Seemingly unrelated trends paint a clear picture for PR practitioners accustomed to achieving their goals through press release distribution and media pitching. The trends: People trust each other less than ever; people define what news is based on its impact on them, becoming their own gatekeepers; and video podcasts have become so popular that media outlets are including them in their upfronts. In this short midweek FIR episode, Neville and Shel find the common thread among these trends and outline how communicators can adjust their efforts to make sure their news is received and believed.

Links from this episode:

• What Is News? (Pew Research Center)
• Americans’ Trust in One Another (Pew Research Center)
• Video podcasts are the next big pitch at media Upfronts
• News Consumption in the UK: 2024

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, May 26.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript

@nevillehobson (00:01)
Hi everyone and welcome to Four Immediate Releases. This is episode 465. I’m Neville Hobson in the UK.

Shel Holtz (00:09)
And I’m Shel Holtz in the U.S. And if you work in communication, it’s time to tweak your media playbook. If you still treat a press release and a reporter pitch as the center of the universe, it’s time to reconsider things. We’ll talk about why and how right after this.

Let’s start with the human glue that holds any message together, that being trust. Pew released a survey on May 8th that tells us only 34 % of Americans now believe that most people can be trusted. In the Watergate era, that number was 46%. In the mid-50s, it was closer to 70%. This is a crater, not a dip. Low social trust bleeds into institutional trust. So your brand news

starts with a skepticism handicap. Now, later on this, Pew’s other study also released in May tha