Gregory Galant PRAXIS 2019

Editor's Notes

• #2: As newsrooms shrink, PR pros have increasing difficulty in helping reporters cut through the massive amount of pitches they receive daily and grab their attention. If you can understand journalists’ habits and preferences, you can transform how you contact them and how they look at you—and dramatically increase your media placements. This is especially true on social media. Journalists look for news, scoops and sources on social media 24/7. In this session, Muck Rack’s COO Natan Edelsburg will go through insights from Muck Rack’s annual journalist survey to show you how social media best practices can improve your media relations strategy.
• #3: Muck Rack is a PR platform that enables communications teams to effectively find the right journalists for their stories, send customized pitches, collaborate as a team, and quantify their impact. Forward-thinking brands and agencies trust Muck Rack as an essential component of their communications strategies.
• #6: India is a large and complex market, and different parts of the population use news in different ways. Looking specifically at English-language internet users, one recent study documented how many more Indians identify social media as their main way of accessing news online (24%) than say they go direct to the websites or apps of news media (just 18%) (Aneez et al. 2019). As in many other markets in the Global South, both Facebook and Twitter are widely used by internet users to access news, far more than in the US, UK or most other European countries (see Figure 1). 18% of English-language internet users in India name Twitter as a source of news, and 52% name Facebook (Aneez et al. 2019).
• #7: India is a large and complex market, and different parts of the population use news in different ways. Looking specifically at English-language internet users, one recent study documented how many more Indians identify social media as their main way of accessing news online (24%) than say they go direct to the websites or apps of news media (just 18%) (Aneez et al. 2019). As in many other markets in the Global South, both Facebook and Twitter are widely used by internet users to access news, far more than in the US, UK or most other European countries (see Figure 1). 18% of English-language internet users in India name Twitter as a source of news, and 52% name Facebook (Aneez et al. 2019).
• #10: India is a large and complex market, and different parts of the population use news in different ways. Looking specifically at English-language internet users, one recent study documented how many more Indians identify social media as their main way of accessing news online (24%) than say they go direct to the websites or apps of news media (just 18%) (Aneez et al. 2019). As in many other markets in the Global South, both Facebook and Twitter are widely used by internet users to access news, far more than in the US, UK or most other European countries (see Figure 1). 18% of English-language internet users in India name Twitter as a source of news, and 52% name Facebook (Aneez et al. 2019).
• #11: As in past years, most journalists first get their news via online newspapers and magazines, followed by Twitter, and with a large drop off for all other sources. Other social media widely used for news (or where users are often exposed to news while using the platform for other purposes) include Instagram (26%), Twitter (18%), and Facebook’s Messenger (16%) – whereas, for example, Snapchat is much less widely used (5%
• #12: how they decide what to click on when navigating news on social media: 56% say they decide on the basis of who shared the post while for 63% the headline is very important and for 58% the brand.
• #13: Online news engagement among our English-language respondents is primarily driven by sharing. Reuters data suggest that Indian users share a little less on social media and email as compared to users in Brazil or Turkey, but they still share much more than users in the United States. Facebook, as the most widely used social media platform, and WhatsApp, as the most widely used messaging application, are central to how Indians engage with online news. Looking at Facebook, our respondents are particularly engaged, with 69% saying they’ve looked at or clicked on news, 54% have posted or shared news, and 41% have taken part in a group or private discussion about news. For WhatsApp, the numbers are similar, again, 60% have looked at or clicked on news, 46% posted or shared, and 39% taken part in group or private discussions. On both platforms, our Indian respondents are more engaged in group and private discussions than in most of the markets we compare them with here.
• #14: As a clear illustration of how digital and print still supplement rather than supplant each other for many users in India, a number of major English-language Indian newspapers have wider offline reach than online reach – a very different scenario from most other markets covered in the Digital News Report research, where newspapers tend to have far smaller offline reach than online reach.
• #15: To better understand disinformation problems in India, we asked our sample of English-language internet users about their exposure to and concern over different types of potentially problematic content that previous research for the Reuters Institute identified as examples of what the public associate with ‘fake news’ and disinformation.23 The categories include false news narrowly defined (‘Stories that are completely made up for political or commercial reasons’) but also hyperpartisan political content, whether from politicians, pundits, or publishers (‘Stories where facts are spun or twisted to push a particular agenda’), ‘poor journalism’ (stories that respondents consider marred by factual mistakes, inaccuracies, etc.), and more Levels of concern over all these categories are high in India, with the majority of our respondents expressing concern over hyperpartisan content (51%), false news (50%), and poor journalism (51%) – the percentage of respondents who in addition say that they themselves have come across such problematic content in the last week is generally lower, but still comparatively high, with around four in ten reporting exposure.
• #16: Given that many respondents agreed that India is plagued by a range of disinformation issues, it is important to understand who, if anyone, they believe should act to address these issues. We asked respondents whether they felt publishers, platform companies, and/or the government should do more to make it easier to separate what is real and what is fake on the internet, and reminded them that any action to decrease/reduce the amount of misinformation (in the media or in social media) is likely to have the consequence of reducing, to some extent, the range of real or legitimate news or opinion available. We find considerable appetite for action against disinformation and action from all different actors. Regardless of political affiliation, about two-thirds of our respondents felt that publishers, platforms, and/or the government should all do more to address disinformation problems. Compared to the United States, our India respondents express similar levels of appetite for action from publishers and platforms, and significantly greater appetite for government action.
• #18: As in past years, most journalists first get their news via online newspapers and magazines, followed by Twitter, and with a large drop off for all other sources.
• #19: As in past years, respondents cited Twitter as the most valuable to them as journalists (up from 70% last year), followed by Facebook (up from 22% last year). Linkedin ranked third with 5X the number of journalists from previous years (26%, up from 5% last year).
• #20: Once again, Facebook was the social network journalists said they plan to use least in the next year. That said, once again, Facebook-owned Instagram is the platform journalists plan to spend the most time on over the next year (other than Twitter).
• #21: As in 2018, respondents the top two things that make a story more shareable are an image and a subject connected to a trending story are the top to things
• #23: While PR pros use a variety of channels to pitch journalists in addition to such as phone (41%) and Twitter (29%), most journalists just want to receive 1:1 emails.
• #24: 65% of journalists prefer to be pitched before 11 AM.
• #25: Lack of personalization is once again the #1 reason why journalists reject otherwise relevant pitches, followed by bad timing
• #26: A third of journalists want to receive pitches under 3 sentences in length, with another 61% preferring under 3 paragraphs. Only 6% of journalists would like to receive pitches over 3 paragraphs.
• #27: 73% of journalists are OK with receiving a follow up to a pitch they didn’t initially respond to. Only 12% would prefer to not receive any type of follow up.
• #28: 76% of journalists are more likely to cover a story if offered an exclusive. 0% said they would be less likely.
• #30: The State of PR 2019, 93% of PR pros follow journalists on social media
• #31: -- Barbara has a good comment on this slide -- David to plug verizon
• #33: Thank you ProTip: Use the “Format Options” sidebar panel in Google Slides to adjust the pattern image’s brightness if it’s difficult to read the text over it.
• #34: Thank you ProTip: Use the “Format Options” sidebar panel in Google Slides to adjust the pattern image’s brightness if it’s difficult to read the text over it.