Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-nn8mf-148c78f

The media landscape is constantly changing, making it harder on journalists. Naturally this affects how PR pros do our jobs. In this episode we talk all about it, including some points from recent survey results from Cision and MuckRack.
 
Transcript
 
Michelle Kane (00:03):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my ever steady co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen. It's another episode. Here we are.
Karen Swim, APR (00:20):
Hello Michelle. We are here. We are steady eddies. What's the female version of that? Is it steady? I don't know.
Michelle Kane (00:35):
I'm sure we can think of something
Karen Swim, APR (00:37):
For sure.
Michelle Kane (00:39):
We're creative like that.
Karen Swim, APR (00:41):
I'm so happy to be here. The older you get, the more you celebrate every single day that you are waking up and jumping out of bed.
Michelle Kane (00:52):
That's a good motivator. I will say it's true. It is true. I'm going to totally bobble this point because I forget the meme. It was something, oh, I think it was a Marcus Aurelius quote actually. Something about something to look forward to each day - for an ancient dude, he has some timely advice and I thought, yeah, I think I shared it with my thought of, yeah. “Okay. I'll tell myself this on Monday morning.”
Karen Swim, APR (01:19):
We're live, we're here and we're doing something that we love. We love this podcast. We love getting together and chatting. That's true. And just inviting a few of our friends to listen in with us.
Michelle Kane (01:32):
Yes. So we hope you are ready Today we are spurred on by a couple of reports from Cision and MuckRack talking about the state of journalism today, which as we all know, if you're listening, you may have already made a face, but hopefully we're just going to talk about this a little bit and try and bring out some of the brighter points to keep our tools sharpened.
Karen Swim, APR (02:02):
And I think as both of these reports mentioned, the more that we understand the challenges that journalists are facing, the more that we understand how to be problem solvers for them because obviously for communications professionals, journalists are definitely one of our audiences. And so it's important to learn how we can be more collaborative and more helpful. And there are a couple points that really stood out for me that are troubling.
Michelle Kane (02:32):
All right. We'll do the bad news first. Hit me with the first point.
Karen Swim, APR (02:37):
So the bad news is these studies show that there is less trust in CEOs as credible sources.
Michelle Kane (02:50):
Yeah, that one stood out for me as well.
Karen Swim, APR (02:53):
And aligned with that, this makes sense that one of the biggest challenges for that, journalists said, that they've experienced in the last 12 months, and this is from I think the Cision study, is that their challenge is maintaining credibility as a trusted news source. So you have them battling against misinformation, this label of fake news, combating those accusations and maintaining credibility and then not trusting that we are helping with that at all. So concerning,
Michelle Kane (03:37):
And I could totally see why. I mean, there are the nefarious sorts out there who are all too happy to use credible news organizations to spread their misinformation and disinformation. And that's not to say that journalists don't fact check. Of course they do. But yeah, it's a really tenuous spot, which puts us the PR pros in a really difficult situation because,
Karen Swim, APR (04:04):
And I hate to say this because I know that the majority of our audience, there are some that are coming up in the profession and emerging. The majority of our audience knows this, but I think it's always good to remind ourselves too, because in the heat of the moment when we deal with a lot of things that journalists do not realize, there is pressure from clients, there are the demands that they don't see. There are the requests that we push back on. There are things that we educate about, but I think that it is critical today to educate our clients thoroughly about the role that the media actually does play. The media is not part of your marketing team, and unfortunately, if you don't have something that can advance a story forward, that adds value, that presents something that the reporters' readers will be interested in hearing, you're going to have a harder time getting coverage in credible publications. So to be credible, don't see this as an opportunity to push forward the name of your company.
I understand the struggle is real and I have beautiful clients, wonderful clients as we all do, but we all know that sometimes it's really hard for companies to get out of their own way. You ask them a question and they immediate