Change Happens: Change With It

 

Happy New Year. January is often the month of renewal. Goals are set, lists are made, workout clothes are purchased. You know the routine. On a global scale, we can probably all agree that we need to walk slowly into 2021. Feel it out for a minute before committing to anything hardcore.

2020 was wild. How is it in a year where everyone had an opinion and most likely disagreed with everyone about almost everything can we collectively agree on that single issue? Change happened whether you were on board with it or not. I live in Mobile, Alabama, and we had to get incredibly comfortable with the uncomfortable feeling of landing yet again in the cone of uncertainty. James Spann should have just rented out a condo this year. 

Hi there, I am Amanda Young, and if this is the first time you have landed on my blog, I would like to invite you to join my journey here over the next eight weeks as I discuss emerging communication trends. If you followed along previously, welcome back.

I am currently a Troy University graduate student pursuing a M.S. in Strategic Communications. When I began this blog, it was for my first class and focused mostly on communication theories. This past semester I completed my fifth class and officially kicked off 2021 with classes six and seven of ten. I have thoroughly enjoyed pursuing this degree and hope that the next set of blog posts will carry more weight and knowledge with the added experience under my belt.

I stated the following in my first blog post, but I wanted to give a recap of how I ended up on this path if you are new. Almost a decade ago, I received my B.F.A. in Graphic Design from Auburn University. After graduation, I spent three years working in the publications unit for the Alabama Cooperative Extension System at Auburn. In 2013, I moved closer to the beautiful Gulf Coast. I landed a job working for Feeding the Gulf Coast, a hunger-relief organization serving 24-counties throughout Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida Panhandle. My initial role was graphic design heavy. I took on developing a brand system that covered everything from in-house forms to external publications. In 2016, the food bank rebranded from Bay Area Food Bank to Feeding the Gulf Coast. 

My role shifted dramatically in 2017. I began to manage the entire marketing department for the three states. Shortly after realizing how in over my head I was, I became involved with the Mobile Chapter of the Public Relations Council of Alabama to develop professionally. I decided to pursue my APR, but I realized I desired a more in-depth communications education through that process. After a lot of consideration, I decided to pursue Troy's online Strategic Communications degree.

As a side note, I am still pursuing my APR and serve on the board of PRCA, both locally and on the state level. You can say the last seven years, I have changed my approach to communication. 

So while I still value and love good design, I have a deeper understanding of how valuable listening to your audience is to effective communication. Regardless if your message is distributed visually, audibly, digitally, or physically, the vital aspect remains that you must understand your target audience. You must know how they consume messaging, how they relate to messaging, and how they trust messaging. Above all, you must be willing to adapt your approach to fit their needs.

The Times-they are a-changin 'as Dylan sang in the 60s. Perhaps he meant any of the numerous newspapers carrying Times in their name. In art school, I remember professors talking about the laborious process of setting type and creating graphics for print. There were jobs for various steps along the way. Then one day, the world no longer needed those jobs because software and fancy processing systems were available. I also remember the days of heading to the drug store photo lab to drop off my disposable camera after a week at a Summer camp for processing. Now I have 8,623 photos on my phone backed up simultaneously to a magical thing called the CLOUD. 

Life has a way of changing things, sometimes slowly, other times fiercely. Discoveries lead to new processes and new habits. Over time, those habits become set, and some systems do not survive. 

Some systems can survive if only they choose to evolve with the times. Newspapers have had to adapt over the years, but a lack of adopting the digital revolution early on has led to a severe decline in readership, revenue, and job security. (PEW, 2019)

Short-sighted media companies missed the digital train, and now they are frantically running behind it with little hope to catch up. As they could have learned from Jeff Bezos, who purchased the Washington Post and is doing quite well in the aftermath of 2020, "The three big ideas at Amazon are long-term thinking, customer obsession, and willingness to invent." (Genachowski, 2013)

Things change all the time. My in-laws paid the bills by delivering newspapers when they were younger. Is that even still a valid side hustle? I use to love Book Fairs when I was a child. Now when I go to a book store, I don't particularly appreciate checking out because the clerks are pushing magazine subscriptions like their paycheck depends on the commission. Even in those bookstores, it seems like people are mostly browsing instead of purchasing a book because it's usually cheaper on Amazon.

In my first blog post, I discussed the theory of diffusion of innovation; you can read that here. To break the idea down quickly, digital consumption is here to stay, and if you are just accepting that fact, you might fall into the laggard category. 

You can earn degrees entirely online, and they are valid! You can work 100% remotely. Sure, that doesn't mean there isn't value in the traditional ways, but traditional methods must recognize that they are not the only game in town. The internet has expanded the way we do virtually everything, from education, how we watch and consume tv, to the way we interact with our coworkers. Teleportation may not exist (yet), but we can travel virtually anywhere in seconds-given we have a decent internet connection.

Now the question is, can newspapers bounce back at all? 2020 changed the way people shop, interact and consume media. (Deggans, 2020) As we waltz into 2021, will some habits remain permanent, or can we regain some of the old ways of doing things?

Thanks for reading along this week. Be sure to find your way back to this blog by bookmarking: https://amanda-c-young.blogspot.com.