Three Things for August 19, 2021
From the Public Impact Group
This week’s Three Things for public media leaders looks at:
Where Do Your Podcasts Land in the Grid of Pain?
Bridging the Divide between the Media and American Conservative and Right-Leaning Audiences
Don’t Overlook the Philanthropic Opportunity with Gen X
THING ONE: Avoid The Swarm and Become One of The Superstars
Steve Goldstein is a really smart guy. He’s created successful radio formats and was a founding partner of Saga Communications. He runs a consulting firm, Amplifi, that works with audio producers on strategy in this moment of digital transformation.
Last week, Goldstein’s blog discussed the “Podcast Grid of Pain” that hit it out of the park to deep left-center, urging producers to honestly assess how a podcast fits into the increasingly crowded podcast ecosystem.
The sweet spot, according to Goldstein, is the upper right quadrant (in blue and identified as “The Superstars”) which is where “everyone wants to be,” but few actually get there. This is particularly true at the local station level, where resources are stretched.
If your podcast isn’t generating the recommendations or awareness needed for growth, it is worth diagnostically looking at this grid and assessing where things stand. Look inward and think about the topics and execution as well as other podcasts with similar content. Not every podcast is poised for greatness, and as they say, trees don’t grow to the sky.1
Most public radio stations probably are not spending enough time really assessing our content and the megaphones we use - or need to use - to build an audience to bring the ROI for these significant content investments. That’s why most podcasts live in the lower-left quadrant known as “The Swarm.”
Goldstein notes that the lower-right quadrant, described as The Hopefuls, is where many very good podcasts reside. They are well-produced and unique but suffer from low awareness. We’ve been lucky in public radio to have this reserved space on the broadcast dial that has allowed audiences to discover our content sometimes by accident. However, in the on-demand audio space, we need to be much more thoughtful and work much harder to get recommendations and generate awareness to build the audience and loyalty to thrive.
Goldstein is also an advocate for the “PodQuest” process derived from design thinking, similar to Project Catapult training that PRX has offered to public media organizations.
I recently stumbled across this video from last year by Werner Puchert, a Digital Strategist based in Poland, who shares his thoughts on applying design thinking in developing a podcast. The video is a little quirky, but his approach to design thinking and the podcast concept whiteboard is a good tool to help in the podcast planning phase. Puchart specifically details how to use the whiteboard in the video.
THING TWO: Six Approaches to Better Connect with Conservative and Right-leaning Audiences
Last week’s Three Things mentioned the Trusting News project as an excellent resource for public media journalism organizations to build credibility and transparency with audiences in this time of media polarization in America. Earlier this year, the Center for Media Engagement joined with Trusting News and 27 local newsrooms to find out how news organizations can help bridge the divide between the media and American conservative and right-leaning audiences.
Three public media organizations (KCUR | Kansas City, New Hampshire Public Radio, and WITF | Harrisburg, PA) were part of the research study.
The study's goal was to understand better the societal and psychological forces that influence polarization and perceptions of news. The results, released this week, come from questionnaire responses from more than 3,400 Americans that led to 91 in-depth interviews with news consumers across the country.
The first takeaway from the interviews and surveys showed that those who self-identify as conservatives said they often felt portrayed stereotypically in the news and believe that journalists have a bias against conservatives and those with right-leaning viewpoints2.
With these preconceived notions about most journalists, plus the general sense that their political identity is built around the idea of being anti-media, the research points to many areas for news organizations to consider to improve the trust and relationship with this sector of American society.
The survey responses showed little consistency in where participants get their news, supporting the idea that this is a varied group of individuals.
The researchers, Marley Duchovnay3 and Gina M. Masullo, came away with three key findings from the study, none of which should come as a surprise given our current political climate.
Concerns about whether national news is believable or trustworthy: Participants perceived local news outlets much more favorably than national news outlets. Many described local news as playing a vital role in their lives. For local news, trust was higher for local TV station affiliates than for local newspapers.
Concerns about portrayals of conservative and right-leaning Americans: Many participants expressed concerns that the news media stereotype conservatives and those with right-leaning views as having the same opinions about race, Donald Trump, and other issues, or by depicting all conservatives as extremists. They urged journalists to provide a more nuanced view of people with conservative and right-leaning beliefs and opinions and include various voices in stories.
Perceptions of bias in news coverage: Perceptions of bias in the news were commonly raised concerns. Participants stressed that bias is a complicated notion that includes the stories journalists cover (or don’t cover), how journalists ask questions, and what they inferred were journalists’ attitudes toward the issues in their stories.
From the data collected, the researchers suggest six approaches that newsrooms can take to help bridge the divide that exists between the media and conservative and right-leaning audiences:
Build relationships with people who have conservative and right-leaning viewpoints in your community and listen to them.
Include a variety of voices from people with conservative and right-leaning views in stories. However, journalists should be cautious of using “conservative” or other terms as catch-all labels for people with very different beliefs.
Consider the diversity of political beliefs and backgrounds when hiring for the newsroom.
Focus on story facts, not interpretation.
Correct mistakes promptly to demonstrate trustworthiness.
Don’t criticize only one side of an issue.
To help local newsrooms and journalists bridge the political divides in our nation and local communities, Trusting News has announced a new initiative that I hope many in public media will embrace.
