Creating accurate media lists are a crucial part of any public relations professional’s job. They ensure your story ideas and press releases go to the right person at the right outlet as you work to secure news coverage that can translate into increased revenue, brand awareness, and support for your clients.
With the constant changes to the news landscape, making media lists can feel like a trek through an arid desert – a news desert – that keeps expanding with each outlet that closes or is bought by a media company or hedge fund that prides itself on saving money by “being efficient” (aka cutting jobs). The Wicked Local staff page lists seven people where there used to be dozens. Old local friends like the Brookline Tab and Marblehead Reporter are no more.
According to a study done by my alma mater Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism more than 360 newspapers closed in the past three years and more than a quarter of the country’s newspapers has disappeared since 2005. An estimated 70 million people live in true news deserts, places that lack reliable local news coverage.
As both a PR professional and an avid sports fan, I was disheartened when the New York Times eliminated their entire sports department and will be getting coverage from another outlet they acquired, the Athletic. Although the 35 reporters and editors will be reallocated, in sports, relationships with players built over time are essential and readers have intense love/hate relationships with the reporters who cover their favorite teams.
However, more than one oasis has emerged to provide news sustenance.
Nonprofit organizations and socially responsible companies are swooping in to rescue papers before they can be gobbled up and downsized. The nonprofit National Trust for Local News bought the Portland Press Herald and more than 20 other daily and weekly newspapers in Maine. They include the Sun Journal in Lewiston, the Kennebec Journal in the state capital of Augusta and the Times Record in Brunswick. The trust was founded in 2021 to provide sustainability for local news sources, starting with two dozen community newspapers in Denver. The owners of CherryRoad Technologies formed CherryRoad Media which owns and operates newspapers in 17 states including Massachusetts outlets The Leominster Champion, the Grafton News and the Clinton Item. As someone who pitches stories in Central Massachusetts and Maine, these developments are as welcome as a long drink of cool water during a sweaty hike.
New outlets are being created. Brookline.News is an independent nonprofit news organization formed to cover that Massachusetts community as part of the Institute for Nonprofit News, a network of more than four hundred nonprofit news outlets. The Marblehead Current and Marblehead Beacon have emerged from the ashes of the Marblehead Reporter.
News collaboratives are forming. In June of 2021, 10 of the Black owned newspapers and media companies in the National Newspaper Publishers Association teamed up to form Word in Black to, as they put it, amplify and elevate the voice of Black America not only locally but nationally. By working together and sharing content, they make each other stronger.
These innovative ideas are no mirage. They are information lifelines to inform citizens about what is happening where they live, and, from a personal perspective, they give PR professionals additional outlets to which we can pitch our clients’ stories.
Header image source: UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
