“Smart Brevity”: a media game-changer for PR pros… and clients, alike
An approach to journalism that keeps up with our busy lives (and will keep clients happy)
Situational analysis: Whether you are a consultant, a Hill staffer, an entrepreneur, a PR pro like me, or just an everyday news junkie (also like me), a hunger and absolute need to be being up on the news is a part of our daily routines. But in the 24-hour news cycle, it is hard to keep up on it all and take the time to read all the content we need to bring our level best in the office.
There is a new news trend: With packed workdays and more news content being published by the hour than one person can realistically keep up on, thankfully there are several media companies out there that aggregate the day’s headlines and summarize the information into easy to digest formats. Morning Consult and the Skimm are just a few examples of platforms that send out pithy bulletins right to your inbox. These services even give the option to choose topics you are interested in and will have a corresponding newsletter that covers daily news for that specific subject matter, getting you the relevant content you actually need to know.
On background: In 2016, three Politico alum founded Axios, a new media company formed on the concept of “smart-brevity” offering original reporting and narrated summaries of the day’s news. While there were already ‘top news’ roundups out there, Axios went a step further by summarizing the coverage and identifying any relevance it had to larger themes and trends.
More and more, media companies are doing these newsletters. “Breakfast briefings,” roundups, tipsheets — whatever you want to call them — smart reporters are bringing the news right to your inbox, saving the reader from having to go out and comb through massive amounts of coverage (and risk missing or misunderstanding developments in a subject area they may not be well versed in).
Big picture: While I am still a fan of the good old fashion newspaper, a relaxing morning of thumbing through the paper while I sip my morning coffee is not realistic in the fast-paced Washington arena. I believe I can speak for most PR pros when I say that our days fly by a little faster than they do for the average person. PR pros need to stay on top of all news for everything from competitor intelligence to earned media opportunities — news media drives public relations at its core.
I would say the majority of emails coming into my inbox each morning are these newsletters — Axios AM and Politico’s “Influence” tipsheet are two of my favorites. These, along with Google Alerts and alerts from various media monitoring programs we have set up for clients, help me track coverage and keeps me smart on client-industry trends for a diverse client roster.
Something else: The ability to read through short 280 character Tweets with the swipe of your thumb maximizes information consumption in our mobile world — which is part of the reason social media dominates a significant portion of our day. Axios and Morning Consult have picked up on this with their Tweet-size summaries in “scrollable” emails.
Sure, email alerts from The Hill and push notifications on my phone from CNN and The Washington Post are great for breaking news, but all they do is give you the headline and drive you to an article — no commentary.
I’d say there are few things more embarrassing than your boss or a client catching something before you do. You can be the smartest person in the room and could lecture for an hour on a topic, but in our fast-paced, hyper-connected digital world, your boss or client is just going to look at you and say “get to the point.” So, let’s be glad there are services out there to help us out.
Regardless of the subject areas we are keeping up on, we all want to be first to have new information — and having it fed right to us is just another plus.
Why it matters: Clients rely on PR pros for strategic counsel and guidance through the news media circus. These newsletters get the information right to us, right away, and breaks down complex information into easily digested facts. I am not arguing that the greater media landscape is drastically changing, but there is a significant trend in media to accommodate the growing demand for content that feeds a readership that needs everything right now.
The AP Style Guide and any PR 101 class teach news writing on the “inverted pyramid” metaphor which illustrates how information should be structured in text — most newsworthy facts first, narrowing down with more general information toward the bottom of the piece. So, structuring media monitoring reports, a situational analysis or any other client deliverable should follow suit.
Bottom line: As great as “smart brevity” is for pros, clients would benefit even more from information being provided in the same way. Most PR agencies provide media roundups and status reports for clients — which are usually just a list of headlines with links back to the articles. I would wager that clients would appreciate our professional analysis of the big picture in our reports, instead of just a list of clips with no explanation of why those articles are significant.
One last thing: Notice how this was written? (Thanks, Mike Allen, for the template).
Bradley Ingram is a public relations associate at a Washington, DC area creative communications agency. The views expressed here are all my own and not on behalf of any agency or client views. Just a few thoughts from a recent college grad getting his start in the professional world. Follow me on Twitter @bradleysingram.
