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COSIDA/NFL PR DIRECTORS COMMUNICATIONS WEBINARMay 11, 2010Scott BerchtoldMark DaltonMichael SignoraTony WylieJUSTIN DOHERTY: Thanks for joining us. Appreciate you all taking the time. We obviously appreciate our guests from the National Football League taking their time to visit with us today. The format for the call, basically I'll present a topic. I'll ask each of our NFL reps to provide their thoughts and then we'll just continue on in that manner. Some questions have been emailed in and we will try to get those addressed as well. If you do have questions during the call or right now, you can email those. Let me do quick introductions of our NFL guests. Tony Wylie is vice president of communications with the Houston Texans. Tony has been with the NFL for 17 years, including 10 with the Texans, and he's actually just been named senior vice president of the Washington Redskins. Congratulations, Tony. A native of Brooklyn, Wylie and his staff have earned the Pete Roselle Award, given to the league's best PR staff four times, including once each with the Rams and Titans and twice with the Texans. He is the only executive in the NFL to win the award with three different teams. Wylie, who has worked the last eight Super Bowls, was a student assistant in the SID office at Texas Southern, where he earned a journalism degree and also has an MBA from Rice. Scott Berchtold is vice president of communications for the Buffalo Bills. He was named to his current position in January 1999. He joined the Bills in March of 1989 as manager of media relations before serving as director of media relations beginning in 1991. He has served on 23 NFL Super Bowl PR staffs, served as the assistant PR director for the Green Bay Packers from '85 to '88, and was the SID at Wisconsin Oshkosh in 1981 to 1984. He attended Illinois and graduated from Southern Illinois in 1978. Holds a masters in sports administration from Ohio University. Mark Dalton, vice president of media relations with the Arizona Cardinals. Mark enters his seventh season with the Cardinals and oversees the team's media relations operations. In April 2009 the Cardinals were recognized with the Pete Roselle Award from the Pro Football Writers of America as the league's top staff. Prior to joining the Cardinals, Dalton served on the PR staffs of the Bills and the Eagles. He worked for the New Jersey Devils of the NHL and Birmingham Barracudas of the CFL. A native of Westchester, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of Temple. Lastly, Mike Signora, director of media relations and international communications for the NFL. Mike enters his 15th season as a member of the NFL's PR department. He was appointed to his current position in October of '06. He's responsible for media operations at all NFL events, including the Super Bowl, Pro Bowl and the NFL Draft. He oversees all football publicity efforts for the league, driving media coverage to support multiple NFL initiatives and serving as spokesman to the media on key league issues and policies. He's responsible for publicizing and promoting numerous endeavors to enhance the profile of football internationally, and he is a key point of contact with the growing number of international media that cover the NFL. He is a graduate of Penn State. Wanted to let you know who you're visiting with here. We'll go ahead and get going. I think the first topic we had was the opportunities and challenges associated with the growth and impact of non-traditional media. I'm sure everyone on the call knows what that means. If you could just maybe offer your thoughts in that regard. I'll start with Tony. TONY WYLIE: I'll touch on the subject of the challenges. Basically you have people nowadays just really posting stuff on websites. It's getting covered everywhere. We usually have to have the challenge of who should get access, who do we provide credentials with these non-traditional media. Bottom line is it's usually relationships. If we have relationships nowadays with people losing jobs in newspapers, and they start with a website, another position, if we know the person and we trust the person, we have a relationship with the person, usually we'll be okay with that. Nowadays, with the TMZ Sports, things like that, it's really a challenge to really try to monitor those things. So I think the bottom line, it's relationships, usually in communication with our peers. If we don't know or are not familiar with something, we'll usually call the league or someone else. Usually we provide a united front on certain outlets. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Scott? SCOTT BERCHTOLD: Let me first say since Tony took the challenges, I will address the opportunities. How is that? First of all, the first topic, I think my NFL colleagues would agree, we could sit here all day and talk about that one subject. It's the newest thing in the neighborhood and it's the thing that, quite frankly, we stress with our players and our coaches in much of our media training now. Some of that traditional media training that we've done for years with players and coaches has really changed in that now we're talking more about social media, the opportunities that players and coaches have with that, and obviously the pitfalls that come with that that they have to be aware of and very careful. The opportunities out there they have is that if a player really wants to take advantage of the social media and opportunities that are out there, he can present himself, he can present his message in a completely different way than what was available to players and coaches in the past, even the organization itself. We monitor through the PR department all of our players' and coaches' Twitter accounts, their websites, any other media vehicle that they can use on their own. Many of them in this day and age have their own PR assistants outside of the organization. We're in constant contact with those people as well. It's something where, again, if a player really wants to take advantage of it, he