Broken News

Hey, big radio companies! You want to seize on an opportunity, right? I got one for you right here.

News.

Wait, come back. I know, it costs money and all that. There are lots of places to get news. Facebook is monopolizing news. Got it. But hear me out.

You might have seen that Associated Press article last week about how a vast number of local newspapers have folded in the last 15 years -- over 1,400 cities have lost papers in the last 15 years -- and it's left "news deserts" in its wake. (Didn't read it? Here it is.) The takeaway you might get from the article is that newspapers are even deader than you thought they were. But that's not the only thing radio should note.

The effect of the withering of print is that there are vast areas of the U.S. (and other countries, for that matter) that are going without effective local news coverage. Web sites have not figured out the financial aspects of local coverage, either; you can find plenty of articles about the monetization woes of local news sites, and the few that have gained traction have done so as public trusts, endowed by civic-minded foundations. And if you're thinking, well, that's just small-town America, it is assuredly not just the "flyover" or rural territories. The City Hall reporter contingent in big cities has shrunk as well. TV news doesn't cover all local issues because it's not what they do best; Their wheelhouse is feature stories that can be teased tabloid-style to get people to watch ("Are your shoes KILLING YOU? Plus, a penguin playing baseball, and a famous actor, ARRESTED -- Action News, tonight at 11").

That leaves local government unchecked. That leaves important stories unreported. That is not a good situation. But that is also an opportunity.

Radio, for all its economic woes, can still monetize its content better than most. Programmatic hasn't eliminated all local sales people. There's still advertising revenue far greater than digital competition at this stage. The infrastructure remains, even if the industry has done all it can to destroy its own news operations. It would be an investment to restore and expand news operations, but....

But there is a massive opportunity. Social media isn't doing it. Newspapers are either dying or at the stage where private equity firms have strip-mined them into irrelevancy. Television is, for the reason mentioned above, not in that game. But people want and need information about their localities, and Nextdoor is not the answer. Or maybe you want to be the authority people cite on Nextdoor about local issues. Actually, you want to be that authority for everyone, whether they post your reporting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, wherever. There's a particular vacuum for local news that's getting more acute, and radio could fill that gap.

I know, there are stations out there doing just that. They tend to be successful stations, which should tell you something. I also know that news is a particularly expensive line item that management sees as eminently cuttable. I know that some of the big station operators have essentially abdicated their news responsibility by regionalizing their news so that there are really no local reporters in many markets. I know that I've had multiple major market news directors tell me how they have to cover large areas and an incessant stream of stories with far too few bodies. I know. It is not cheap, and it is not easy.

It is, however, an opportunity. In fact, it might just be that radio is alone among the media in being able to fill the news gap and monetize it on multiple platforms -- on the air, online, in podcasts, even video. You zig when others are zagging. You provide a service people find valuable and even critical to the functioning of our society when others won't or can't. You own a position that you can own easier and better than anyone else.

Seems to make sense. I wonder if radio will seize this day.

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I'm too tired to come up with a clever transition into the plug gor Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, so just go there to get all the stuff you need to talk about on the radio. Find it for free by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

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I'm also too tired to come up with a clever way to end this thing today. Three conventions in a little over a month will do that, even if they're all in your home town. Speaking of which, the third is coming up in two weeks, the Worldwide Radio Summit, and I'm afraid that there's not much on the agenda for spoken word radio, but there's plenty about radio in general and if you have a foot in the music radio world, you'll find a lot of networking opportunities there. It's March 27-29 at a very cool location in Burbank, The Castaway, and you can find out more and register here.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
www.facebook.com/pmsimon
Twitter @pmsimon
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