Traditional media outlets still wield immense power, Isentia research finds
Exclusive news stories still have a major impact on society, brands and politics, despite the pressure placed on journalists working out of shrinking newsrooms and with pressure of rolling deadlines.
Research presented for the first time by Isentia at Mumbrella’s CommsCon revealed that newspapers, television and radio stations continued to wield immense power when it came to breaking news, which could be traditional media platforms’ saving grace in the face of increasing competition and declining revenue.
“The power of traditional outlets was astounding, rather than diminishing in power,” Isentia’s chief executive of insights and research, Khali Sakkas said.
“One of the burning questions we have with all of of this at stake is whether we have a highly unusual situation here of shrinking news rooms yet increasing influence?”
She noted exclusives were increasingly important commercially and were being built into journalists’ KPIs.
The initial stage of the research looked at a single week in the news cycle in February and found that media outlets published or broadcast 256 stories classed as exclusive, either by label or by fact that the outlet was the initial source of the news.
The research found a vast majority of exclusives were carried by newspapers, with 87% coming from metro and national titles.
TV exclusives were often focused on unique footage that the station had obtained rather than a story or investigation.
“Radio did have unique content, it had very newsworthy content that actually set the agenda for most of the day, but it didn’t play the exclusives game, it didn’t label the content as exclusive and it didn’t make a fuss,” Sakkas said.
Sakkas said the research suggested labelling stories as ‘exclusive’ might be a survival mechanism being used by press in the attention economy.
“If it is then we need to acknowledge that not everybody is playing the same game – The Australian newspaper accounted for close to 30% of all exclusives recorded in our week and this was followed by The Daily Telegraph with 11%,” she said.
However, in a twist not expected by the researchers, the exclusive news stories were not all bad or negative, with 20% having a positive spin or outlook.
The research she speculated that in some cases PR companies were increasing their offer of exclusives to get across positive stories about brands and organisations.
“Health, sport and construction are the top three industries that are using exclusives in Australian media. It’s working for them,” she said.
Exclusive stories also often had a “fairness” element, with stories about aged care, penalty rates and stamp duty also prominent.
Sources of exclusive stories were also investigated, with 39% coming from interviews with a person, 18% from a reporter’s investigations, 8% from unnamed sources and 2% from Freedom of Information requests.
“I think that when we look at impact and power we are going to see this chart reverse,” she said.
“We are going to see the impact of footage (such as Don Dales and NSW Greyhounds) and Freedom of Information come up as having much bigger impact than all the interviews.”
As part of the study Isentia also looked at one story – the chartering of a government plane by health Minister Sussan Ley – and how it grew from a single story about her travel spending on a single flight into a controversy over her purchase of an apartment, revelations of New Year’s Eve parties, her resignation from the ministry and finally reform of politician’s travel expense entitlements.
Isentia charted the impact of a single story
“I find that this incredible influence all started from 358 words in a so-called dying medium,” Sakkas said.
“30 different stakeholders bought into this issue in a few days.”
Ultimately Ley’s crisis led to 8,788 articles.
“When you are sitting here dealing with this issue on January 2 or January 3 you have no idea what’s coming,” she said.
Sakkas also looked what she called “failing the pub test” – that an issue was not acceptable to the average Australian – and benchmarked the time it took for Ley’s resignation compared to other political travel rort scandals.
She concluded that MPs who respond quickly to such issues (within two days) kept their jobs, while those, including Ley, who took four days to make a statement, lost theirs.
