Recap of Our Predictions for 2017

We feel it’s not enough to issue predictions for the upcoming year. We also think it’s important to look at how we did with predictions for 2017.

A brief recap – though we predicted a shorter news cycle in 2017, we did not expect it to be this fast/short. Whether or not you’re a news junkie (and if you’re reading this, we assume you are), 2017 has been an unusually exhausting year. Even generally apolitical Jimmy Fallon envisioned Halloween nightmare that entailed being unable to escape the news cycle. There were a lot of stories this year that we (nor anyone else) predicted – a list of so many, mostly political (which we avoid), we are not going to list them here. We will say that we did not expect the solar eclipse to generate so much coverage.

One of the big themes late in the year was the pervasiveness of sexual harassment in Hollywood, politics, the media, and pretty much every field; we hope awareness of and concern regarding sexual harassment continues to be a public conversation that will make it difficult for those perpetrating the harassment to get away with it. We also hope that it will be easier for victims to be believed and supported.

Here are our assessment of our predictions for this year.

1. Fake news won’t fade in 2017. 

Unfortunately, we were right about this one. “Fake news” is too broad a term says Claire Wardle, Strategy and Research Director of First Draft News, a nonprofit research group housed at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University. Wardle told CNN’s Brian Stelter on his “Reliable Sources” podcast that there are “three different types of problems:

• Mis-information: “the kind of false information disseminated online by people who don't have a harmful intent.”
• Dis-information: “false information created and shared by people with harmful intent. False news reports around presidential candidates ahead of the 2016 election fall into this category, and so does their social media amplification from malicious accounts.”
• Mal-information: “the sharing of ‘genuine’ information with the intent to cause harm. That includes some types of leaks, harassment and hate speech online.”

Keep in mind: the general definition of “fake news” tends to be news the speaker doesn’t agree with – it’s actual truth, notwithstanding.

We think Wardle’s definitions are useful to understand there are flavors of fake. But we don’t think the distinctions will become mainstream because currently there isn’t much consensus on facts (or “facts”), with one person’s dis-information (harmful intent) being someone else’s mis-information (false information passed along with non-harmful intent).

Meanwhile, we said it will be difficult for social media sites to combat the spread of fake news, especially because they profit from fake news.

Grade: A+.

2. Big Social will evolve in 2017, but not necessarily in a good way. 

Unfortunately, we were right about this, too. We said, Twitter’s future “is very much in doubt,” and that continues to be true. We said that Facebook is facing problems about fake news, and that was proven true in November’s Congressional hearings. But we left out Google – oops. We said, “all of this turmoil will benefit Snapchat, which is already is favored by the millennials,” and Instagram, and we think that’s right – butt we overstated things when we predicted that SnapChat will be the dominant social media platform by 2018. We also predicted “LinkedIn will thrive as long as it remains (as we think it will) apolitical,” and that’s been true.

Grade: B+

3. The media cycle will speed up. 

This certainly was true in 2017. While President Trump’s use of Twitter to announce official government policy certainly is a major reason, it’s just one factor. Another: a recent Pew Research Center report found that, “About a quarter of all U.S. adults (26%) get news from two or more social media sites, up from 15% in 2013 and 18% in 2016.” So expect this trend to continue into 2018 and beyond. (This is not necessarily a good thing but was predicted in the early 1980s by futurist Alvin Toffler.)

Grade: A+

4. The gig economy and the sharing economy will continue to go mainstream.

Independent contractors or contingent employees – as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) used to refer to them – now comprise an estimated 30% of the U.S. workforce. The BLS and U.S. Census Bureau plan to do a better job of tracking the gig economy. In the meantime, we were right when we said, “We need to more accurately define the gig and the sharing economies… to gain an accurate portrait of overall U.S. economy as well as develop appropriate policies regarding taxes, healthcare and social services.” Both the New York Times and Wall St. Journal validated our predictions.

Grade: A

5. IoT will continue to open the door to cyberattacks.

This was not as big an issue in 2017 as we expected. That does not mean the threat is over. As the Internet of Things (IoT) does go mainstream, cyberattacks remain a significant threat – though likely more targeted to companies than to the average home. But overall, we overstated this.

Grade: C

We will post more of our annual recap in the next few days.

News Media Budget Cuts & Democracy

I've written about the loss of news media as potentially harmful to our democracy not because we'll have fewer voices -- clearly there's no dearth of voices and opinions on the blogosphere. But because we'll have fewer sources of fact rather than opinion.

Blog favorite Brian Stelter at the New York Times makes a similar point in today's paper (it's still available in paper format), When the President Travels, It’s Cheaper for Reporters to Stay Home.

As news organizations continue to seek cost savings as much as they seek the latest headline, fewer organizations are paying to have their reporters and producers fly on the charter plane that accompanies the President because the costs can be very high. The current process is that each news organization sending someone on the charter plane shares the cost of the total airfare.

The problem: As fewer organizations send reporters on the charter, the airfare per organization increases. That becomes a downward spiral, says the president of the White House Correspondents' Association: with fewer organizations able to foot the bill, the price increases, causing more organizations to drop out.

