Getting Your Brand Out

As traditional newspaper journalism evolves under competitive pressure from the Internet, celebrity journalism and the many options readers have to get news, some journalists are getting more aggressive about creating a space for themselves in the beleaguered industry.

Once content to remain faceless behind their bylines, some print reporters are looking to brand themselves as a way to build readership, loyalty and value.

And in an environment where newspapers are cutting costs, revving up online newswire content and laying off employees, it may not be a bad idea, some say.

“You’ve got to get your ‘brand’ out. People have to know you,” says Al Lewis, business columnist for The Denver Post. “In a world where people are going online, newspapers really have to focus on ‘what can we provide our readers that’s different.’ Local personalities and local coverage can help them to compete with the wires and distinguish themselves.”

Promoting names, as opposed to just the news, has always been a marketing dilemma newspapers have toyed with, said David Mindich, a journalism professor at Saint Michael’s College and author of “Tuned Out – Why American’s Under 40 Don’t Follow the News.”

“It’s not that celebrity journalism is new, but cross platform media exposure has made journalists in the last 10 years more famous than they could have been in the last 30 years,” he said.

Now that the newspaper business is straining to keep up with broadcast and online mediums, print  journalists are becoming more savvy about gaining B-celebrity status, he said.

Case in point: Jonathan Lansner, real estate columnist for The Orange County Register. His blog and columns are drawing thousands of readers.

“He was early to predict the housing slump in Orange County,” said Scott Flanders, CEO of Freedom Communications, which owns The Register. “Now everyone in the real estate business reads his column. He put forward facts and other analysts that supported his view.”

Blogs are crucial as newspapers try to develop loyal audience niches, Flanders said. The bloggers also need to need to stop playing it safe and develop a distinct point of view.

According to Flanders, news has become commoditized and journalists, as well as their papers, need to distinguish themselves.

“Being visible in the local community has always been an aspect of the radio marketing profile and newspapers need to take a page from that successful strategy,” he said. 

As a columnist, Lewis of The Denver Post believes self-promotion is a crucial part of his job, and it’s a task he has taken mainly upon himself.

“Our newspaper doesn’t do much marketing at all.  You don’t see a bus go by and there’s a picture of some journalist on the side,” he said.  “I can count on two fingers the times the paper has had an advertisement in the newspaper about me.”

Refusing to be another faceless journalist, Lewis appears weekly on a NBC affiliate in Denver and often provides business analysis for a local radio channel.  He also started blogging in May 2005.  The blog “Talk Back to Al” gets about 1,000 hits per week and is more like a “reporter’s notebook” than breaking news, he said. It features a biography, a Q&A and links to his column.

But not everybody is a fan of print reporters boosting their name recognition. Mindich said it could hinder the quality of news if personalities receive top billing over the product.

“It might be a good business strategy,” he said. “But I don’t think a star system in journalism is necessarily a good thing” because it could place personality over intrinsic news value.

Meanwhile, Lewis and Flanders said they’ll continue promoting personalities along with the news.

“We definitely need to make journalists celebrities - not like Paris Hilton celebrities - but well known among their audience,” Flanders said. 

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism