April 2015 Noon Time Talk Narrative
Atlantic City and the Media: Telling Our Own Story
Media coverage and perception of Atlantic City directly affects whether people choose to invest, live and visit Atlantic City. Therefore, media coverage directly affects our livelihood. The bad news is that we can’t control what people chose to report, post, tweet, and blog about AC. The good news is there are so many people that want and need Atlantic City to be successful and that commitment is an asset we can organize and leverage.
I get offers to help almost daily! The idea we want to develop today is how do we disseminate positive information on a regular basis through a dependable network.
Welcome to our 10th Noon Time Talk with the Planning Department.
The intent of these discussions is to inform and engage the community, and exchange information. The goal is a common vision for development in the City.
The Atlantic City Alliance tracks media coverage in Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore (not local) for positive and negative content using a measurement called an “Optical Content Score”. This is important because what people hear in the news affects 3 out of 5 decisions whether to travel to AC.
· In 2014, there were 15,000 news stories
· TV coverage spiked around the closings of the casinos after Labor Day—most of it negative
· There have been more desirable than undesirable stories in the media about Atlantic City since October.
· Desirable stories outnumber undesirable 2.5 to 1.
· Four of the top five pieces of news people recall about AC were positive.
· In terms of volume, coverage of AC was double that of February 2014 andwas 85%desirable, compared to62% desirable a year ago. Being named the mostromanticcity and the slight uptick in casinorevenues contributed tothe positive coverage.
The most significant, and most damaging misperception is public safety information. (show crime stat slides)
Myths in Media – Mel Taylor
Creative AC and Live Work AC – Nick Palmisano
How to tweet and other social media instruction - Janet Garraty, Go Jane News
examples of positive storytelling by an agency for (creating a sense of place, i.e. ReNewbold). How the public feeds that story using social media - Antoinette Johnson, At Media Design, Philly and now AC -
“Destination Atlantic City” slideshow of projects– available to public - Herbert Ushewokunzee
Introduce Pinky Kravitz – his thoughts on the discussion