can get a message out there regardless of the subject. Maybe it's what he thinks is the best pizza place in the city in which he's playing or maybe it's that he's been injured and he wants to get the word out there to his fans that watch him particularly that he's okay, that type of thing. What we have to do as a department now is not only monitor it but realize that those avenues exist and help the players formulate what they want to say. It takes a lot of additional manpower from what we're used to, but it's also a tremendous opportunity that we can use that's out of the traditional arena such as press releases that come out from the team and the media guides, so on and so forth. So it's a great opportunity, even to the point where the coaches have an opportunity to do something as well. As Mike may address, there are certain guidelines that the NFL strictly adheres to. Obviously, during a game, NFL personnel cannot be using their Twitter account, that type of thing. We always have to remind players of that. Even though for the most part now they're used to it and they understand it, we still have to remind them, especially in our media training we go through with the guys. Again, I can't stress enough, if you want to get a particular message out, there are certainly other ways to do it now with the social media avenues that exist. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mark? MARK DALTON: I think Scott said it well when he said we could talk all day on the topic of non-traditional media and the growth and impact. As Tony mentioned, there's the challenges of ascertaining who to give access to, who to credential. That's challenging. It's also had an impact on the general mainstream media in terms of the attitudes being different in a lot of ways the rules changing. It's not just our industry, not just sports, but I think you see it in political coverage, entertainment coverage. There's so much more of an emphasis because of the technology, there's so much more emphasis on immediacy and volume perhaps more than there is depth and thoughtful analysis. That certainly changes the way we approach dealing with the media and preparing our people to work with them. You know, those are some of the challenges in addition to what Scott and Tony have talked about. The opportunities, you know, I think the other guys talked on it, too. But because there's better technology, there's more available to you. There's a lot more opportunities to tell your story. There's better ways to connect with media. There's more outlets, 'outlets' in some cases, but there's more ways to get our stories out. Those are all good things. There's more ways to connect directly with your fans in non-traditional ways, and that's a good thing. You know, as professionals in this industry, I guess our challenge is how do we embrace the new technology and the new outlets that may be popping up. It gives you an opportunity to shape a relationship with someone that you hadn't had before. Some of these new outlets, these websites for example that you may not have had experience with, some of you may want to shun them and not let them in, but some have a sizable number of your fans. If your fans are getting information from those places, it's probably a better course to shape that coverage than shun it. There's a lot of different metaphors that people use, but it's a glass that starts today empty and it's going to get filled. Do you want to participate in filling it or do you want to let other people fill it for you? JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mike? MICHAEL SIGNORA: You know, I think really from a league perspective, the way we look at the non-traditional media is it's an opportunity for us to reach our fans and to engage our fans in new and different ways. We really look at it as a tremendous opportunity and something that we embrace. I think Tony and Mark and Scott have talked about the realities of how they make that work from a team perspective. But at the league level, it's something that certainly we're encouraged and excited by because right now we have an opportunity to tell our story, and the story that we want the public to engage with, in avenues that we never really had in years past. We think it's something that really, in terms of how you deal with new that media, yes, you have to make some decisions, but the fans are the ones making decisions for us to a degree because we need to be where our fans are. If our fans are spending a lot of time on blogs, fan forums, engaging in these things, we need to be there as well. We do a lot of things at the league level to cultivate relationships with people that run these sites that are non-traditional. A recent example would be at the NFL Draft where we had several bloggers that were coming to the draft, provided on-site coverage. We welcomed them in. We also take into account the reach of the organization, how professional the content is. It's not that we're throwing open the door to anyone. We are selective. But at the draft we welcomed many of these bloggers in. We arranged a session with them with Commissioner Goodell. The coverage of that was positive and really something where they felt incredibly honored that we'd take the time to do that. So now when there are subjects that are perhaps a bit more difficult and certainly not as positive, we think we've gone a long way toward building a relationship. Maybe it helps us those ways, not only telling the positive stories, but when things are negative, helping these entities look towards both sides of the story, something they're not bound to do in a way the traditional media will be. JUSTIN DOHERTY: We'll move to another topic. The importance of unified messaging. How important is it to have a unified message and how do you go about that. Tony? TONY WYLIE: It's very important. Can't have one person saying one thing and another group saying another in relaying your message. You have to have direction. We rely on starting from the NFL office, Mike and his group. They will like, for example, depending on the various topics, player suspension, we usually get direction from them, it goes down to us. We make sure our coaches and general managers know so there's one consistent message at any time on any one subject. