The media landscape has changed almost beyond recognition. What makes a story matter has not.
I learned the business of storytelling on deadline. At Bloomberg News, CNN, The New York Times Washington newsrooms, and The Tampa Tribune’s Capitol Bureau, I covered the release of the Starr Report, the Clinton impeachment trial, the 2000 recount, September 11th, multiple hurricanes (an eye-opening experience for a girl who grew up landlocked in the Midwest), and more legislative sessions and election nights than I can count. The tools changed constantly. The fundamentals never did. Know the issue cold, have your questions ready, know who to call, and get it right before you get it out.
Twenty-some years later, I sit on the other side of the table. And I can tell you the ground has shifted under all of us — reporters, newsmakers and the public alike.
How stories are told
There was a time when a story had a shape. An inverted pyramid. A lead, a nut graph, a kicker. It ran once, in print or in a broadcast window, and that was that. That was when we lived in a 24-hour news cycle. That is not how we live today.
Today a single story might live as a thirty-second vertical video, a 2,000-word newsletter, a ninety-minute podcast conversation, a thread, a chart, and — if it’s lucky — a well-reported news article. It is told in fragments, across formats, by people with very different standards and very different reasons for telling it. But it also lives well beyond that first telling and in perpetuity.
That isn’t all bad. Some of the most thoughtful, deeply sourced work being done right now is happening in formats that didn’t exist when I started in journalism. But it means the story you think you’re telling is rarely the only version people encounter. And they will not only encounter it once — but again and again across different formats and through different lenses.
Where stories are told
Newsrooms have changed. Beats have consolidated. The statehouse reporter no longer just covers a single chamber of the Legislature or the Governor. With newsrooms contracting and social media and technology making most of us addicted to immediacy, the day-to-day beat reporter is gone, and news is no longer shared in a single format. There’s print, digital, blogs & vlogs, social media posting — the way stories are shared is so varied and often hurried; traditional source-building opportunities — the hallway conversation, the background lunch, the years-long relationship with a reporter who really knew your issue — have diminished.
At the same time, independent journalism, podcasts, newsletters and specialized verticals have created new places where important stories are told. A trade newsletter with a few thousand readers may matter more to a policy outcome than a front page ever did. A podcast host may have more trust with a key audience than any anchor. A political vertical that also gives preferential coverage to organizations and individuals that advertise with it can be just as influential and valued by political leaders as traditional media was in the past.
The map has more destinations than ever. The roads between them are harder to find.
How stories are seen
The public doesn’t sit down with the paper anymore. They scroll. They catch a headline in a group chat, a clip in a feed, a hot take from someone they follow. Algorithms decide what rises. Context is optional. Attention is the currency, and it is spent fast.
The result is a public that is often exposed to more information and informed by less of it.
Why the Fourth Estate still matters
Here is where I’ll be candid: I am biased. I believe in the press.
A free, independent, professional press is still the best mechanism we have for holding power accountable and keeping the public aware of what is being done in its name. Traditional newsrooms — with editors, fact-checkers, a journalism code of ethics, corrections, and institutional memory — do something no algorithm and no influencer can replicate on their own. They verify. They contextualize. They stay on a story after the moment passes.
When local and statehouse coverage thins out, or when those in power start handpicking who gets credentials and access, it doesn’t just leave a gap in the news; it leaves a gap in public awareness. Decisions still get made. Fewer people see them coming or understand how they affect their lives.
So supporting good journalism — by being a credible, accessible, honest source — isn’t just good communications strategy. It’s good citizenship.
What hasn’t changed
Despite the disruption, the need for credible sources, trusted relationships, and substantive conversations across all channels hasn’t changed.
Reporters still need people who understand the issues and will tell them the truth. Organizations and leaders still need journalists who understand their world well enough to tell their story accurately. And the public still needs both to show up.
The channels are new. The trust is not.
Find the story. Then make it matter.
That is the work we do at North.
We help organizations and leaders uncover the ideas, narratives, and points of view that set them apart, then turn those ideas into stories people understand, remember, and act on.
That starts with finding the story — which is rarely the one in the press release. It’s the insight buried in the data, the person behind the policy, the consequence nobody has explained yet. Then we make it matter, shaping it for the right audience, the right moment, and the right channel, whether that’s a legacy newsroom, a specialized vertical, a newsletter, or a microphone.
Introducing North Exchange
Because relationships are harder to build than they used to be, we built the room.
North Exchange brings together the people telling the stories with the people who understand the issues — creating stronger relationships, better context, and opportunities for the right stories to happen at the right time, in the right places.
It’s not a pitch session. It’s the background lunch, reimagined for a media world that no longer has time for lunch. Reporters, editors, podcasters, and newsletter writers get access to real expertise and real context. Leaders and organizations get to know the people covering their world before the story breaks — not after.
Better context makes better journalism. Better journalism makes a more-informed public. That’s a story worth telling.
North is a strategic communications firm that brings a journalist’s instinct for the story together with a strategist’s understanding of the stakes. North advises leaders and organizations across five connected practices: Strategy & Leadership, Storytelling & Positioning, Media Strategy & Relations, Reputation, Issues & Crisis, and Public Affairs & Advocacy. The moments that matter rarely stay in one lane. Neither do we. Want to find your story, or join the conversation at North Exchange? Let’s talk.
