There is a story behind the headlines about the year’s economic freefall: newsrooms are decimated around the country. Senior staff, cub reporters, editors and managers are victims of layoffs and cutbacks. Declining ad revenues and the rise of free online news sources have hit both print and broadcast media outlets, and hit them hard.

Just one recent example: a Florida newspaper, Sarasota Herald-Tribunelaid off 48 people from the newspaper and the cable news operation, SNN News 6, to cut costs and remain financially viable.

What does this mean for news reporting, today and in the future? And what does it mean for companies’ media relations programs?

Wire stories predominate. Look closely at the pages of your local newspaper, and you’ll find many more stories from wire services – Associated Press, Reuters, United Press International, plus syndicated wire services. These stories are fed to media across the nation; without the staff to do original reporting, more of their content will come from the wire.

  • Takeaway: Wire stories need to be a priority in every national campaign. Packing the elements for these stories – a national issue, original information or content, real people examples, and a broad scope – is essential.

Reporters who once covered one beat may now cover several. Consequently, the health care reporter may come into a story knowing very little about health care. At a local level, they may have come straight from real estate, personal finance, or entertainment – and still be covering those topics as well. The same situation occurs at top tier media. For example, Scott Public Relations arranged an interview on healthcare reform with a senior reporter at a major national news magazine, who had just been assigned to healthcare.

  • Takeaway: Our job here is to work with these reporters to help educate them, providing resources and building relationships in the process. The benefit is a new and hopefully, long term relationship and the opportunity to get more in-depth coverage on this particular story by being the essential informational resource to make the reporter’s job a little easier.

There is less bandwidth for investigative stories. Before having a sigh of relief, let’s note that those topics that are chosen for investigation will have “legs” to be worth the investment of time and resources. Witness the multi-year coverage by the Los Angeles Times of California’s health plans.

  • Takeaway: Don’t relax yet. A new crop of investigative journalists is rising up as we write this.

While print and broadcast may be contracting, online and new reporting sources (such as the Kaiser News Foundation as reported in SPR’s blog post “The Future of Healthcare Journalism: Foundation News Bureaus?”) are growing in reach and influence.

  • Takeaway: Take the search for media influencers online – find the bloggers, the media-sponsored blogs and online columns, and even the news feeds and aggregators that are getting information to your audiences, and target them for interviews and articles.

So, the proverbial silver lining in this cloud may not yet be apparent for the displaced writers and reporters. We hope and believe that they will find “second acts” in other niches within the communications field. For public relations professionals, the insight is to recognize the impact of these upheavals and adapt to the changing order.

For more public relations insights…