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Scott? SCOTT BERCHTOLD: That's one thing that we're talking about some of the new entities of the non-traditional media, how new all of that is. The second part of this conversation is going back to traditional PR that has never changed. That has to do with the message that you want to put out, the spokespeople that you assign to your team who are doing that, and at the same time making sure that everybody in the organization who may encounter media understand what that message is. Some of it depends on the time factor. You have to identify what the situation is. Sometimes it's what we deem as 'crisis media'. Hopefully we don't have too many of those. But many times it's just a simple message that you're putting out that day. There may be many messages you're putting out that day. But it's important that everybody in your organization is on the same page, whether it be the owner, the coach, certainly the players, and everybody throughout the organization. The important thing with that is that there's communication that's involved. Obviously that starts with the PR department. It's important that we always try to address to our players what our coach has just told the media in a press conference, and vice versa, so that each party understands. I think that's usually the most important step, is that you get the message out, everybody knows what it is, but also that other people in the organization understand what has already been told to the media, whether it's a player or coach that has already spoken to the media, because that's usually when somebody gets blindsided. If the coach is speaking last, the media may come up and say, How would you respond to this, understanding a player has already said this. In my role and my staff's role, if we can get to the coach before that and have him understand what a player has said, it usually eliminates that problem for the most part. It all starts with communication. Anytime you're putting out a message like that, usually everybody in your organization will look to you as that person that's going to facilitate getting that message out there, getting it to everybody in your organization. You have to understand what the message is certainly. That's an obvious first step. But you also have to understand what your role is in the organization. A lot of times, we've all dealt with coaches who have their own way, so to speak, of getting out their messages, certainly in our case, general managers and owners. You have to understand what your role is in making sure that everybody is on the same page as well. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mark? MARK DALTON: I guess what I would add to that is, what we deal with a lot of the time are external communications primarily through the media. What we're talking about that's crucial in this instance is the internal communication within your organization and within the team. As Scott mentioned, it may seem basic, the first step is understanding what is the message on a particular topic, what is the team's position or the key message you want to get out. A lot of times that falls on our plate to help define and refine what that is, then make sure everyone knows what it is. There's a lot of different ways that that takes shape. Letting everyone organization-wide know, as Scott said, This is what we're telling the media. That will ensure it's consistent with what we're telling fans, our partners, what we're saying internally on a particular topic. I would agree with Scott, the head coach is so crucial in helping a consistent message with a team. In our case, there's 53 players on a team. It's hard to individually communicate, Hey, one-on-one, which is what the team's position is, this is an important message for us to remain consistent on. But when a coach says that in a forum like in a team meeting or locker room, that's impactful. No one knowingly wants to go out and make a statement contradictory to what the coach has just said his position is. That's not good for anyone's long-term viability. That's a helpful tool. Another thing we really try to emphasize is making sure people know who is authorized to talk to the media within an organization. No one willingly or intentionally tries to get out in front of it. But on any number of issues, the media can go directly to another person in the organization. If it's a business issue, they might go to a person involved in the marketing department of the team or a ticket issue they'll go right to the ticket window. Make sure it's clear to everyone, here is what the policy is, here is why our policy is, all those interactions should go through a central source, mainly the media relations department. It's not a matter of not trusting the employees. It's not certainly a matter of we don't want you to be rude or discourteous, impolite, but this is an important part of the process to make sure that we're, A, being consistent, we're being uniform, and most importantly we know what stories are out there. If they can go to any number of people within an organization, it's tougher to keep it reined in. The last thing I would say that's really important for all of us in our roles is the anticipation factor, knowing what are the likely topics that the team would have to address. That involves, you know, being aware of what's going on in your industry, what's going on with your team, what's going on in all of our industry, not just in our market or in our particular team, preparing our people for what they can likely expect on a given day. JUSTIN DOHERTY: And Mike. MICHAEL SIGNORA: Certainly on this subject no one likes surprises. As PR people, we're really in a position to try to minimize them in terms of how we deal with our constituents internally. I think it's very important that in our case the league level, no matter