Author Archive for David Henderson

Over years of consulting on strategic marketing communications issues, I have observed that one of the core reasons that organizations, business and governments suffer financial and other hardships and sometimes fail is because of self-inflicted damage. Losing market share or shareholder value or any other benchmark of success, especially revenue, is rarely as a result of a competitor taking it away but rather an organization giving it away through unwise decisions and policies. There is the case today than the mainstream news business. A couple of examples that forecast the future, I believe, for specific news organizations:

1. The Washington Post online.  If this online news organization ever had a strategic compass to chart a place in the competitive online world it was lost long ago or most likely never existed.  Today, The Washington Post online does not reflect its core market and community of the nation’s capital, and its audience numbers show the decline, as measured by Alexa.com. The newspaper’s site design has not changed much in the last six years.  Even the online news site of WTOP, a local radio station in the Washington, D.C. area, has significantly great audience than the Post.
2. MSNBC.  This cable news operation (when it is not airing infomercials for cleaning supplies and exercise gadgets) once was outstanding, particularly in its coverage of Katrina and the hurricane’s damage in 2005.  But that was then.  Today, MSNBC shows nine year old video of TV entertainment reporter Bill O’Reilly going obscene on camera and ignores covering world news, such as the earthquake in China or cyclone disaster in Burma.  For MSNBC, it’s all about talking about how great their own campaign coverage has been … at a time when many viewers just want the news.
3. CBS 60 Minutes.  Once the premier television news program, 60 Minutes is relegated - due to budget cutbacks - mostly to doing interviews with personality authors about their news books.

As the digital revolution has evolved online, blogs are taking more of a role to express freedom of thought and voice. For example, human rights organizations occasionally support independent bloggers who target messages to people living under governments that restrict free flow of information and news. There’s one big problem, however. The ordinary people in many of those countries with Internet access will never see a blog. Here’s why –

Many bloggers use free Blogspot blogs, and oppressive governments in countries such as China, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and India … and others … have the ability to block all access within those countries to any Blogspot blog … and they do. As a matter of fact, any blog with a URL such as … yourname.blogspot.com or yourname.typepad.com … cannot be accessed by people in those countries. When governments have that power of censorship, they negate any attempts to influence … whether the general public or the government itself.

There is a solution … register a specific domain name or URL through a service such as GoDaddy.com and import the free Blogspot or Typepad into a standalone Wordpress site. In that way, the site cannot be blocked and is available for people to see around the world, provided they have access to the Internet.

“Today’s news media is clueless and scared.”  A friend who was a 30 year veteran of the newspaper business recently made that candid statement about today’s condition of the news media.  And, you know what?  Even though his statement uses a pretty broad brush, I think he’s mostly correct.

Let me provide an example:  Have you heard any reporter challenge either McCain or Clinton to explain how they would lift the tax on gasoline this summer?  Heck, Congress takes a year just to clip its fingernails.  There’s not much happening on Capital Hill except more funding of the war, and there’s certainly no one up there wishing to ruffle feathers with the oil companies out of fear of losing big bucks when the next election rolls around.  But, have you heard just one reporter ask either candidate … how?!

Here’s why the reporters are timid:  (1) With all the cutbacks in the news business, they are scared of losing their jobs or (2) they are afraid they’ll get kicked off the glamor assignment of riding on the campaign bus or (3) it hasn’t occurred to them that it’s okay to ask any intelligent questions.  

The once-admirable trade of being a news reporter … a journalist … has today become dominated by a flash and trash mob, and don’t rock the boat.  TV news is just a dummied-down form of show biz … except for the NewsHour on PBS.  Newspapers have cut newsroom staffs to the point where those left are terrified of losing their jobs.

So, the politicians with all their big ideas mostly get a free ride.  Yeah, I think my friend was right.

As I was pumping regular gasoline into my Volvo today that cost $3.65 a gallon - the highest amount I have ever paid - I thought about a news story I had just heard: While Exxon Mobil earned $11 billion during the first quarter of 2008, buoyed by soaring crude oil prices, some oil industry analysts voiced disappointment that the profits were not higher.

The oil giant’s profits rose 17 percent against the same period last year, and some greedy ba***rd was “disappointed!” Yet … we consumer pay it, and we keep our voices muted.

Then I thought about friends who are communications executives at Exxon Mobil and what an easy job they have of spin control over the profit story because there’s not a damn thing the American consumers are doing about it, except buying more SUVs.

I urge you to check out BlogStrategies.net.

So many acquaintances have asked me to assist with developing and launching blogs that I have taken my show online at BlogStrategies.net: step-by-step instructions to create a self-hosted or independent blog that can be customized for a business, online newsroom, organization, or individual. The outside services I suggest are the same ones I use. And if you don’t have the time or inclination to launch a blog, I’ll do it for you at a nominal fee and in less than 24 hours. It’s become a passionate hobby.

By the way, “self-hosted” means a Wordpress blog that is using a professional Web hosting company rather than a free service over which you have no control.

My gosh … did Elizabeth Edwards get it precisely right about the trivial and clueless nature of today’s mainstream news media in her call-it-like-it-is OpEd in The New York Times.

“If voters want a vibrant, vigorous press, apparently we will have to demand it,” she writes, and then, she challenges all of us to raise our voices of complaint. Good for her. More people need to speak out over the sorry state of the media.