Media Trump

This Globe and Mail article by Simon Houpt, which is a good read, asks more questions than it answers about how the media is handling Donald Trump:

“His appeal raises hard questions: about clickbait versus quality journalism, and whether the two are mutually exclusive; about bias and fairness; about polls; about outrage journalism; about the little-examined role that class plays in media; about journalistic integrity; about whether the media – even the media outlets that position themselves as the true voices of real people – are actually in touch with real people.”

Whatever the answers, Trump is using his notoriety to make him money, not to make him president. He knows the media loves bad news and sensationalism, so they will pile on to the next story about the sky falling.

Trump has little chance of getting more than a fringe vote and the GOP won’t think he’s so grand when it’s time to pick a viable contender who can get the votes that Romney couldn’t attract.

Perhaps the Trump benefit is that more people will vote due to the heightened news coverage and awareness. If so, the media can be credited with helping to get out the vote, even if they’re struggling with how to report on Trump.

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This Year’s Marketing Communications Trends

As we jump into the first month of the new year it’s a good time to look ahead at the communications work that will be a priority for the industry. It’s no surprise digital will continue to grow in importance as more marketers become comfortable with content marketing and social media and the results these channels can deliver.

Here’s a list of the communications trends I posted on the PUNCH blog.

Live Tweeting The Weather

Tornados are top of mind in Ontario these days after one ripped through Goderich this week and the threat of severe storms earlier tonight. This fact was evident for a few hours on Twitter. #tornadowatch, Southern Ontario and Weather Network, where I work, all trended in the Canadian top nine.

Ontarians, including a couple talented people at The Weather Network, live tweeted about the storm so that I could virtually see it moving east across the south part of the province while also reading about conditions elsewhere in Ontario.

As I said in a note to the writer, “I think you set some kind of national or international weather live tweeting record.” And more importantly, people got the news they needed about the storm’s severity.

TV and web can’t match this pace. Sure their reach is far greater with millions more people tuning into our on-air broadcast and web site. But if you wanted to know what was happening every few seconds in different areas, these live streams provided nice little chunks of easy to digest news. Which greatly complimented information on our other platforms including Facebook. As evident by the tweets referring to our TV reports and web radar models.

It’s common for Canadians to need their weather news. Tonight’s weather reinforced this fact while also highlighting Twitter’s information sharing strength.

Not as strong as the thunder and lightning, high winds and violent rain just experienced, but impressive all the same.