what the topic is we're being asked about, it's identifying if there is an expert spokesperson internally that we would be helping ourselves to expose to the media, and if so, also identifying what other people internally need to know about that message and the person delivering it so there's no one caught unaware why a certain person or executive is quoted on a topic. As Tony mentioned, dealing with player suspensions, league policies, we will always work with the club and try to help in terms of distributing the message. So there's many subjects that would come up that perhaps we can help in terms of being the voice to the media on behalf of the club. So if it's a potentially negative topic, something that involves a league policy, the club would not necessarily have to speak if they choose not to, it's something handled at the league level. Certainly the communication internally is critical. While not a glamorous part of the job, certainly something we really all need to master if we hope to be effective advocates in our own organizations. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Our next topic is protecting media access with your coaches and players. I guess if you can discuss sort of how you approach media access, what the league policies may or may not be, what team policies are, how you approach that topic. Tony. TONY WYLIE: Sure. Well, there's certain days we have to keep the locker room open for at least 45 minutes. This starts at training camp. Training camp we don't let the media in the locker room, but we'll make it where players are available coming off the field, and the coach is available coming off the field. Bottom line is you have a policy that everyone knows from the beginning of the season where they can get access to the players and coaches. I think there's certain days of the week we keep open, then after practice or meetings we'll let some guys in the locker room so they can get access to the players. For assistant coaches, we usually get a request from the media, we'll let the head coach know, but we'll let them be available as well. The bottom line is making sure everyone is on the same page, meaning the players, coaches as well as the media so you don't have people going someplace they don't belong trying to get their job done. As long as you're up front with people, let them know, I don't think you have any problems. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Scott? SCOTT BERCHTOLD: I think the important thing to note on this, as Mike will speak to I'm sure, the league mandates what has to be the minimum, and all teams follow that. If they don't, then obviously there's repercussions from that. For the most part I think all the teams abide by it. We certainly understand the value of access to the media in reporting about our teams. And it's important because in a lot of ways that is what has made our league as popular as it is. It's obviously started many, many years ago. But one of the prime advocates that we often refer to is Commissioner Roselle. He started out in public relations. We're all very proud of that fact for those of us that are in this industry and in this league. But it's interesting. You know, to quote one of our colleagues, an individual that many of the CoSIDA members will know, Harvey Green of the Miami Dolphins, he once jokingly said, You're as good a PR guy as your head coach will let you be. Probably truer words have never been spoken by somebody that has been through it as much as Harvey has. It's interesting because a lot of times, you know, you understand what is the minimum. You're always pushing as the PR guy for a little bit more at times with your coach, sometimes your general manager, so they understand this is the way oftentimes that your fans see what is going on with your team. If you don't have that access, it just makes it tougher. Now, certainly there are times when you don't want to give them too much. But nevertheless, it's something that I think it's important that the organization understands and a lot of times gets directed to the head coach and to the players. That's the role again of the PR staff. A lot of time we spend a lot of time behind the scenes. Part of that communication is talking with our coaches, talking with our players. Again, as Tony mentioned, communication really is important because if you're talking to media members and they think there should be more access, you're having conversations all the time with them, and then you're formulating what is the best access policy with the league requirements involved for your organization, then you're taking it to your people. So in a lot of ways, you're serving as the middleman in there with both interests of both parties in there - obviously, always keeping in mind the fan aspect of it because a lot of times that's really what it's all about. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mark? MARK DALTON: I guess picking up on Scott's last point, this comes down to me to maintaining a balance or walking a line between what are often viewed as competing and conflicting interests. That's between the media and the teams themselves. On one hand you've got this tremendous interest from media and our fans. That is a very good thing. That's what we want. Of course, on the other side, you know, you've got a team that's trying to limit potential distractions, has a very structured and regimented schedule. As we talked about on the first point of the day, which was all the various outlets, the explosion of them, trying to manage them in a way that's not creating distraction for your team. Like I said, it's certainly a balance, a line that has to be straddled. I would agree, it's about communicating to both of those two constituencies, Here is why this is important to the team, but at the same time communicating to your team, whether it be the coaches or players, Hey, here is why this coverage is important to us. This isn't just us setting it up to set up times for the media to come in and pick apart your team. I guess the last point I would say is, you know, in the climate that we're in with the media, how it's evolved, they're all being asked to do far more with far less. They're asked to produce more content, more analysis. They're supposed to be blogging all day and tweeting all day. At the same time they've got less of a lot of things, too: less money, fewer people, fewer resources. We certainly don't want to add less access and less cooperation onto what they're getting less of. I guess it's straddling that fence, it's keeping the lines of communication open, trying to find that balance, and understanding both points of view. