On June 2, BINJE, one of New Jersey’s sharpest business news outlets, reported that Montclair State University had been selected to take over the operating license for NJ PBS, the state’s public television network. The story was first broken earlier that day by the New Jersey Globe. The formal joint announcement from New Jersey State Treasurer Aaron Binder and Montclair State came on June 3.

This is a significant development for the state. NJ PBS has been an institution in the state’s media landscape for decades, and the story has very real implications for everyone who lives and works in New Jersey. BINJE does a great job laying them out and the story is worth a read.

Of course, this story has even more profound implications for anyone whose job includes communications in New Jersey. 

Think about how this played out. A major development affecting one of New Jersey’s most established media institutions was broken by the New Jersey Globe, a statewide political and government news outlet founded in 2018. It was picked up and expanded upon by BINJE, a New Jersey business publication that recently published its first anniversary edition and is already a leading business outlet. Both outlets are well-read and well-regarded within the business and political communities throughout the state. Neither of them existed, or barely did, the last time most communications professionals did a serious audit of their New Jersey media strategy.

Not long ago, a story like this would have been broken by the Star-Ledger or the Trenton Times, expanded on by News 12 NJ, and then analyzed in weekly and monthly outlets until the news cycle ran its course. That cycle still exists in some form, but it looks almost completely different today than it did just a couple of years ago. Today, the story will very quickly travel across more channels and reach more touchpoints than it could have in the past by orders of magnitude. And then our attention will shift to whatever comes next in the feed. 

This is one story on one day in one state. Multiply it across every sector, every market, and every audience you’re trying to reach, and you get a sense of how quickly the terrain is moving.

The media landscape is always changing, of course. What’s different about the changes happening now is a combination of speed and scale. Streaming, podcasts, newsletters, Substack, social platforms that rise and fall faster than most organizations can track: each one has its own rules, its own audiences, and its own norms for how information is shared and consumed. Every audience is spread out across an incredibly diverse and fluid combination of these touchpoints and they’re not standing still. The process of finding, reaching and engaging target audiences in this environment is more challenging than ever before. Looming over all of this is AI, which is in the early stages of completely redefining how people seek, receive, and process information on a massive scale.

The audiences we need to reach obviously haven’t disappeared. The ways in which they’re getting their information, the sources they trust, and the formats they prefer have shifted considerably, and they’ll keep shifting. A communications strategy that was well-designed and well-executed two or three years ago is probably outdated today.

Keeping up with all of this is genuinely difficult, and it’s a lot to ask of anyone whose primary job is running an organization, serving clients, managing a team, or doing any of the hundred other things that fill a workday. The media and information landscape is a full-time beat, and even those of us who cover it professionally have to work hard to stay current.

Even in the midst of all this change, some things stay the same. Here’s one constant that spans our 40-year existence: You cannot run a successful communications program of any size or shape if you can’t confidently answer the following 5 questions: 

1. Who do you need to reach?
2. Do you know where those people are actually getting their information today? 
3. Do you know how your peers and competitors are reaching those people, and what they’re saying? 
4. Do you know what your audiences want to hear from you right now, and why? 
5. Do you know how to deliver a clear, consistent message across a mix of channels that operate by very different rules?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the kinds of questions that a good communications audit can help answer, and that a well-built strategy can address. But they have to be asked first.