Chrome Web browser tallying 10 million users just 100 days after its release. Google also lifted the Beta tag from Chrome, noting that its “goals for stability and performance have been met.” This was a significant move considering many Google apps its senior are still labeled Beta, and an aggressive move in browser/search war terms versus Microsoft and others too.

Facebook - With a 140 million active users and 600 thousand joining daily (according to Inside Facebook and as reported by ReadWriteWeb), Facebook is the juggernaut of social media and online communities. And while Twitter posted impressive numbers of its own this year, ReadWriteWeb calculated that if Facebook were to hold steady at 140 million users while Twitter’s current growth continued, it would take Twitter 36 years to catch up. Two popular and powerful tools, yet a world of difference between them at least as far as uptake is concerned.

Blogosphere - In September Technorati released its annual State of the Blogosphere report. I blogged a bit on it referencing the Universal McCann data that measured 184 million people worldwide having blogs, and 346 million reading them – a ton of content generation for sure. I also found the report’s Day Five data (Brands Enter The Blogosphere) about blogger participation in Web 2.0 activities interesting. The fact that bloggers use other online tools isn’t at all surprising, yet their percentage of activity for things like commenting on other blogs (84%), watching online videos (68%), sharing photos (48%) and using Twitter (41%) confirm that integrated communications are prevalent and expanding. The connected world is now, and its proving out and documenting itself daily.

There’s much more I’m sure. These are just a few social media and Web tools that proved why they’re elite this past year. Lots of social media predictions for 2009 are popping up too. I’ll leave you to surf those out, and will continue my observations of and additions to “the conversation” in the New Year.

You wouldn’t want to upset your mother would you? How about thousands of moms in one sitting? That’s what Johnson & Johnson’s Motrin marketers did with their weekend. Motrin posted a video advertisement on its Web site targeting “baby wearing moms” that made some unpopular references and comparisons, to put it nicely. By Saturday, marketing melee had erupted in the form of a critical mass of angry mommy bloggers. True to form with most Internet marketing faux pas, the proliferation of angry comments went unnoticed by Motrin for several hours. A New York Times article notes that Motrin and its agency, TAXI, didn’t know this was occurring.

By this morning, of course, this instant classic case study has been well covered by many moms, bloggers, and social media analysts. Here’s my bit for the collection.

The Good

As a brief reprieve for Motrin, I think we can assume the brand and its agency had normal marketing intentions here – target moms who may seek relief for aches and pains experienced during the course of their busy days. It is reasonable to expect marketers for an over-the-counter drug – and many products and services for that matter – to view moms as an attractive addressable audience. They’re the ones who keep life glued together after all. Posting a video on the Motrin Web site (since taken down; YouTube video below) also seems like a generally sound move. Forrester’s Social Technographics suggest – and just about anyone under the sun will tell you – that Internet video is hot these days.

The Bad

From what I absorbed yesterday between football games, Motrin basically just dropped the ball during elementary campaign play running. Bad writing via ill-chosen words, the wrong happy-go-lucky tone in their commentary and, more specifically, poor planning and execution. All that was needed to avoid today’s headache was some good coaching and clock management. Unfortunately, a desire for graphic blandishment (i.e. the fast-paced text in the ad) and cool copy, without enough review and editing, appears to have contributed to the backlash.

The Ugly

Life 101: don’t piss off moms. Although Motrin may have intended to sincerely connect with moms, it fumbled big time with phrases like: “wearing your baby seems to be in fashion; in theory it’s a great idea; it’s supposedly a real bonding experience; these ‘things’ put a ton of strain on your back; it’s a good kind of pain – it’s for my kid; it totally makes me look like an official mom; and, if I look tired and crazy you know why.”

Ugh, these don’t work. How do you miss that in reviews and evals? And even though the attempt to connect with moms in a creative way may have had some good intentions buried within, perception is reality. Fuming mad moms on blogs, Twitter, and elsewhere have spoken.

Regarding recovery, this can be a learning experience for Motrin and online marketers in general. Motrin can recover by admitting their miscues and even addressing this topic gently in the future when it no doubt comes up in case study context. In fact, the healing has started. McNeil Consumer Healthcare’s VP of Marketing, responsible for the Motrin brand, sent a letter yesterday, November 16^th, to select bloggers. (Here it is as posted on Amy Gates’ blog.) This time around the message seems well crafted, carefully reviewed, and sincere with Kathy Widmer relating that she herself is a mother of three.

