How New Media Techniques Are Freeing the Hostages of Old Media

“The Internet’s “Transparency Anarchy” Ultimately a Good Thing,” a U.S. communications expert tells delegates from 38 countries at Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

PARIS (August 2, 2010) – New Web-based, social and viral online media is creating enormous opportunities for national and international organizations to rally and recruit people to back causes and issues -- even to battle corruption and bribery.

This is according to James McQueeny, chairman of the Newark, N.J.-based communications company, Winning Strategies. He was invited to speak at an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conference of 38 member countries on the influence of new media in reaching critical constituencies.

McQueeny said the online world has effectively eclipsed the traditional mediums of print, television and radio in both numbers and influence.

"If Facebook were a nation, its 500 million strong international community of users would rank as the third-largest country on the planet, behind only China and India," McQueeny told the representatives.

The birth pangs of these new mediums are creating a form of transparency anarchy, that while producing enormous volumes of information, also generates a great deal of erroneous news, unsupportable allegations, as well as social slights and cultural offense, McQueeny said.

“The same transparency anarchy that produces an unpleasant and uncomfortable aspect is also exposing and disclosing information that is frequently underplayed or totally ignored by mainstream media outlets who have become financially constrained to cut conventional news-gathering operations,” McQueeny said.

McQueeny says many non-government organizations (NGOs) are filling that vacuum and replacing conventional, old-media news gatherers themselves, and posting their reports and news online.

Those organizations are using their own staff and resources in the field to disseminate information online to even mainstream media, or, more frequently, directly to targeted influencers and opinion leaders most interested in their work, or the issue itself, McQueeny said.

“Old Media outlets that would have rejected using stories or videos from these sources a half dozen years ago, now accept this information because they themselves do not field their former news-gathering staffs, or send them to where the news is happening,” McQueeny added.

McQueeny specifically cited Human Rights Watch, an organization using its own staff worldwide to report and record stories that are either put out on their own E-Networks, or contributed as source material to other media outlets. The combined staff numbers make it a news-gathering organization far bigger than the cumulative foreign affairs staffs of all the major U.S. newspapers today.

A recent Columbia Journalism Review analysis of Human Rights Watch’s website activity said the outlet is achieving more than 60,000 page views per day, more than many of the online sites of better-known traditional media outlets, McQueeny noted.

The speech was given by McQueeny at the invitation of the OECD as a member of the London-based International Public Relations Association, and in the capacity of being IPRA’s representative and public relations counsel to the United Nations’ Department of Public Information.

About Winning Strategies (www.winningstrat.com) Winning Strategies offers a range of expertise such as strategic issues counsel, media relations, Internet technology services, corporate positioning, crisis management, media training, issues management and public affairs for an array of international, national and New Jersey-based clients, including Protecting America, Prudential Global, Ford and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Winning Strategies recently received a Stevie Award from the American Business Awards for a social media program. The campaign, engineered for Verizon FiOS, allowed fans of pop singer Taylor Swift to produce their own karaoke videos and compete in a Web-based sweepstakes. The campaign was named “Communications or PR Campaign of the Year – Social Media Focused.” Other honorees at the Stevie Awards included such well-known brands as Hilton Hotels and J.P. Morgan Chase and Company.