✅ Monday briefing: Foodbank fundraiser, council media, COVID-19 impact on PR jobs, ageism in creativity, Google Data Studio update, YouTube, search insights, and more...
This newsletter is crowdsourced each week from my blog and community of practice for people studying and working in marketing, media and PR. It’s a hive mind, newsroom and source of information, help and support. You’d be welcome to join us.
If you’re one of the 2,500 people that finds this newsletter helpful we’d appreciate a donation to our annual fundraiser for The BAY Foodbank in Newcastle. Demand is greater than ever this year because of rising food and energy costs, and Universal Credit cuts. Thank you for your support.
Media
🗞️ COUNCIL MEDIA: A local editor hit out at a council claiming that it was undercutting ad rates. It’s a contentious topic as print media delivered to the home has played a critical role in reaching hard to reach audiences. Spotted Alan Morrison.
🗣️ TALKING SENSE: A team of data scientists at The Guardian has been working with other newsrooms on a global project to explore the potential of AI in journalism. An initial project has explored the role of first person quotes in storytelling, enabling machines to separate fact from opinion. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
📝 LOCAL DEMOCRACY: Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries has backed an expansion of the local democracy reporting scheme between the regional press and the BBC. The BBC-funded scheme grew this year to cover more local authorities. Spotted Alan Morrison.
Industry
👔 COVID-19 IMPACT: 37,000 public relations practitioners work in London, followed by Manchester (2,500), Leeds (1,000), Edinburgh (1,000), Birmingham (1,000) and Bristol (900). Wadds Inc. plans to investigate the impact of the shift to virtual working and the Government’s levelling up agenda over time. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
👩 AGEISM IN CREATIVITY: Despite 30 years’ ad industry experience including a stint at JWT in Australia and running her own agency in Asia Jane Evans failed to land a job on her return to UK. Instead she built a platform for women over 45 of African and Caribbean heritage who want to build a career in the creative industries. Spotted Karan Chadda.
🤕 MENTAL ILL HEALTH: Two in five public sector communications experience verbal abuse weekly. One in ten experiences racist abuse weekly. A longitudinal survey finds NHS, police, fire, local and central government communicators more stressed and susceptible to poor mental health than ever before. Source Dan Slee.
SOCIALLY MOBILE: The deadline has passed for the January-March cohort for Socially Mobile. We’re pleased to report that we expect to exceed our quota of paid and funded places. We’ll open for a new cohort early in 2022. Source Stephen Waddington.
Research and insight
🤖 REITH LECTURES ON AI: In the 2021 Reith lecture Stuart Russell explores the future of AI and asks how can we get it right? The professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, explores jobs, our relationship with machines and applications including warfare. Spotted Stephen Waddington.
👀 VIDEO ENGAGEMENT: The consumption of news video content is on the rise, both in terms of the percentage of consumers who watch and the amount of time they spend watching. Chartbeat analysed video and page engagement across a sample of 50 global sites over four weeks. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
🌍 WORLD PR REPORT: Meaningful measurement and analytics technology will have the greatest impact on the PR and communications industry’s future. The 2021-2022 ICCO World PR Report suggests that the global industry is more aware and willing than ever to embrace meaningful measurement and evaluation approaches. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
COMMUNITY POWER DYNAMIC: Thanks to Andrew Smith for building a Google Data Studio dashboard for activity in the Wadds Inc. November in November. It appears to follow a 90-9-1 model for participation. Have a poke around in the data yourself and let us know if you spot anything. Source Andrew Bruce Smith.
Social media and platforms
🗒️ GOOGLE DATA STUDIO: A GlowMetrics primer explains new formatting options such Sections, Dividers, Headers, and Icons in Google DatA Studio. New updates to the platform provide the means to customise analytics and reporting dashboards. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
🔍 SEARCH INSIGHTS: Experimental YouTube Insights features provide search insight information for channels and contents, as well as for general search queries. Spotted Andrew Bruce Smith.
📮 POSTING STRATEGY: Facebook is set to provide more content insight within Creator Studio with the rollout of a new ‘Inspiration Hub’ element. The features will highlight trending content and hashtags within categories related to a business page. Spotted Alan Morrison.
🚫 STATE-SPONSORED TWITTER: Twitter has removed more than 3,000 accounts that were operating as foreign state-linked information operations. The Twitter accounts that were removed were linked to operations attributed to six countries, including Mexico, China and Russia. Spotted Stephen Waddington.