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100 Days of Gushing Oil

The story was overwhelming. For days on end, from spring and into summer, oil burst from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico and polluted sea and shore. Throughout, the media covered the Deepwater Horizon crisis with conviction and focus.

This week, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report detailing just how the media portrayed the worst environmental event in the nation’s history. The excellent analysis titled “100 Days of Gushing Oil, Eight Things to Know About How the Media Covered the Gulf Disaster”offers insight on a variety of fronts, but perhaps most curious is the pure amount of coverage produced.

Normally, the media’s attention span for a crisis extends about a week, depending on such circumstances as the number of people involved and other, competing news.

Remember the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007? That terrible story gripped the country….for a week. Then the media moved on.

“The massacre that left 33 people dead on the Virginia Tech campus was the biggest story in any given week that year, filling 51% of the newshole studied from April 15-20. But by the following week, coverage had plunged to 7%, and the week after that, it virtually vanished,” Pew reported.

After the Deepwater Horizon explosion, bloggers and those populating other social media platforms did move on to other topics. But the mainstream media, particularly broadcast media (read CNN’s Anderson Cooper) kept on top of the story.

Why?

Think back to the coverage and what sticks in your mind? Pictures of oil soaked birds. Or of ugly brown oil plumes spread across the water. Perhaps the most gripping video was the oil bursting forth from the ocean floor. Yes, this was a visual story, fueled by the never ending gushing taking place.

“The oil spill was by far the dominant story in the mainstream news media in the 100-day period after the explosion, accounting for 22% of the newshole—almost double the next biggest story. In the 14 full weeks included in this study, the disaster finished among the top three weekly stories 14 times. And it registered as the No. 1 story in nine of those weeks,” Pew reported.

“The spill story generated considerably less attention in social media on blogs, Twitter and You Tube. Among blogs, for example, it made the roster of top stories five times in 14 weeks. But during those weeks one theme resonated—skepticism toward almost all the principals in the story.”

In many crises, the public gets fatigued with the subject even before the media moves on, creating the perception the media “milk” the event. But in this case, the public’s fascination appears to have matched the coverage.

“Often between 50% and 60% of Americans said they were following the story ‘very closely’ during these 100 days. That surpassed the level of public interest during the most critical moments of the health care reform debate,” according to Pew.

Let’s see. Which was more visual? Health care debate? Oil disaster?

Hmmm.

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A New Website Strives to Bring PR and Media Together

During my 20 years in journalism, few things were as valuable as a reliable source. Someone with good news judgment, who understood the media and what they were looking for, and provided valuable information, particularly on deadline when chasing a story, was a source to be cultivated.

During my four years in public relations, I’ve learned that few things are as valuable as the ability to communicate well, to reflect good news judgment, to provide interesting and valuable information to journalists in a timely manner and above all, to be sensitive to their increasing deadline pressures.

The key is to make the initial connection, to develop the necessary relationships. In an article today, Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times calls these “professional relationships that seesaw between love and hate.”

Journalists pride themselves on their ability to “source,” or develop the relationships they need to do their job. A new website launched today is designed to help them.

NewsBasis leverages the Internet’s ability to bring people of common purpose together. In this instance, the common purpose is an exchange of information, from an organization to the media. In addition, NewsBasis allows organizations to insert their own information into a news story, just for the edification of other journalists.

PR professionals can monitor NewsBasis for queries pertinent to their clients, and then respond as well.

Whether NewsBasis, created by Darryl Siry, a former journalist and marketer, can become a new marketplace of ideas and mutual information exchange, will be an ongoing question.

I suspect it will work if it reflects good news judgment, is frequented by those who understand the media and what they are looking for, and provides valuable information, particularly on deadline.

And perhaps mixes in a little love and hate as well.

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