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mike? MICHAEL SIGNORA: I think it very much goes back to the NFL's historic position in terms of dealing with the media. It has always been a league that is historically very media friendly. I think we're all very humble and we all realize the position that the NFL and our sport enjoys in our society, in our culture today, was certainly not the case throughout our history. I mean, we did not get to the position we were in overnight. So a lot of the things that needed to be done in the time of Commissioner Roselle, outreach to the media, welcoming the media to experience our sport, engage with our players, that spirit of openness is something we've tried to carry on to this day and it's why we do have so many media policies that are so media friendly. It's why we continue to speak to our players about cooperation with the media as a responsibility. Without the fan and the media interest in our game, then we don't have a viable business. If we don't have a viable business, all of us that are employed in it would no longer be employed in it. Really it's critical from a business perspective. We also really understand and realize that nothing's guaranteed for the future, so we need to keep finding ways to connect with our fans. We need to continue to bring them as close as possible to our game. We don't have the opportunity that some other sports have where their athletes are visible, they're not hidden behind helmets. There's only a few athletes in other sports on the field at that time. We have a lot of people playing at once. Anything we can do to take the helmets off of our players, expose them to the public, we're interested in. That's why we've continued to be very aggressive about our media access policies. It always amazes me the more interaction we have with international journalists, the more they marvel what we are able to mandate from an NFL level. When you look at international media relations in terms of sports, they do not do what we do here. The entire concept of opening a locker room is foreign to journalists all around the world covering other sports. The notion we would do something like that is just not something that is customary in other places. So it is something that we recognize is really a symbol of a special relationship that the NFL has had with the media going back upon decades and decades. It's really continuing to look at our policies and make sure they fit the needs of our fans and the media and the clubs to the present day. JUSTIN DOHERTY: I think there's interest out there about how you all handle credentialing. I'll kind of maybe roll a few questions into one and you can maybe sort of address the topic as you see fit. But how are you evaluating websites for credentials? Do you have standard policies from team to team or is it a league-wide mandate? MICHAEL SIGNORA: What we would do with that, I mean, the decisions on accreditation for games and practices, things like that, they are left with the clubs. So the clubs have the decisions to make in terms of, you know, who they determine is their local media, so by extension who has access to a minimum portion of practice each day. There are a broad set of qualities we would look at when an organization applies to the league in terms of accreditation for NFL events, the Super Bowl, the Draft, the scouting combine, things that are league in nature. The most important aspect of that is really the reach of the entity. It's not so much that we're interested in, Do you consider yourself a newspaper, a magazine, an Internet site? How many fans do you reach? How broad is your audience? Those are the questions that we're asking. From that standpoint, once we can try to have a reasonable answer to that question, then that will determine how we're going to go about the accreditation decisions. Another important factor is the journalist using the credential. Is this someone we know? As Tony, Mark and Scott mentioned, there are media working for non-traditional organizations. Is there someone we've had a relationship through the years? That would be another factor. When we do make decisions to accredit an organization, that organization has the ability to determine who is going to use their credential. We often would get a question, Does the NFL credential bloggers? It's not really the right question in that if we grant the Washington Post four credentials to cover the NFL Draft, it's up to the Washington Post to determine if they're going to be filled by a columnist, by a blogger, by a beat writer. As long as they're adhering to the policies we set forth in terms of reporting cannot approximate play-by-play, things of that nature, it's up to the entity to decide who's using those credentials. There's a broad set of standards we're looking at. Primary factors are the reach of the organization, and then it is up to the clubs to determine on their own individual basis how they're going to handle things for their regular season games, for their playoff games up until the championship game round, and then also for access to their facilities during the week. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Tony, do you have anything you want to weigh in on that? TONY WYLIE: No, I think he said it well. The key thing we do like during training camp, we let everyone in. I'm pretty lax during training camp. I observe everyone, monitor them. They have to work their way before they can get a game day credential if I don't know them. Usually a relationship-type deal. