Creative Circle research offers insight into how local media can reconnect with readers

The good news about our research is that local and community media are trusted at a much higher level than national media. We keep seeing polls that give media a low ranking. In this survey, "the media" got a 52% trust rating – right between the oil and gas industry and Vice President Pence. But local media get a trust rating of 82%. Wow.

The other good news is that our readership is up. Some of the local web sites hosted by Creative Circle saw jumps in traffic up to 330% in the spring and summer. Most of our web sites more than doubled their traffic. Doubled. That's unbelievable. We've also seen gains amoug our print newspaper clients.

In this national survey, 81% of respondents said they were following COVID news on a daily basis.

Another key finding was that more than a third of respondants – 34% – said they were using new sources of news to get information about the pandemic. Local news was the number two answer, right between YouTube and Facebook. 

Breaking it down to types of media, newspaper web sites came in at 16% right between Twitter and broadcast news. And print newspapers were at 8%, between Snapchat and podcasts.

 "The ache for authenticity is overwhelming," said Bernard Whitman, president and founder of Whitman Insight Strategies, whose firm created this research. "Local media are best positioned to deliver that," said Whitman. "People are starved for content. They are starved for connections. That's why community media have so much to gain. You are already part of the community and people feel lke they know you or they should know you."

So we are getting a lot more eyeballs but can we keep them?

That's the bad news. We may be missing the chance to turn these new readers into paying subscribers.

Traffic across all our sites is already down significantly from its peaks last spring. And Gannett and other bloated national chains are continuing to slash editorial staffs beyond skeleton levels.

We've been saying for 20 years that the biggest problem at newspapers is that we are out of touch with our readers. Newspapers aren't dying. They are committing suicide. Our stories are too often flat, boring and misdirected.

Editors and publishers will tell you they are covering COVID like a glove. And many are in some ways. But I would argue they aren't doing it in a way that is engaging that new audience – or the old audience.

The stats from Whitman Insight Strategies show that our readers are scared. They are afraid for the health and safety of themselves and their loved ones. They are worried about their careers and job security. They are sad, angry and depressed. Things feel like they are spiraling out of control.

Are we covering that? And how?

Roughly half of our readers have shifted to working from home during at least portions of the pandemic. That is an earthquake in all the norms of our lives. Combined with school closures, this is changing everything from what kinds of homes and apartments we want to traffic levels on our highways. It's changing how we spend money and who we spend more time with.

Many spouses, for example, might have spent more time at work than at home. Kids might have spent more time at school or with friends than with their parents. Now, those numbers have been reversed. How are families getting along? How are they coping?

Well, drinking and drug abuse are up. So are divorces. Kids are falling behind in learning and social development. How are we covering that?

COVID is driving other big stories, from businesses going under to massive deficit spending by every level of government. Unemployment soared and remains high. Many more people are now significantly under employed. Teachers are quitting. 

Are we talking to families? Are we exploring how kids feel about what they are going through? Have we explored the difficulties of leading a virtual classroom?

More importantly, are we helping our readers get through this? Are we holding their hands and leading them to new solutions? Are we providing an outlet for how they feel and why they are sad or angry?

Then there are the small changes stemming from spending more time at home:
• People are feeding birds more, leading to a shortage of bird seed last spring and summer.
• People are gardening more, leading to a shortage of flowers at nurseries last spring.
• People are cooking a lot more and they are searching for new recipes and help learning how to cook or cook more and different things.
• More people got pets to keep them company at home, in some cases leading to a shortage of puppies and kittens last spring.
• People are remodeling like crazy, leading to widespread shortages of appliances and some construction materials and waiting lists for contractors.

Did you cover those stories? Most editors would scoff at a page one story about feeding the birds or gardening, but you can tell important national stories through these smaller stories about real people finding their lives being turned upside down.

"The opportunity to create stronger bonds and a stronger sense of community with softer, more imtimate content is very real," says Whitman.

We need to tell a lot more stories through the eyes, behaviors and lives of our readers. We have urged journalists for years to cover life, not news. It's time we learned to adjust our definition of news to what our readers want and not what we learned in journalism school.

Newsrooms are in a terrible rut, covering news the same way year after year and covering COVID like a school bond referendum or a major local economic development. But this is a bigger, broader story that is cutting deeply into people's lives. It's intimate and emotional. It's far reaching and personal. It will have long-term ramifications about how we live. And we are missing the guts of what's happening.

This Xfinity holiday commercial does a lighthearted job of showing what every company needs to do to respond to COVID by understanding the emotional support that people crave today. They identified one of the things people need and got the messaging right. Can local media possibly do the same?