Media Navel Gaze: September 10, 2012
The Week Unpeeled
The Democratic convention ended last week and now the serious gloves-off campaigning begins. Needless to say, gobs of ink and e-ink spilled on coverage and analysis but some interesting social-media analysis surfaced toward the end of the week on the campaign (not just the conventions), especially in Charles M. Blow’s column in The New York Times on Saturday, titled “The Engagement Gap” or the media engagement (social media, that is) gap. For example, the Obama campaign posted nearly “four times as much content as the Romney campaign and was active on nearly twice as many platforms,” according to a study from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, referenced in his column and probably not too surprising. Obama easily outscored Romney on retweets, YouTube views, likes, and the likes. Also, the President’s speech last week set a record for political moments on Twitter. Hashtag that! And in the old-school TV medium, one kinda embarrassing statistic (for the Republican camp and America), according to The Hollywood Reporter: The Republican convention on Wednesday was “outperformed” on every station among the 18- to 49-year market by the TLC show, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” Almost makes you miss the Kardashians.
Also, worth noting (for us pitching and for us educating clients and how we can leverage an interview) was a rundown of a day in the life of a reporter at the convention and how much their work has changed, observed by Thomas L. Friedman in his Sunday column in The New York Times: report, file for the Web edition, file for the International Herald Tribune, tweet, update for the Web edition, report more, track other people’s tweets, do a Web-video spot and then write the story for the print paper. An NYT grand slam would be one interview in all channels, right?
Elsewhere:
- The US jobless rate declined to 8.1 in August from 8.3 in July, mostly because the unemployed got tired of looking for jobs in a sluggish report overall and a big boo boo for the Obama campaign;
- The Dow ended the week 1.6 percent higher to close at 13,306 on Friday amid talks of plans for eurozone bond buying;
- Cosmopolitan of Hearst Magazines named Joanna Coles from Marie Claire as its new editor;
- Apple announced plans for a Web-radio platform a la Pandora;
- Also, this week saw the launch of new Smartphones from Nokia, Motorola and Amazon;
- Figures from the British Retail Consortium highlighted the economic impact of the Olympic Games was not as strong as expected. Sales in some stores in August were down by 0.4 percent on the same period last year;
- The Bank of England decided to keep interest rates unchanged at 0.5 percent and not to implement additional quantitative easing; and
- In another bad week for job losses, insurance giant Direct Line confirmed that nearly 900 jobs are being axed and Nomura announced a retreat from London with an expected 400 jobs likely to go.
