A wealthy county in the suburbs of Washington, DC, provides insight into how news media misunderstood their audiences–and lost them.
The Washington Post dissected media habits of Loudoun County, VA, over the last few years to discover why several news media outlets, including the Post, have abandoned the county. The conclusion: The media discovered too late that news consumers wanted hyper-local coverage of their neighborhoods, not hyper-local news coverage of their county. Now, media outlets find it impossible to provide news and information that is local enough. Citizens have developed their own micro-local ways of getting news and they don’t want to be bothered with old media.
Exit traditional media.
Said the post, “Some people are finding out what’s going on in their neighborhoods or schools from community e-mail lists, Web forums or automated phone calls, all of which might deliver the news faster than professional journalists.”
On paper, Loudoun County should be a media dream. In just a couple of decades, it grew from about 60,000 residents to more than 280,000. And it has the highest median income in the nation. The new residents perceive little stake in their local county government. But they are passionate about their neighborhoods:
In interviews, Loudounites, many of them newcomers, said their desire to know about traditional countywide news — development trends, political stories, crime in someone else’s neighborhood — is not as great as their interest in keeping up with the latest in and around their own developments: teenagers egging houses, complaints about trash removal, school boundary disputes or, in one recent case that heated up the Broadlands community Web forum, a new Dunkin’ Donuts and its allegedly stale Munchkins.
Many residents said they are hooked on the Broadlands homeowner association Web site and another site called the Brambletonian. Both offer multiple forums for residents to exchange news and debate neighborhood issues, as well as lists of where to shop or eat.
Newspapers over the years paid little attention to their audiences and were caught short when those audiences changed. Media managers had little idea of what news consumers wanted or even who they were beyond a few poll numbers.
Beyond the media, the Loudoun County example raises serious concern about whether citizens can get themselves informed enough to make decisions about their wider communities. Interest in the neighborhood is good, but elected officials build roads and sewers–and collect our taxes. It is dangerous for citizens to ignore government at any level. But the old argument in news circles about giving citizens what they want versus what they need is not relevant, either, these days. Experience shows that force-feeding news to citizens just does not work.
Some metro newspapers are now attempting to repair the damage. The Charlotte Observer, for example, is moving to reclaim suburban communities it abandoned earlier and the N&O reports some success with community editions.
But as media outlets work to reclaim their audiences in places like Loudoun County, they would do well to study carefully what folks want and how they want it delivered. Old tactics just won’t work. Posted by Leroy Towns
Traditional journalists once dismissed blogs as opinionated shouting. Then along came Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo, a blog that actually reported real news, including the story of the Bush Administration’s firing of U.S. Attorneys in several states.
There’s an old saying in Washington that if two people are interested in an issue, there is an association for it. Today, there’s a group on Facebook.