New Technologies in Food Communications
Recently, I attended the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ conference in Denver. Attendance this year numbered 700, just half the usual expected for this major conference. The economy is taking its toll.
I was especially interested in a session called The Changing Food Section. With competition from blogs and Web sites, some newspaper food editors are going multi-media — producing their own videos, writing blogs and tweeting as a means of branding themselves. Imprinting a personality onto the community in multiple ways helps to make an editor a bit more indispensible to the newspaper. Imagine the uproar if the food editor who visibly and actively supports all community activities — even participating in a pancake eating contest (Flip videoed and linked to the newspaper’s Web site, of course) — is dismissed. Today’s food editors are covering the news and making themselves part of the story, 24/7. Good strategy for holding on to your job.
The bigger issue, of course, is how newspapers will survive in the world of instant and free communication from online sources. Food is an especially active topic — every food enthusiast has a blog in a time when newspapers are laying off experienced food editors at an alarming rate.
In last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, (subscription required) Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt suggests new delivery methods to save newspapers, including a system of micropayments. In this model, newspapers would support themselves with online ad revenue, which Schmidt insists “…still is the best way to reach a large audience. ” Additional revenue would come from charging a few cents for each article of customized content — you pay only for what you want to read. Google wants to work with newspapers to test such models.
For PR practioners, the type of press package we put together for the media is changing to meet new needs. The most important thing we can do is to keep up with technology so we can identify those needs. Because no matter what the delivery, good information is still an important commodity and food editors who have to fill so many channels with content should welcome some help — as long as it’s useful information, not self-promoting fluff.
Experiencing new technologies first-hand is key. Which is why I started a pioneering Web site in 1995, recipe.com, (link courtesy of Way Back Machine Web archive) to find out how the Internet would impact food information delivery when most Americans hadn’t even heard of the World Wide Web. And why I started my Twitter account and joined the Foodbuzz community more recently.
Change happens. We just need to forsee and adapt.