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Scott? SCOTT BERCHTOLD: I would add another twist we've had here in Buffalo that's been fun and interesting at the same time. That is, through our regionalization efforts, we now play this year in particular two games in Toronto. So in a lot of ways you're dealing with a media base that will come down to Orchard Park and cover your team, but when you're going up to Toronto, you're talking about a lot more in-depth Canadian media. Some of them you know quite well, some of them you barely know. It's incumbent upon us to get to know those media members. To the points of what everybody has been talking about so far, it all deals with relationships. If you know some of the media members, you think it's worth having them come into the games, cover the team, it makes it much easier if you know who you're dealing with. If you're talking about a blogger you've never met, you're more than likely not going to give them access to your games. Maybe sometimes they deserve to be in there. Again, it comes down to relationships. That's the thing that has been fun for us in the three years we've been dealing with having games in Toronto. It's been a great opportunity to us to market our team in another market and through that obviously with our area of public relations it's been fun and it's been exciting dealing with a lot of the Canadian media that in the past we've only dealt with a little bit on the edge there, so to speak, down here in Orchard Park. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mark, anything you wanted to add? MARK DALTON: Briefly I think Mike hit it exactly right. The question comes up all the time, Do you credential websites? We don't credential bloggers. We have a policy where websites not affiliated with mainstream news outlets. That's becoming more and more or less and less practical, I guess. To Mike's point, there are ways to measure the audience of websites, whether it's Alexa or Site Analytics, sites that can give you information. When an entity comes in and asks you for access, you gauge what their audience is. Mike mentioned that is the primary thing. But to ask the question, Hey, do you credential bloggers, is like saying, Do you credential newspapers? Sure, we would credential a newspaper with a circulation of 750,000. Would we credential a newspaper that prints twice a month and has a circulation of 250? Probably not. In terms of new media, alternative media, it's the same standards as we've always applied, just in a different way. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Another topic. I'll try to roll a few questions into this. I think in the current environment, a lot of organizations, whether they be in or outside of sports, certainly the college athletics level as well, there's maybe a trend or a shift of some sorts becoming your own media entity, how you all view that move. I have a specific question. In becoming your own competitive media communications entity, how do you balance creating and promoting a positive message with the reality that negative things happen that fans want to be informed about? How do you use your own website when you're dealing with a controversial situation? Sort of that general concept, how do you all see that. Tony? TONY WYLIE: Again, what we talked about earlier is unified messaging. Once you have that message, you use your website, a negative situation, to get that message out there. You make sure you have the same message, whether it's a statement, use your website to get your message across. Now, of course, media outlets, they'd rather cover man biting dog than dog biting man. You pitch a feature story, people are not being receptive, of course, use your website as a vehicle to get your story out there. We talked about social media. You can use Twitter. Nowadays you can tweet what's going on. A lot of us have Twitter accounts. You have Facebook pages. You can use those outlets to get the message across. Bottom line, being another way to get your message out and being creative and strategic when you do it. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Scott? SCOTT BERCHTOLD: Well, there's a couple of things that I would address in regards to this topic. One is that it is important to get your message out there in a controlled atmosphere, so to speak. If you can do that, obviously that would be the biggest vehicle, it would be through your website. But you also have to keep in mind that you have to have credibility in the eyes of your fans when you're doing it. So if you're only putting out positive stories or you're only putting out stories when it's positive things, you're going to lose some of that credibility. You have to understand that if there is a negative story that's going to come out, it's oftentimes better that you put it out first because at least you can give both sides of the story, whereas media may only represent one side of the story. So that's important that you understand that, yes, you can put things out there through various avenues, whether it be your media website, Twitter account, whatever you want to use, but also realize there's a credibility issue there as well, because that is important in the eyes of your fans. The other thing is, too, you also have to realize when you're doing this, the important thing is you get out in front of it first if it is a negative message. Again, that all has to do with timing and understanding through communication with the various entities in your organization, whether it be the owner, the head coach, the general manager, and certainly the players and coaches, that you're putting this out. Again, it goes back to message. But you have to understand the timing of all of it, trying to put that out there. That's where your website and Twitter account can be very important vehicles for you. It's important that you use it that way. The one thing I will throw out, because we all know that with these avenues, whether it be the website or Twitter, whatever, there are so many