Back To Good

… and here’s where it all can end. More observation is plentiful if you want it. Google “Motrin” or use Twitter Search to find #motrinmoms. Some of my favorite to-the-point analysis of Motrin’s Moment, by the way, comes from Pistachio’s blog.

Anyway, it’s Monday and time to return to normal. For my wife and kids at least, that means learning shapes and colors, chopping up turkey dogs into itty bitty pieces, activities with the mom’s group, wiping runny noses, and those sorts of things. There’s real work and child rearing to be done. (Thanks to my wife and all Moms for helping keep our lives in gear. Have a good one!)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mztymu72l7c]

Today my article “Birds On A Wire: PR In The Twitterverse” was published in Tactics, a Public Relations Society of America publication. The article is online and also appears in the October print edition mailed to PRSA members and subscribers.

My thanks to John Elsasser, Tactics Editor In Chief, for the opportunity to write this piece, and the following friends and social media experts who appear in the article: Paul Greenberg, Scott Nelson, Brent Leary, Laura Fitton and Aly Saxe.

My sidebar article “Social media skills – They got’em, and You can get’em!” also references some social media and communications experts that many people follow on Twitter including Chris Brogan, Charlene Li, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, and Brandon Zeuner – my personal pick-to-click regarding someone you should be following on Twitter.

Also, special thanks to Chris Brogan for introducing me to Laura Fitton. As he suggested, Laura contributed a great amount of insight – more than I could include in the piece.

Finally, thanks to a couple of my local Arizona faves, Aly Saxe and Brandon Zeuner. Aly provided some examples of practical PR applications for Twitter in the article, and Brandon has been a social media influencer ever since I started using Twitter and learning immensely from it.

Link to the article and sidebar: http://www.prsa.org/supportfiles/news/viewNews.cfm?pNewsID=842347614

I enjoyed following the presidential debate last Friday night… on Twitter. Although the TV was on, it was Twitter that held my attention with a kind of town hall-ish feel.

Thousands of people with at least some interest in McCain or Obama were tweeting their opinions in bursts of 140 characters or less, which generally follows Twitter’s “what are you doing?” premise. The pace of tweets appearing on Twitter’s Election 2008 ‘channel’ was such that you could barely read messages on screen before they scrolled by to make room for others.

This got me thinking about the utility of Twitter in mass appeal scenarios. On Friday, for me, it was mostly a way of polling people’s immediate thoughts. That’s very helpful. But think of the extended impact a more formal use of Twitter with, dare I say, some light moderation could provide.

What if Tom Brokaw chose a couple intelligent questions from Twitter to ask candidates during the second presidential debate in Nashville on October 7th? It is scheduled to follow a town hall format. I’m sure the rules are strict, and they have already been agreed upon by both parties. Perhaps he could get a pulse from twitterers about what they would like answered prior to the debate, if he has that latitude and interest.

A good example of doing just that is CNN’s Rick Sanchez who has recently used Twitter to monitor and ask for viewers’ opinions before doing his broadcasts. Social media expert Brent Leary recently detailed and analyzed this in one of his posts. It’s a good read if you have another minute.

There were some light-hearted moments during Friday’s Twitter debate viewing too. Someone sent a message to @jimlehrer essentially saying “Jim, stop letting McCain run over his allotted response time!” I took this to be intended as comical, although this person could have just as easily meant it. Regardless, monitoring and respecting the ‘vibe’ as a groundswell of tweets occur is a good practice. You can obtain priceless feedback about the topic at hand. (Note: searching on Twitter, it appears the name @jimlehrer is registered but with no updates. Lehrer, or one of his associates, does appear to post updates via @NewsHour.)

I also noticed the “national drinking game” being promoted on many Twitter threads. The rules stated that every time McCain said “my friends” or Obama said “change” you were supposed to take a drink. I didn’t notice either candidate using their buzzwords much though. Perhaps their campaigns did some monitoring of their own and advised each to tone it down, and avoid the embarrassment of elevating the joke.

Whether for amusement or advancing targeted objectives, it is clear that Twitter and other social tools similar to it are gaining critical mass and can help a candidate or organization better convey its message with a sense of immediacy.

To this final point, each campaign is doing a fair job of formally embracing social media. Mashable recently posted a thorough list of each candidate’s various sites and community pages. Take a look and weigh in.