AMPERAGE Marketing & Fundraising

One-Minute MarketerTimes, They Are a Changin’

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Times, They Are a Changin’

News is changing. Where we get our news is changing. And the amount of time we spend with news is changing.

Our need for news is changing: Millennials consume 30% less news than people over the age of 38.

The fact is that people consume news from a variety of outlets.

FT_18.07.24_SOTNMTakeaways_audienceThat means the dilution begins to impact all media.  Audiences for all news media dropped last year, except for radio (mostly bolstered by National Public Radio and Public Radio International).  Granted, there was some postelection letdown on news viewing, but for some, this trend is worrisome.

Yet take a look at our news outlets: Most remain unchanged for the past 30 years. A newspaper looks the same. A TV newscast looks the same. News hole. Weather hole. Sports hole. Weather kicker. It’s the same stuff, different day.

Innovation is needed in news. The only signs of innovation are in the digital coverage from the New York Times.  When you do the same thing over and over again and expect different results, that is the news media watching interest fall.

Written by:

Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle. After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant. He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.” Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.” One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College. Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board. Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.