Showing posts with label The STATE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The STATE. Show all posts
Sunday, November 13, 2011
STATE Newspaper has excellent story on Charlie Coker
Charlie Coker is one of the business legends in South Carolina. Here The State newspaper provides an interesting overview of a long career building a company and a community. Charlie's efforts continue today. I think you will enjoy reading this story from The State newspaper on the influence Charles W. Coker has had on the State of South Carolina, Sonoco and Hartsville.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Community building is about consensus building and consensus is in generally short supply in the current environment at nearly every level of government. On Sunday THE STATE newspaper of Columbia had two articles that I noticed discussing the need for coming together. The first was an editorial by Cindy Ross Scoppe about the candidacy of Vincent Sheheen for governor of South Carolina. The other article was by David Gergen,called HOW MUCH GOVERNMENT. The article was a back-page column in PARADE magazine. He discussed the metaphorical daggers that everyone seems to be bringing to political and problem-solving discussions. He made a good point about not being able to solve problems when facing daggers. While I am on the other side when it comes to government, Gergen had important things to say about the discussion process. Just thought it would be good to note some of this very important food for thought.
http://www.thestate.com/2010/05/09/1277538/scoppe-tackling-big-issues-seeking.html#RSS=Cindi%20Scoppe
http://www.thestate.com/2010/05/09/1277538/scoppe-tackling-big-issues-seeking.html#RSS=Cindi%20Scoppe
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Newspapers -- were heart of community building
What now?
As we think about community much of this blog is focused on Hartsville, SC. Today the focus is newspapers and their demise, which is being accelerated by business decisions that just don't make sense to this newspaper consumer.
Marsha Mercer's last column for Media General is at the bottom of the editorial page of the MORNING NEWS of Florence, SC, this morning. "Media General deacided a few weeks ago to close the Washington bureau March 27, joing the other media corporations that have taken that difficult step because of the sharp decline in advertising revenues." What are they thinking? What is THE STATE newspaper in Columbia, SC, and their parent McClatchy thinking when they lay off journalists -- the lifeblood of their product?
Media companies all over this country are laying off (firing) employees and particularly journalists to save costs because their ad revenues are down. Many of these media companies are also putting many of their reporters -- print, online and television -- on unpaid furloughs. What does all this mean? Well, the product that news organizations offer consumers is news. The product that news organizations offer advertisers is readership/viewership. When you take away the news that is unique to your medium you take away any reason -- at all -- for readers (consumers) to buy your product. And, generally, most of these companies are not only downsizing their news product they are raising the cost of the product. In my marketing communication classes we quickly cover the traditional 4-Ps of marketing -- Product/Price/Place/Promotion. Is there no one in the business offices of these major media conglomerates (usually the vanguard of marketing) left who remembers the basics?
But, for those of us on the outside this accelerating demise of the news and local news media is even more disturbing. Generally, you would be able to study strong communities and find strong newspapers at their core. What happens to the communities when the newspapers disappear? we know in the small city of Hartsville, SC, that when the news hole is compressed there is a lot less common knowledge of what is happening in the community. We had a recent example of that when the editor of the THE MESSENGER provided the community with a pretty comprehensive article about the serious problem of dilapidated housing that is plaguing the city, especially our South Hartsville area. The editor's article shows the power of the press in highlighting important issues. But, we don't get nearly as much of that any longer in Hartsville, in Columbia, in Charlotte and the list goes on.
My communication career started when I was 12 years old and I entered the communication distribution business in one of the greatest hands-on business training programs available -- the local paper route. So, there is no question that I am a big nostalgic about the way the newspaper companies are accelerating the death of this medium. At the same time, the concern comes in that currently there is nothing taking the place of newspapers in the communication leadership of our communities. That is distressing for the short run. For the longer term I am optimistic that we are going to see some caring, intelligent media mavens who find a way to craft community communication solutions using the multi-platform media that is quickly being perfected. (Think of blogs for example -- we have the ability right in this space to provide words, to provide video pictures and sound, to provide audio files when just voice will work and a wide variety of photos and graphics.) Doug Fisher with grants from the J-Lab at the University of Maryland and some funds from the previous Messenger owners developed Hartville's HARTSVILLE TODAY citizen journalism web platform. As it continues to develop, it might be one of the bridges to the new media.
But in the interim, what are the media companies thinking?
As we think about community much of this blog is focused on Hartsville, SC. Today the focus is newspapers and their demise, which is being accelerated by business decisions that just don't make sense to this newspaper consumer.
Marsha Mercer's last column for Media General is at the bottom of the editorial page of the MORNING NEWS of Florence, SC, this morning. "Media General deacided a few weeks ago to close the Washington bureau March 27, joing the other media corporations that have taken that difficult step because of the sharp decline in advertising revenues." What are they thinking? What is THE STATE newspaper in Columbia, SC, and their parent McClatchy thinking when they lay off journalists -- the lifeblood of their product?
Media companies all over this country are laying off (firing) employees and particularly journalists to save costs because their ad revenues are down. Many of these media companies are also putting many of their reporters -- print, online and television -- on unpaid furloughs. What does all this mean? Well, the product that news organizations offer consumers is news. The product that news organizations offer advertisers is readership/viewership. When you take away the news that is unique to your medium you take away any reason -- at all -- for readers (consumers) to buy your product. And, generally, most of these companies are not only downsizing their news product they are raising the cost of the product. In my marketing communication classes we quickly cover the traditional 4-Ps of marketing -- Product/Price/Place/Promotion. Is there no one in the business offices of these major media conglomerates (usually the vanguard of marketing) left who remembers the basics?
But, for those of us on the outside this accelerating demise of the news and local news media is even more disturbing. Generally, you would be able to study strong communities and find strong newspapers at their core. What happens to the communities when the newspapers disappear? we know in the small city of Hartsville, SC, that when the news hole is compressed there is a lot less common knowledge of what is happening in the community. We had a recent example of that when the editor of the THE MESSENGER provided the community with a pretty comprehensive article about the serious problem of dilapidated housing that is plaguing the city, especially our South Hartsville area. The editor's article shows the power of the press in highlighting important issues. But, we don't get nearly as much of that any longer in Hartsville, in Columbia, in Charlotte and the list goes on.
My communication career started when I was 12 years old and I entered the communication distribution business in one of the greatest hands-on business training programs available -- the local paper route. So, there is no question that I am a big nostalgic about the way the newspaper companies are accelerating the death of this medium. At the same time, the concern comes in that currently there is nothing taking the place of newspapers in the communication leadership of our communities. That is distressing for the short run. For the longer term I am optimistic that we are going to see some caring, intelligent media mavens who find a way to craft community communication solutions using the multi-platform media that is quickly being perfected. (Think of blogs for example -- we have the ability right in this space to provide words, to provide video pictures and sound, to provide audio files when just voice will work and a wide variety of photos and graphics.) Doug Fisher with grants from the J-Lab at the University of Maryland and some funds from the previous Messenger owners developed Hartville's HARTSVILLE TODAY citizen journalism web platform. As it continues to develop, it might be one of the bridges to the new media.
But in the interim, what are the media companies thinking?
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