Replaced with a Tweet? Has the bold, printed headline become obsolete?

While enrolled in graduate studies for Journalism at Temple, I developed a fascination of headlines in the printed press. Since this time, I have been collecting historic newspapers, many of them framed and featured around the walls of my dining room. From an original 1860 newspaper announcing Lincoln's presidency to the more captivating headlines of the past century, including the Moon landing, JFK's assassination and Nixon's resignation, they all illustrate how journalism has evolved over time.

I enjoy looking at headlines and how their advancement, which is mostly attributed to improvements in press production and the introduction of electronic publishing. The announcement of Lincoln's presidency in the 1860 paper is found on page two, not page one. Today it seems so unimpressive, as it's positioned a few inches down on column two, page two, with no more than a 12-point header. In just 100 years, the headline had exploded, as evidenced in the JFK story, where the headline and news takes up the entire front page.

While we still have large headlines in print today, the printed paper is not how the majority of people get their news. Radio, television, internet home pages, Twitter, Facebook, texting and other forms of social media comprise our primary sources of media. With all these forms of communication at our fingertips, it's rare that anyone is seeing the "headline of the day" at the subway or street vendor's newsstand. By the time we see a headline in print, it's old news.

Instead of seeing the big, bold headline to know what's the major story of the day, we piece together news "nuggets." Nuggets come in many forms: the news soundbites or breaking news tickers, radio updates, Facebook posts, Tweets, online news streams, texts, YouTube videos, e-mails, etc. Instead of being exposed to a single, captivating headline for the day, we probably see a hundred or more "nuggets" signaling to us the trending topic of the day (or hour). Depending on your industry our line of work, you may be exposed to more than 100 small headlines before finishing your morning cup of coffee.

What does this mean for the pr practitioner? Your job is harder, and changing every day. There is no single, one way to reach your audience. It's neither a press release or a single Tweet. It's everything. Knowing your audience allows you to emphasize certain media outlets over others, but they all need to be acknowledged and dealt with individually.

No longer is public relations about just sending out a press release on the wire. The information needs to be choreographed to hit news outlets, your website, message boards, Twitter, Facebook, e-mail groups, industry bloggers, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other forms of social media simultaneously.

Today, it's not the size of the headline that matters, as much as whether you've saturated enough media outlets with your message. In some aspects, we've shrunk our headlines back down to about the same size of the Lincoln headline in the 1860 paper. A Tweet is about the same size, and limited in characters. The difference between then and now is that the distribution channels have increased considerably. Hitting your target isn't about printing one line in one source, it's now about getting that smaller nugget exposed in dozens of outlets.

As I'm writing this, I'm realizing it won't be long before the printed newspaper becomes entirely obsolete. I suddenly feel an urgency to add to my newspaper collection, as I can't imagine a day where people like myself buy and trade original Tweets highlighting the greatest news moments in the 21st-century.

Journalism vs. Public Relations

George Orwell said it best:  "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." Even with the explosion of social media and the ever-changing landscape of traditional journalism in George Orwell's time, this definition still stands as clearest and most poignant one I've come across. 

When I read a newspaper or news website, I can't help thinking about "the source" of the news. It's especially interesting to pick up a copy of a small-town, local paper to really see the impact of public relations on the stories we are fed as news.

The front-page story in this week's local paper highlighted a boy that gave his life savings (of $100) to support a cancer organization. Worthy cause? Yes. Wonderful story? Yes. Worthy of front page news? Probably not.

If you have your own local business, do you ever ask yourself why Tony's pizza is featured with a nice article about Tony's Sicilian mother who immigrated to this country with nothing but $5 in her pocket (and her great aunt Sophie's pizza dough recipe), the dry cleaner that found and returned an heirloom watch to one of its customers, or the seemingly impressive new Math teacher at Woodbridge Academy?

Are these stories examples of journalism, or are they as George Orwell asserted, public relations? These stories are examples of public relations. Public relations often receives a bad rap with terms like "spinning" or even "creating" the news. As someone who as worked on both sides of the journalism-public relations fence, public relations does often deserve a bit of cynicism. Often I've sat around the table with clients or corporate executives and brainstormed of what we could do to "create" news. 

Journalists generally don't follow around corporate executives, small business owners or directors of charity organizations to report on their business dealings or operations. Journalists depend on obtaining entire stories or leads by public relations professionals -- some studies indicate as much as 75% of all editorial content is based on public relations.

While this statistic may seem depressing at its face, it doesn't mean that most of all news is not newsworthy and that it's just fabricated stories being pushed out by pr flacks. A corporate communications officer or public relations manager at a company is an integral part of the news process. I think most people in the industry come to accept the fact that journalism and public relations professionals both need one another, and it would be hard in this uber-competitive, instant-access kind of society for either to exist without the other.

What does this mean for both parties? In short, journalists should not rely solely on information they are being fed and take it at face value. Hopefully, most journalists do not rely solely on a single angle story they are fed through a press release (such as Tony's pizza). Journalists should look at a news release and expand on it to include a larger, more meaningful context.As a public relations professional, one needs to carefully balance the role he or she may be playing in the creation or shaping of news. Will this story be of value to the consumer beyond how it may serve your company or organization's bottom line? If not, how can I better position this story for a larger appeal?

Journalists should be working in a way that blurs the line so that readers aren't able to come to such quick conclusions about whether a story is news or whether it's just good public relations. Is this even possible? I'm not sure if I've ever come across such a piece. Most stories seem to provide nice examples using George Orwell's categorization: where they are actual news stories because they are things that someone doesn't want printed (political scandal, bank bailouts, etc.) or public relations, which simply includes everything else.