We May Have Voted on a New Media Landscape

The recent election saw campaigns in both parties employ different media strategies. What will this mean for political communications as well as public relations in the private and nonprofit sectors?

After every election there is a lot of punditry. We are not in short supply about why the winner won and the loser lost. Polls are taken, strategies are evaluated, and plans are set for the next campaign season.

But there is something happening now in post-election 2024 that seems to a tipping point with significant change in the media landscape and public relations practice. It is on the order of FDR’s fireside chats on radio or the televised debate between Kennedy and Nixon.

There have been many articles about the role of media and changing media platform preferences of campaigns and voters in the last election cycle. This article in the Wall Street Journal reports significant viewership declines on election night and during the campaigns compared to four years ago. The conclusion is that legacy media have lost viewership, relevance and their traditional gatekeeping function. Candidates have found new gates, or even simply broken down the fence and the gate along with it to extend that theoretical metaphor.

This is a non-partisan phenomenon. You saw one or both candidates eschew debates, abandon press conferences, move toward appearances with entertainers, and most significantly in my view sit down for interviews with podcasters, most famously the “Call Her Daddy” podcast with Kamala Harris and the Joe Rogan Experience podcast interview with Donald Trump. These are the number 1 (Rogan) and 2 (Call Her Daddy) podcasts on Spotify in terms of views, and drew a large and specific audience that exceeded the numbers of Saturday Night Live, CNN, Fox or any of the networks.

Unlike political pundits, I am not going to make specific predictions. But I do have a list of questions that will be interesting to watch going forward. We may find in 2028 and beyond that 2024 was our generation’s Kennedy-Nixon debate in terms of change to media landscape and resulting communication strategy.

1. Who is in WH briefing room? Will podcasters and independent journalists get passes to be part of the White House press pool, given their impact on public attention and opinion? Will there even be a press briefing given the avoidance of press conferences and PIOs avoidance of details? It may be the White House and other political agencies post statements to their web site. This has been happening on the White House Briefing Room website for several presidencies and may be enough. Interested citizens can use an RSS feed to read these directly and avoid the media filter. This could be the case in both campaign and governance mode.

2. What is the role of the White House press secretary? Will there even be a press secretary if changes in number one happen. Maybe they will be engaging new media outlets one on one, or focused on writing internal tactics and worried less if at all about taking the podium.

3. Will media availability shift to podcasters and independent journalists as the norm? As noted above, will interview availability of politicians and their staff follow the audience and we’ll see more on socials and podcasts and Substack outlets than traditional media? I anticipate we will see more of that, but it may be the case that traditional media are an afterthought to a podcast in a reversal from today.

4. Will media relations continue to be less of a priority in exchange for paid media and in-house tactics? Early PR practitioners from Edward Bernard to Arthur Page started saying 100 years ago that the profession was far more than news releases. Some still perceive of and practice public relations as if the term PR stands for press release. That may finally erode as professionals are buying ads and sponsored articles and posts or generating their own digital assets from blogs to podcasts to socials. This is happening already and may increase exponentially.

5. Will media targeting be increasingly ideological vs demographic? Media theorists always argue about whether the media affect public opinion or respond to it. Regardless, we have long had a partisan media (even back in the 1700s if you study your history). The question is, going forward will there be more targeting of media on ideology than geography or demographics? Some of this targeting could be to enter “hostile” territory to not just encourage a base of like-minded but attempt to do some old fashioned persuasion.

6. Will we see a return of long-form interviews? The Kamala Harris interview on “Call Her Daddy” was 44 minutes. Trump sat with Joe Rogan for three hours. Both are longer than typical network TV or national radio interviews. It leads to another question….

7. Will content strategy favor authenticity vs spin? Some reports and polls indicate that people responded favorably to details and rationale based on policy as opposed to vague and emotional performative statements. Perhaps political communication professionals will craft speaking points that get into depth and making a case as opposed to creating an image and maintaining a narrative. It would be refreshing.

8. Will the changes in media and public relations strategy extend from just politics to the business and nonprofit sectors? My background before becoming a full-time professor was public relations in the non profit and higher education sector. Such organizations have always had a media mix, but the balance may tilt even more away from media relations to other tactics and strategies. This is due not just to public media habits but the sad reality of a shrinking news room for local media who do not have the capacity to do as many interviews or stories as in the past.

Shortly after the founding of our republic, the First Amendment was passed, granting a set of special freedoms to citizens. The most famous of them was “freedom of the press.” But this was never about journalism. It was a response to censorship via the Stamp Act, and afforded freedom to produce and distribute information to anyone who happened to own a literal printing press. They happened to be printers, who in addition to handbills and other documents printed a new form of media called a newspaper.

Today the means of production for information is ubiquitous. That freedom is embraced by many. And the public has freedom as well in terms of to what they will attend to. The public relations professionals guiding politicians, not to mention businesses and nonprofit organizations, are smart. They will respond to changes afoot. I am excited to watch how.