Chris Lewis on media & PR

US press shows continued circulation fall

A Wikinews update from May this year reports that US newspaper circulations continue to decline. The only winners appear to have been USA Today and the NYT. The former, with figures of 2.2m, is still some way short of the biggest selling UK title, The Sun, with 3.3m. Furthermore, the total circulation of the top ten US titles (some 5.4m) is dwarfed by the equivalent top ten UK figures (approx 11.5m). The US newspaper business does have a long tail with bigger circulations in many regionals but if you consider the relative populations of 247m versus 57m, it’s still clear the Brits have an extraordinary affection for their daily papers.

SF/Bay Area office space shows tech recession may be over

I’m working with the company’s team in San Francisco currently to establish the new US HQ and it’s clear the city is finally moving again after the deepest and longest recession ever in the tech industry. Rents are escalating again and the largest landlords in the city are now offering time-specific deals which increase after a few weeks.

The PR business here has consolidated recently with NFC acquiring Outcast and Applied, but it seems busier than at any point for some time. For more detail on this see my colleague Morgan McLintic’s excellent blog on the specifics. This, allied with Nasdaq holding its position convincingly above the 2000 mark, suggests that the industry might finally be recovering. Let’s hope so.

Carrot, not stick

Seems LEWIS has come in yet again for more stick from its old friend Spin Bunny.
Come on Thumper, what's your problem? Is it the fact that the company has grown from startup to 200 staff in 16 wholly-owned offices globally in ten years? Or that it's been done with no debt (not even an overdraft) and no redundancies? What do we have to do to get a carrot, Flopsy? 

Who dares diss the blogosphere?

Certainly not Jack Schofield of UK's Guardian Unlimited. He carefully sidesteps confrontation with the brotherhood by simply identifying the madman who wants to kick off with the entire new world. This is a man that says citizen journalism is dead. For reference, this is Vincent Maher. So you don't have to read it, he says blogging is dead, because most of it is crap. It's written by mendacious, opinionated, irresponsible, amateurs, whose economic isolation is tantamount to a sort of self-declared UDI with other vested participants. Yep. He's right about that. But it isn't dead. Not even ill. Just because it isn't quality or reliable, it doesn't mean it won't be massive. This is for two reasons. Firstly, journalism has never been about the truth (whatever that is). It's about so many things - entertainment, belonging, hypocrisy, even just movement. Most of the world's stockmarkets get paid when shares trade. Shares trade when values change. Values change when perceptions change. Perceptions change when someone learns something they believe to be different and true. Moreover, many on a daily basis, people pay highly simply to have their views reinforced by the power of the masthead. Secondly, all that blogging does is to amplify and transmit what's already there. Sadly, that's an awful lot of people that would like to give you the benefit of their experience - many of them just hi-tech saloon-bar bores. The cost of entrance to having your opinion legitmised in HTML is negligible. We therefore know there's going to be a lot of it. Like it or not, this is an age of universal dissent where everyone irrespective, of knowledge, experience and character, is allowed to publicise their prejudice in the deluded hope that someone is listening. Naysayers might extend this to it's ultimate level, and arrive at an inch of separation between us all. "We" becoming millions of sorts  of "They". They might argue that you can't re-write the US Declaration of Independence on this basis. Democracy is based on majorities. Democracy is based on "We". But the diversity of citizen journalism can still accelerate with the mandate being retained or enhanced precisely because it is crap. People will still need representation, by those who can articulate or engineer the wishes of the citizen better. People will also still pay to read whatever version of history helps support their own petition for the resources needed for the future. Their chosen medium for this exchange may evolve but citizen journalism still wins under this model. Irrespective of their sophistication or enlightement, the more people talk to each other, the stronger democracy becomes. If citizen journalism is dead, then so is our democracy. I think even Maher must realise this. His comments therefore suggest a greater understanding of the use controversy in marketing, than of the phenomenon that is the blogosphere.