The Pluralism Network invites journalists into conversations and collaborations addressing how journalism can reach and be trusted by a more diverse audience with fact-based, responsible journalism. The goal is to strengthen trust across the political spectrum by helping journalists bridge divides, foster productive conversations and fuel open-mindedness.
THING THREE: Philanthropy and an Identity Split Within Generation X
The demographic group that we identify as Gen X gets caught and often ignored in research studies due to the influence and larger population of baby boomers and millennials that dominate our strategic thinking.
Last year, the fundraising and marketing consultancy RKD Group commissioned research to gather much-needed insights about what drives Gen X, which RKD describes as the next big cohort of wealth in North America. As more and more Baby Boomers shift into retirement age, Generation X stands poised to make the biggest impact on charitable giving in the coming decades.
NPR’s Audience Profile 2020 shows that the median age of a public radio listener is 53 and that the percentage Gen X listeners to public radio closely mirrors the general population in America4. This all depends, of course, on how you define the age cohort of Generation X5.
For the RKD Group research, they broke down the generations slightly different than what I’ve typically seen, extending the age cohort of Gen Xers and Millenials. According to Josh McQueen, co-founder of research firm McQueen, Mackin & Associates, who worked on this research project, each generation is approximately 18 years, and each generation is roughly the same size.
For the sake of this study, we’ll go with this assessment, although I’m sure that it could result in some passionate conversation as to whether it’s accurate or not.
So what did the research find?
First, the research shows that Generation X is actually two generations in one:
Older Gen X: Born 1965-1973
Younger Gen X: Born 1974-1983
The defining split coincides with the rise of digital technology.
Put simply, Older Gen X reached adulthood in a mostly analog world. Younger Gen X had their childhood and adolescence defined by home computers and the screech of dial-up modems connecting to the internet.
Digital and the Internet mean different things for these two groups, in behavior and attitude. For example, older Gen Xers see the world more like Baby Boomers, while Younger Gen Xers align more with Millennials.
Another interesting outcome from the study connects Gen X with the events of the past 18 months. McKinsey research from last year reported that COVID-19 brought about a rapid migration to digital technologies. This helped, according to the study, accelerate the giving behaviors of Generation X forward five years (or more) because of their already strong adoption of technology.
In short, the RKD Group notes that this is a demographic that’s primed to connect with causes. Here’s why:
Gen X sees a connection to nonprofits as a part of their identity and does their research. This means content marketing and a firm expression of why to support your cause is important.
Gen X is digitally connected. Lean into mobile and streaming strategies, including integrated direct mail.
Gen X is financially stable. In fact, many reports show that they weathered the pandemic best.
The Gen Xer groups ' split becomes clearer when you dig deeper into why donors choose to support organizations. Older Gen Xers and Baby Boomers indicated more interest in the traditional support model of making a financial contribution and receiving impact reports of the work being done by the organization.
Younger Gen Xers and Millennials—far more immersed in the realm of social media influencers—showed a strong affinity for helping to increase the clout and reach of nonprofits.
These reasons provide some excellent food for thought in how nonprofits can target messaging and benefits to reach specific groups. The same is true for the motivations for why donors choose not to support a nonprofit.
The biggest reason for losing support—which should be on every nonprofit’s radar—is mission drift. Therefore, charitable organizations need to stay true to their cause and values.
Millennials and Younger Gen Xers feel strongly that the government should use tax dollars to provide services instead of leaving them to nonprofits. However, when compared to Older Gen X and Baby Boomers, the younger pair also show a far more pessimistic view of nonprofits:
Charities don’t let donors specify where donations go
Nonprofits treat the symptoms instead of the core problems
They don’t keep up with new ways to accomplish their missions
They don’t develop new ways to earn money
In terms of generational attitudes, Gen X as a whole stands alone in their outlook on life. Here, the data shows Millennials and Baby Boomers are more aligned with their views of life and upbringing.
Millennials and Baby Boomers were more likely to say:
I feel like my life is heading in the right direction
My generation has more than its fair share of naturally born leaders
Gen Xers were more likely to say:
Many who know me would say I’m just naturally skeptical
I resent how little time my parents spent with me growing up6
The study showed a fascinating contrast between the two Gen X groups to a series of questions designed to identify several core value dimensions ranging from self-reliance vs. caring about others, adventurous vs. responsible, embracing change vs. desiring security, and being a leader vs. being a part of a team.
Regarding these core values, the study notes that Younger Gen Xers align more closely with Millennials, while Older Gen Xers align strongly with Baby Boomers.
The full report is available online, along with an excellent Persona Guide for all four age groups that provide additional specifics on giving and attitudes.
From Amplifi Media’s Blogstein blog.
The researchers acknowledge that “conservative” should not be used as a catch-all term to describe how a particular group thinks, feels, or acts.
Marley Duchovnay is a research associate at the Center for Media Engagement. Gina M. Masullo (Ph.D., Syracuse University) is the associate director for the Center for Media Engagement and an associate professor in the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.
SOURCE: MRI-Simmons Doublebase 2019.
The NPR Audience Profile defines GenXers as born between 1965 - 1976.
This ties back to the concept of “latchkey kids.” Generation X was born between 1965 and 1983 when the traditional family model began to change. This transformation left more children to look after themselves with less parental supervision.