Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

It’s no secret the traditional news industry is on the ropes. Recently, the BBC slashed another 1,000 jobs. Viewership on US news networks like Fox, CNN and MSNBC has dropped 19 percent since 2009. Newspapers have cut more than a third of their workforce in the last 25 years.

But here’s the thing: these dismal stats don’t reflect actual demand. Viewers and readers aren’t abandoning the news; instead, they’re switching over to social media and other online sources in droves. The number of people who consume news via major social networks has significantly spiked in just two years, with the majority of Twitter users (63 percent) and Facebook users (63 percent) now saying they get their news from the platforms.

Not surprisingly, social media giants have been racing to take advantage of this increasing demand—bringing in more and more news elements to their platforms and making it easier than ever for users to get convenient, timely information via their social feeds. In the years to come, social media will only have a bigger impact on how news is distributed, consumed (and ultimately monetized). To get an idea of what the future might look like, here’s peek inside the playbooks of some of the biggest players:...

It looked like a garden-variety promotional tweet, designed to attract attention to the AP’s big investigation into allegations of conflict of interest on the part of the Democratic presidential candidate. But by trying too hard to drum up interest in the piece, the wire service made itself the target instead.

The post made a significant, and startling, claim. Namely, that “more than half those who met Clinton as Cabinet secretary gave money to Clinton Foundation.” Surely this was compelling evidence of a conflict.

As sharp-eyed reporters for competing news outlets noted within minutes of the tweet and article being posted, however, this statistic was only true if you ignored the thousands of government officials, dignitaries, and so on that Clinton met in her capacity as Secretary of State....