Don’t Knock those Media Dinosaurs
By Dan Fleshler

Our clients—and people who want free advice (who, alas, are far more numerous than clients!)—keep asking if they should create their own blogs in order to influence opinion or foster brand awareness. They want to know if they should consider getting their messages out via podcasts or viral e-mail. They ask whether they should hire people to lurk in chat rooms or internet “communities” so they can monitor or influence digital conversations.

It often makes sense to use the latest digital or wireless communications channels. But what is interesting to me is that in this quest for the new and the hip, people sometimes overlook one of the most effective mechanisms to create awareness: a news article or an opinion piece in a printed newspaper or magazine.

But aren’t print media becoming “dinosaurs?” Aren’t they losing more readers every day? Isn’t the internet the medium of first choice for an increasing number of people who want information, including CEOs, politicians, activists, Wall Street analysts and consumers? 

Yes. But, paradoxically,  sometimes the easiest, most efficient and most effective way to take advantage of the internet is to first place an article in the print media.

To understand why, it’s important to fathom some emerging trends in Web-based communications. The internet, we were told, would revolutionize communications by making it possible for ordinary people to express their opinions. To some extent, that is happening. There are 27 million blogs in the world, at last count. However, at the same time, there is a kind of class system forming in the blogosphere, which is dominated by a tiny cadre of  influential digerati.

As noted in an instructive story by Clive Thomson in New York magazine (“The Blog Establishment,” 2/20/2006) “at the very top, there are a small number of A-list blogs that have thousands of sites with inbound links pointing towards them, driving huge amounts of traffic. Everyone else –the B-list and C-list blogs—has very few links and thus a much smaller readership.”  

Now, let’s say you are interested in influencing public opinion on Topic A. Whether Topic A is the future of the European Union, food additives or Jessica Simpson, chances are that some portion of the World Wide Web is very interested in it and follows it closely.  And chances are there will be a very small, select group of A-list blogs and other web sites that are visited regularly by opinion leaders and other key stakeholders.

So, how can you get attention from the people who control the A-list?  Every day, they are sifting through an enormous amount of information on the European Union, food additives or Jessica Simpson  before deciding what to say and whom to quote. They are not only checking out the daily news and what others on the Web are saying about Topic A;  increasingly, they are being “pitched” by p.r. firms trying to call attention to clients and causes.

Enter the “old fashioned” print media. Amidst all that clutter and noise, a news article or an op-ed in a respectable printed newspaper or magazine will  have instant credibility to the A-list bloggers. It will stand out from the crowd. If it is important enough for a newspaper editor to think it is worth publishing, the most influential bloggers and other Web denizens who follow Topic A will read it very carefully. And if they find it sufficiently compelling, your article will be excerpted or will appear in full on many web sites.  It will be the topic of the moment, a source of much digital buzz.  And it will reach an audience that is exponentially larger than the subscription base of the newspaper or magazine where it first appeared.

Let me give you an example.  One of our clients, Gary Heiman, the CEO of Standard Textile Co., Inc. opposed quotas on textiles from China, a topic which was very much in the news in 2004 and much of 2005. We helped him to place an op-ed in the Washington Post on April 8, 2005.

Within a matter of days, the piece was discussed and (usually) praised on a host of individual blogs and other web sites focusing on trade issues,  American manufacturing and other topics. One could find it published or commented on by the National Association of Manufacturers, Tom Paine, The Athena Alliance (which focuses on innovations in basic industry), the Future of Freedom Foundation, Farm Policy.com, Israel Policy Forum and many others I, for one, have never heard of.  It was also picked up or written about in the printed versions and web sites of The New Republic, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the New Hampshire Union-Leader, newspapers in Pakistan, the Mariana Islands, China and elsewhere.

Of course, the Washington Post is a major shaper of public opinion and it is, to put it mildly, very hard to get an op-ed placed there. But if it is intriguing enough, a piece published in a regional newspaper or a daily in a small city –such as The Winston-Salem Journal or The Oregonian—also will get noticed by the A-list bloggers. That is especially true if your communications staff makes sure to send it to them!

All of this shows the power and the reach of the print media because of—not in spite of—the digital media. As long as they play an informal, de facto role as gatekeepers or screeners of information for the World Wide Web, print media outlets will not only stick around; they will be vitally important to any person or organization with a message to convey or a product to sell.