Archive for December, 2004

stumbled onto a good synopsis of media trends… pretty broad and misses most of the blogsphere. Here’s a quick summary:-

1) A growing number of news outlets are chasing relatively static or even shrinking audiences for news. (more to read…)

2) Much of the new investment in journalism today – much of the information revolution generally – is in disseminating the news, not in collecting it. Most sectors of the media are cutting back in the newsroom.

3) In many parts of the news media, we are increasingly getting the raw elements of news as the end product. This is particularly true in the newer, 24-hour media.

4) Journalistic standards now vary even inside a single news organization. Companies are trying to reassemble and deliver to advertisers a mass audience for news not in one place, but across different programs, products and platforms.

5) Without investing in building new audiences, the long-term outlook for many traditional news outlets seems problematic.

6) Convergence seems more inevitable and potentially less threatening to journalists than it may have seemed a few years ago.

7) The biggest question may not be technological but economic. While journalistically online appears to represent opportunity for old media rather than simply cannibalization, the bigger issue may be financial.

8) Those who would manipulate the press and public appear to be gaining leverage over the journalists who cover them. As more outlets compete for their information, it becomes a seller’s market for information.

To which we can add:-

9) The transformative economics of the Web drive micro publishing to new levels,

10) Participatory Journalism and the “evolving personalized information construct” change everything, and

11) Audiences, driven by mistrust of media, increasingly turn directly to the source for information, and; the source, empowered by the web has the capability to “print” in real time.

Gerry Griffin shot me this story (which features him) on the ineffectiveness of email as a communications tool. Gerry’s onto something here. Email isn’t the problem. Neither is it’s ubiquity or volume.

The problem is that the average employee takes little time to communicate effectively. Or, they haven’t developed the skills. Or, like it has for many, email has become like an arcade game in which we win by shooting the bastards down as they flood our inbox. What is said matters less than the quickness of the finger. This eventually develops into a deep form of gaming addiction in which we have to be ready 24×7 to fire!

Here are eight of my rules:-

1. Do your best to restrict email to a couple of windows every day. Don’t sit there hammering away. Your communications effectiveness generally declines the further you progress through the pile;

2. Use the title bar to headline you email. And make it entertaining;

3. Take the time to write short emails – you know how it goes – didn’t have time to write a short memo so here’s a long one;

4. Use rules to eliminate the junk and sort newsletters and the like into a reading folder;

5. A mentor of mine – Michele Moore of Dell – taught me the trick of the ‘tickler file’. I have one in my directory and drop into it things that can be dealt with later or that need to be chased;

6. Doing both 4) and 5) unclutters your inbox and gives you room to focus of communicating;

7. Never email in anger (do as I say, not as I do…);

8. Clearly articulate the decision or action you require in the first sentence.

Remember – you don’t do email. You communicate.

(btw – Gerry is an ace media trainer – best I’ve seen. I’ve learnt a ton from him.)