☆ If local business wants to be heard, they need to speak up
Opp Now's co-founder Christopher Escher joined the South County Business Alliance's May lunch with a simple word of advice for local business: when media is slanted against you, grab the bullhorn. An Opp Now exclusive.
My thesis for you over the next ten minutes is this:
The media landscape in Silicon Valley—and by that I mean online, print, social media, and broadcast journalism—is substantially tilted against your interests. There is a way forward, but it requires adding marketing and media relations to your business’ core competencies.
So allow me to proffer 5 Truths about business and media for your consideration.
#1: Left-leaning media is a vertically integrated propaganda business.
I spent most of my career in high-tech marketing, and every place I worked understood that marketing is not advertising nor PR—it’s an integrated effort of creating a whole ecosystem of supporters and partners who magnify and feed your marketing spend. Our friends on the left locally have this game down pat and—this group excepted—our side doesn’t. Local Media—whether print or online—is funded and supported by a broad constellation of Labor unions, nonprofits, online influencers, who all work together in a pretty united manner to create content, drive opinion, establish narratives—attack and diminish alternative or competitive viewpoints.
It may seem that it only occurs during campaign season, but the reality is: their work takes place all day every day, regardless of the campaign season; and it gives them a real competitive positional advantage.
Here’s how it works: because they work every day and on multiple fronts to move Conventional Wisdom (or the Overton Window, in academic-speak) towards positions that are less friendly to business, by the time election season begins—guess what?
We start from behind. And Labor/left candidates have a head start. This is an unenviable position for our side.
#2: News media is run and staffed by people with a left-wing bias.
This wasn’t always the case—long ago when I graduated college with an English degree, many of us with more small government/libertarian leanings went into publishing. It’s no longer the case. Consider this bit of data: the Media Research Center reports that over 95% of working journalists consider themselves liberals or radicals.
#3: The growth area in media—nonprofit journalism—is overwhelmingly funded by left-wing foundations.
I would suggest that whenever you hear a nonprofit media outlet suggest that they’re objective, take a look at the donor page. If you see government entities, Labor unions, left-wing nonprofits, and big foundations—beware.
#4: News media privileges a government perspective, not a business one.
This is a systemic fact: government action almost invariably makes news and establishes narratives. In many ways, news media exists to cover government. The laws of supply and demand, as a result, compel media to want more government, more activist government, as it creates (often free) content and built-in readership. Business becomes a section—not a driving force.
#5: Business can have a similar impact on local media—but we have to do the work.
What Labor/left media does is not especially hard or even expensive.
My quick top-line recommendations for local business:
1.) Don’t rely on big organizations to save you: I saw in despair the SVO collapse in a heap years ago, and its disappearance from the political scene left the local pro-biz community adrift.
We’re like a chess player who only knows how to move one piece—their queen. And when that queen—the Chamber—gets taken, we don’t know how to proceed. The truth is, we can do quite a bit if we figure out how to attack with our rooks, bishops, knights, and pawns.
2.) Create more organizations like this—having a multitude of pieces at work can control the chessboard. I would love to see organizations like this in every city, every county district, in the country. I would like to see single-issue organizations populate the whole valley. I’d like to see ten more independent, grassroots media properties like Opp Now. An ecosystem with that kind of reach and impact could retake control of the game.
3.) Build an aggressive comms effort into every organization. Every group should have a website, a blog, an X account, and be in constant contact with local media to amplify your message. Don’t wait for the media to come to you; take your message to them.
4.) Be confident and cheerful in your messaging. Remember, the pro-business community has an advantage over big government Labor/left media that, if properly realized, should always win.
And that advantage is this:
Our ideas are better, and should win in a free marketplace of ideas.
So step one is simple: get organized, show up, and have fun making some noise.
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