As many of you must have read, the latest in the ongoing saga that may or may not be the death of print is that the New York Times has threatened to shutter the Boston Globe if the paper's unions don't make $20 million in concessions.
Print may be dying, but journalism is not. Journalism is only changing. Nobody knows how it will look when it emerges from the current crisis, but a fundamental restructuring seems inevitable. That's why Campbell Consulting has been increasingly emphasizing new media outlets in our campaigns for various clients.
Just this weekend, I compiled a media list of influential beer bloggers in Texas who might be interested in writing about Deschutes Brewery's foray into the Texas market. A media list of bloggers looks very different from a traditional media list. Instead of circulation numbers, we find out the site's Page Rank and how many pageviews and unique visitors the blog receives each month. Often, we don't have contact information for the blogger. It may be difficult to even learn the web master's real name. But this is no less challenging than cold-pitching a reporter at a traditional media outlet. With blogs, there is always a way to get in touch with the authors. We may have to contact the blogger through Twitter or by posting a comment on the blog and waiting for a response.
Bloggers are often a pleasure to work with. Reporters at traditional media are often numb to pitches from publicists and may refuse to accept product samples because of ethics policies. (Side note: Never send product samples to USA TODAY. When I was there in 2006, reporters were not allowed to take home or write about any of the zillions of unsolicited freebies that get sent to them. The policy meant even the unpaid interns were barred from taking anything -- the stuff was donated to charity at the end of the year.) In contrast, we connected with a tea blogger who was thrilled to get review samples of Oregon Chai, Stacia wrote me a note: "They are so NICE! Unlike traditional media." That connection resulted in three very kind reviews on a site that got more than 770,000 page views in March.
The moral is, cultivating relationships with bloggers is just as important as cultivating relationships with traditional reporters.
-Adrianne (@msfener)