Now how does this impact democracy?

The fewer people who have access to the President to be able to report about what he does, what he says, with whom he meets, etc., the less real information we have about him, his thoughts, etc. And I think that's right -- we need access and coverage of the current president just as we need it for any past president.

Now we can't force news organizations to spend the money to cover the White House. But a while back, organizations like CBS News felt they had to serve the public interest and treat the news as if it is not a profit center. No one thinks like that anymore, though some think of news as a cost center.

That's a step back for democracy.

Fox is the Dick Cavett of News: It makes itself part of the story

Fox News is becoming the Dick Cavett of the news business.

For those young enough not to know Cavett or old enough to have forgotten him, Dick Cavett used to have a talk show in the 1960s. Actually, he's had several talk shows along the way.

Often, he would ask questions of his guests that had more to d to with Cavett than with the guest. I remember a segment (though I can't find it on YouTube) when Groucho Marx was on the show, and Cavett asked, "Remember the first time we met?"

According to Brian Stetler in the New York Times, "Fox’s Volley With Obama Intensifying," "Fox has made the channel’s tensions with the White House a story."

And, now, so has the Times.

It's the Info, Not the Culture: CNBC expands overseas

Great article about CNBC's international growth by Brian Stelter in the New York Times: "Overseas, Sedate Affiliates Give CNBC a Lift."

The subhead in the print edition tells the story: "The Same Brand, But Less Shouting." I'm not sure why summary is not available on the online version because it's very helpful, and was the highlight (used to be solid lines of text), which said, "No stock tips, and an aversion to the parent's over-the-top enthusiasm."

What's interesting is how brands are translated to different cultures. In the States, we think we export our culture (certainly our movies).

But for global marketing functions, it's important to understand what does not translate well. This article gives some useful insight.

Wired's Look at "The Great Wall of Facebook"

The media loves to report on great corporate battles.

There were the "Cola Wars" between Coke & Pepsi.

There was Microsoft vs. IBM.

Google vs. Yahoo.

Microsoft (now with Yahoo! search) vs. Google.

Even an MSNBC vs. Fox. (Read "At Fox and MSNBC, Hosts Refire the Insult Machines," by Brian Stelter.)

Now there's Google vs. Facebook.

Check out Wired's "Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network's Plan to Dominate the Internet — and Keep Google Out."

According to Wire, here are four critical steps that PR functions should be aware of in terms of understanding how to work with Facebook:

• Build critical mass. With more than 200 million users, I'd say Facebook has done that.
  
• Redefine search. Very interesting -- enabling people to use their Facebook friends for advice instead of Google search.
• Colonize the web. Facebook Connect allows people to sign on and comment about posts from other sites, but the comments appear on their Facebook page.
• Sell targeted ads, everywhere.

Check out the article.

Why Can't Even Online Outlets Make Money Online?

The common wisdom is that newspapers need to shed their print operations (printing presses, delivery networks, etc.) because they cost too much at a time when people access news for free on newspapers' websites.

The answer to print media's problems is not necessarily an online-only business model. By shifting to an online-only model, newspapers give up subscription fees and print advertising revenue.

Also, most online-only media are available without paid subscription or other user-generated fees. The prolific New York Times reporter, Brian Stelter, wrote an interesting article last month, "Payoff Over a Web Sensation Is Elusive."

In it, Stelter cites estimates that Susan Boyle and Britain's Got Talent lost about $1.75 million based on 75 million streams of the various clips of Boyle's performances.

The key question for all media is how to generate revenue streams. After all, free is not a sustainable business model, as New York Times media columnist David Carr, has noted.

Claire Cain Miller at the Times has written several articles recently about web advertising: "A Case for Non-Ad Revenue on the Web," "GigaOM Seeks Non-Ad Revenue" & "Ad Revenue on the Web? No Sure Bet."

My bet: in the future, we will start having to pay subscriptions and access fees for a lot of the content we get for free.

The Most Popular Radio Format? It wasn't what you thought

At least, it wasn't what I thought it would be. I've lived in the Northeast, and always knew there were some country music stations even in big urban settings. I just never guessed how popular overall the format has been. So perhaps my assumption says something more about me than about the radio business.

That said, until last year, country music had been the most popular radio format in the US, according to a New York Times article, "For Conservative Radio, It’s a New Dawn, Too" by Brian Stelter.

In 2008, news talk radio surpassed country music for the first time.

It's an interesting article, noting interesting implications. Well worth reading.

CNN Drops "The Crawl" -- Are "Crawls" Dead...Yet?

New York Times' new media/tech reporter, Brian Stelter reports that CNN has dropped its crawl -- "the unending stream of news capsules that have inched relentlessly across the bottom of cable news programs for seven years, disappeared from CNN last Monday."

Survivors include CNBC, Fox and other cable and broadcast news programs.

Now I wish CNN would stop proclaiming everything it covers as "breaking news." Turning to CNN at random times over the past week, every story seemed to be accompanied by on-screen graphics claiming this to be "breaking news," but most were not. Brian, can you get on that, please?

Meanwhile, check out the story, "The Flipper Challenges the Crawl."