You can expect to see a little less of your favorite 9News reporters and anchors over the next few months. The station’s parent company, Tegna, announced that most employees will be required to take one week of unpaid time off before the end of June.
Additionally, “news directors and station heads of technology will receive a commensurate 8% temporary pay reduction and general managers and corporate senior vice presidents and above will receive a 20% temporary pay reduction,” according to a statement from Tegna.
As a reminder, Tegna raked in $140 million in political ads alone in the 2018 mid-term election season, a number that will no doubt balloon later this year with the upcoming presidential election. Do not expect Tegna to reimburse employees for the lost wages once that revenue bonanza hits.
Hugh Williams, the longtime head of the Denver office of global public relations firm Weber Shandwick, has taken the position of CMO at injury prevention and recovery technology company Addaday. Williams built Weber Shandwick’s endurance sports practice and led the strategy, development and execution of award-winning integrated sports marketing campaigns. He will be based in Boulder.
Williams will be joined by Kristin Goett, who was named Addaday’s Communications Director. She brings five years of in-house communications experience across brands including DISH Network and the University of Denver. She also has been a columnist for Triathlete Magazine.
What impact is COVID-19 having on PR campaigns? According to a PRWeek survey:
- Consumer and brand campaigns are most affected
- 40% of in-house respondents said their budgets have already been cut (24% also said their budgets have increased)
- 26% percent of respondents said hiring is frozen and 16% said layoffs have occurred
- 43% of agency respondents said clients have reduced retainers (although only 24% of in-house respondents said they have reduced them)
Filed under: Public Relations
Global public relations firm Edelman has released a COVID-19 edition of its annual Trust Barometer, and among the findings:
- Ongoing trust issues with government and media has left employers as the most credible source of information for workers
- Unsurprisingly, scientists and doctors remain the most trusted spokespeople
- Employees want regular updates from their employers, with 63 percent asking for daily updates
- Employees expect businesses to act to protect employees and the local community, including by adapting its operations, including remote working, canceling non-essential events and business travel bans
You can read the executive summary and full report here.
Filed under: Public Relations
Voice Media Group, the parent company of Westword and other alternative weeklies nationwide that rely heavily on restaurant and other advertising, has take draconian steps to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic. From Travis Waldron and Tara Golshan at HuffPost:
“Every employee of Voice Media Group, which includes Denver Westword, … had their pay cut: 25% for employees making less than $80,000, 30% for those making more than that, and 35% for executives.”
In December 2019, Westword followed the Colorado Sun, which itself followed the model of NPR/CPR, in positioning itself as membership-driven public-interest journalism enterprise. If you want to support Westword to help it and its staff survive this pandemic, click here.
And just a quick PSA: Subscribe to every publication you read. Most of us will never notice the $5-10 per month each of them cost, and it makes a huge difference in the ability of those publications to do great work. Imagine what a bleak information landscape we’d have if other news outlets went the way of the Rocky Mountain News.
Filed under: Public Relations
“… I’m not looking to be in a situation where I make the front page of the news for being that guy who hoarded 20,000 bottles of sanitizer that I’m selling for 20 times what they cost me.”
– Matt Colvin, a professional profiteer who participated in an in-depth New York Times interview that included a photo shoot.
Filed under: Public Relations
Former KMGH/Channel 7 VP & GM Byron Grandy will return to Denver as the new GM of the KDVR/KWGN joint news operation. Grandy left KMGH in 2014, and most recently was GM at WNCN in Raleigh, N.C.