opportunities, and every day it seems like we're thinking of new ones to use our shiny new toys with, so to speak. Every once in a while I'll have lunch with a group of media people who have been in the industry for a very long time, and I really value their opinions. It's kind of like old school reporting, old school PR. I love these sessions I have with these guys. One time one of them said something I'll never forget and I thought was a very important lesson as we deal with all of this now. That is, he said, Be careful that you don't make the media think that they're no longer needed or wanted because you're releasing everything through your website and these new popular vehicles that are at your disposal. If the media think that they're no longer wanted or needed, they'll start coming up with their own stories. As one of the guys told me, he said, You probably won't like the ones we come up with. He kind of laughed about it. I thought it was a great lesson. It's easy to get carried away a lot of times and start releasing everything through your website. You have to remember that the media certainly has a role in all of this. It's important to recognize what that is. At times you may not like what they're writing or what they're reporting, but nevertheless you have to understand what their role is and how important it is of the role that they have, and don't neglect it. I think that's important as you move through this. It is easy to start to want to do everything through your website where you have some say in the message that's going out. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mark? MARK DALTON: It's a good topic, it really is. The tremendous growth of team websites, team-produced radio and television programming, and at a broader level the league broadcast entities. We have the NFL Network, we have our broadcast partners. It's important for them to have exclusive content and to do right by all of those entities. It's easy to understand why that's important. I mean, it gives us all a chance to engage, like Mike talked about, directly with our fans. We don't have to use the filter of a media middleman, if you will. Ideally, it becomes the number one source of information for people about your team. Most importantly, it's a chance for the team to monetize that, to capitalize from a business perspective on what everyone clearly understands is valuable programming, valuable content. But at the same time it's also easy to understand why it's rife with a potential conflict with the mainstream media. Mike talked earlier about how much everyone has worked for decades, long before any of us got into this, to create a positive relationship with the media. There's a symbiotic relationship that's mutually beneficial for all of us to coexist. By constantly disengaging the mainstream media, you're creating some ill will. As Scott mentioned, it's going to have some effect on the coverage if you don't pay attention to it. I guess it gets back to the balance, that fine line you walk between serving your own team's interest and business interest in some case, and league interest in the case of NFL Network, but also maintaining those positive relationships. In terms of how to handle the content on your own internal media outlets, you know, it was discussed earlier, I think Tony mentioned the credibility aspect of it. The success is going to lie with that. Fans are savvy. Fans know to tune something out if it's not real, if it's not credible. Sometimes that's a challenge internally to convince people in your own organization. You know what, this is not something we conduct, this is something we have to address head on and use it as a vehicle for that. It's a constant balancing act. It's something that, you know, to do it successfully you kind of have to keep an eye on both interests and manage them both. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mike? MICHAEL SIGNORA: Certainly it is a balancing act. In our case at the league level, we now have of course NFL.com and NFL Network. I think we often find ourselves in our role as being an advocate for the external media, being a voice for them as decisions are made internally in terms of things like the announcement of the schedule, the announcement of the Pro Bowl teams. There are many people that feel like those should be completely exclusive events for NFL.com and NFL Network. What you try to do is strike a balance. So if the schedule is released at a certain time, it's released first on NFL Network and NFL.com, we're telling media that, and we're telling them when they can expect to receive the schedule so we're not surprising them. There is the same thing with Pro Bowl. We're very proactive in terms of reaching out to the clubs and making sure the media are aware of what the plan is. If we are giving a window of exclusivity to our own network and website, they know that and they can plan accordingly. In terms of what Mark I believe was discussing with regard to making sure that you do strike that balance, we really feel like the local media, the media that have covered the NFL for many decades, they still do need to feel like they are an important part of our operation and we always want them to feel that way because we do need them. They're the people that have been promoting our sport long before the idea of an NFL.com or NFL Network was conceived. We don't want to forget that and remain true to our roots. I think everyone on the call can attest to the fact that NFL Network and NFL.com do not always report stories in a manner in which the clubs would prefer. It's important that they do have an authentic voice because, as Mark said, the fans will see through that. They are savvy enough to realize if something is only going to be giving them one side of a story. So I think that's been important, as well. And it is a constant and daily balancing act on how we do treat the fact that we are a media company as well as an entity that's seeking coverage from other competing media. