Editor’s note: CDN business contributor Frank Catalano recently participated in a Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce program about strategies for effective public communication by business owners. Here’s a summary of his message and strategies.
What’s the role of a business journalist — for a business?
I understand the business journalist’s role for the reader since I began writing for Cascadia Daily News nearly three years ago: to let you know what a particular company is doing and how you might find it interesting, useful, or both. Stuff like openings and closings. An in-depth profile with an I-didn’t-know-that “aha” moment. An explanation of a complicated economic topic, such as tariffs, commercial real estate vacancies or median home price changes, putting the latest developments in a larger context.
But why should a business that’s approached for a story agree to talk with me?
A need to educate
It’s a good question, and one I proposed to address in a late January discussion hosted by the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce.
As recently as two decades ago, just before modern social media and smartphones saturated our daily lives (Facebook became available to the public in late 2006, and the first iPhone launched a year later), the answer was easier. Advertising costs money. Press coverage was free. Better to reach an audience through the news media, if a business could get their attention.
Now, though, the outreach options are less binary and more of a continuum. Thanks largely to the internet and the prevalence of social media, businesses don’t need to pay to increase their visibility and maintain control over their message. If they do want to spend cash, a broader, squishier range of options exist — from pay-for-placement publications to friendly, sponsored online “influencers” — that can help get the word out. These outlets may also look a lot like journalism to the audience, even if that’s frequently a facade.
Getting a business to talk with a journalist these days might not only take convincing, it could take educating.
Both are what I had in mind that January morning, in front of about 40 in-person and remote attendees of the Bellingham Chamber program, “How to Engage with Local Media — from Business Reporting to Self-Publishing.”
What a business journalist is
It helped to start with a definition. A journalist is someone who reports news of interest to their audience. Whom the business doesn’t pay. And who incorporates what the business does or says into their own story, one the journalist researches and develops.
Flags that a business isn’t dealing with a journalist? The outlet offers to let the business review or edit the story before it appears (a good journalist pays attention, takes detailed notes and follows up to verify fuzzy facts but never turns the business into the story’s author). They ask the business to pay a fee (this can be for “expenses,” in the case of purely promotional outlets that might otherwise look like journalism). They won’t tell the business what the story they’re working on is (stories can change as facts roll in, but all stories start with the reporter having some idea of what angle is worth pursuing).
Put another way: follow the money. If the business is paying anything for the story, it’s not journalism.
Now, does that mean it’s a mistake for a business to talk with a promotional influencer, a pay-for-play outlet, or a non-journalist who agrees to share the news for free?
No. It’s not a mistake if the outlet is being upfront about what they’re offering (and don’t misleadingly claim to be a journalist). If the outlet reaches a business’ desired audience and it’s a fit, it may be worth doing a deal. In a previous life, I was a tech industry company chief marketing officer — we evaluated every option and worked with both reporters and promoters. But I quickly shut down anyone who misrepresented what they were doing. Local businesses should do the same.
Benefits of engaging journalists
So why talk with a business journalist like me, if alternatives that are more under the control of the company have grown?
Simply, to reach audiences that a business can’t already reach directly: people who aren’t aware of a business, or who don’t follow it closely. Engaging can give a business a chance to be part of a bigger story, from trend pieces about industry developments to roundups of what similar companies may be doing. And, perhaps, provide the opportunity to create or solidify a company’s reputation as an expert in their field.
Journalists are not there to promote a business, but that can be a secondary halo effect depending on the news.
Good reasons exist to not engage with a journalist, too. Most basically — and it pains me to say this — if a business doesn’t trust or respect that individual journalist’s reporting because, for example, facts were routinely wrong in earlier stories, or quotes were taken out of context, and nothing was corrected. (We journalists are human. We make mistakes. But we also have a responsibility to correct errors to maintain credibility with our audience.)
A second good reason is that a business isn’t ready to talk about a subject when a journalist calls. The other speaker at the Bellingham Chamber event, Patti Goethals Rowlson of Bellingham PR & Communications, emphasized the importance of businesses learning how to craft a message and understand its news value, especially when they are the ones doing the outreach to journalists and not only responding to reporters’ inquiries. And then decide whether they want to pitch news outlets, pay for distribution or somehow self-publish the news, such as on websites, blogs or email newsletters.
Not a one-off
Yet I’d like to believe that the relationship isn’t always a single instance of the business talking to me or me to the business about a discrete development. It’s an ongoing conversation.
The benefit to you, the reader, of this exchange is clear. I’m not paid by the business so I don’t represent the business. I work to verify claims a business might make. I tamp down hype and puffery. I endeavor to provide context. You ideally wind up (again) with new information that’s either useful, interesting or both.
Businesses benefit as well. They reach a larger, or newer, audience than they can on their own. One they didn’t pay to reach. But they have to give up control to get that reach.
Even though the continuum between traditional journalism at one end and straight advertising on the other is more crowded and confusing than it was in the pre-social media, pre-smartphone era two decades ago, no one benefits if the distinctions aren’t upfront and clear. None of the more recent or hybrid options are inherently bad. They are just different.
But every company, and every reader, should understand the role of the business journalist in the current media environment. That’s why I was pleased to take part in the Bellingham Chamber’s educational program. And it’s also why, of course, businesses should talk to me.
Frank Catalano writes about business and related topics for CDN; reach him at frankcatalano@cascadiadaily.com.