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Continued movement away from printed to digital-based documents. I don't know how many of you all in the NFL are still printing. It looks like most. Just kind of address that topic. MICHAEL SIGNORA: I'll give you kind of a league perspective on that and everyone can weigh in. In terms of the league level, we do not mandate that clubs print a media guide. We also do not prohibit it. It is a team decision. What we do mandate is that on game day a printed product of some kind be available to the game broadcasters and to any media that feel like they need something that's printed. So that's what we're doing. We also require all of the clubs to produce at least a PDF of their media guide with a detailed table of contents so that all of those media guides from all 32 clubs can be aggregated and put on one website, NFLMedia.com where media can access them. Last year and again this year we will make a memory stick available to media with all 32 team publications on it, NFL publications, as well. But this will be the final year we do produce that memory stick because of the fact that when everything is aggregated in a website, that's really all that you need in terms of having everything in one location. In years past, that has been on NFLMedia.com. For 2011, it would be to have all of the 32 media guides available on NFL.com. That would be the goal there. In terms of the overall figures this year of the 32 clubs, I would say between 10 and 12 clubs will not print a media guide in 2010. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Tony, do you have anything to add? TONY WYLIE: The Texans are one of the teams that are not going to print one. It was received rather well. The only difference was the broadcasters, like Mike said, we need to have something printed for them so they can have during the games. I think other than that, it went well. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Scott? SCOTT BERCHTOLD: I think it really comes down to the old adage about PR, and that is servicing the media. Some of your media members will continue to want a printed guide. Whether you Xerox that off during the week or the one you make at the beginning of the season, you do your best at trying to Mike sure that every media member has exactly what they're looking for in those terms. Obviously the technology has just revolutionized everything we're doing in this area. The things that we can do now with the media guide, whether it be updating bios every day, if we want to, updating record sections, so on, so forth, even to the point where we looked at this year within each player's bio of having the opportunity to click on a video message from a player. There's so many things you can do now, it seems like every day there's something new. Whether you choose to utilize that or not, it's up to each organization. But it really comes down, like I said, to servicing the media. While some may not want to utilize that new technology, still have the printed book, I think you owe it to each media member as part of what you do as a profession to make sure that they're taken care of in what they need. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Mark? MARK DALTON: Briefly we're not among the 10 or 12 clubs that are eliminating the printing of them. We certainly produce far fewer than we've done. I think we're down to about three thousand or four thousand. It's more in line with what Scott was with saying. There's a lot of people, certainly the more tech savvy of the media that cover us, that love the electronic version. Great, I can download it to my laptop. There's all 32. I don't have to lug around the book. Then there's the less tech savvy that like it the other way. Our job is to try to serve them both. I don't know that we'll be printing them forever. For the time being, we still print a much more scaled-back run, but someday that will change. JUSTIN DOHERTY: One last question I'm sure any of you could answer pretty quickly. Someone emailed us and wanted to know what is the best way for college SID to interact with pro staffs to get photos and news of alums that may be playing for their teams. Maybe one of you could jump in and address that quickly. SCOTT BERCHTOLD: I think it's important. That is, email is probably the best way to do it and probably the most effective. I know around draft time we certainly receive a great deal of information from the schools of the young men that we just drafted. We're always very appreciative of the universities and colleges of doing that for us. We always try to make sure that we reciprocate with that. So anytime the school needs information on the player, now that he's a professional athlete with our organization, we always want to make sure that we can send them clips if they need them, we can send them media guides if they need them, bios of players, photos for their use, whether it be in the media guy or football office. We always try to take care of that. It goes a long way. It's an important relationship, we've always felt. Having been a former college SID, I've been on both sides of it. It's a relationship that I think, quite frankly, is something that you can cultivate in your own area a lot of times or if you have a particular, and I'm talking from the SID angle now, if you have a particular professional team where you have many of your alums either currently on the team or in the past years, I think that's something that we can all probably be better at. I know every time I've talked to the college SIDs, I've always enjoyed the conversation, sharing some notes and some ideas, just filling them in on what their athletes are doing at this level. JUSTIN DOHERTY: Appreciate that. We do need to wrap it up. Very much want to thank Tony, Scott, Mark and Mike not only for their time this morning but also for their insights. We really appreciate the relationship with you guys and everything you've helped us with this morning. With that I will wrap-up the call. Again, thank you and everyone have a great day. Appreciate it. End of FastScripts |
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