‘When you do your elevator pitch, the response better be “wow!” The secret to that is benefit-driven. You don’t have readership, you have potential customers.’

—Mike Blinder, President
Blinder Group, Lutz, Fla.

Mike Blinder is a big fan of newspapers, and he does not shy away from saying so.

“Newspapers rock!” he affirmed time and time again at his session “Leveraging digital services to gain new legacy revenue” during the New England Newspaper and Press Association winter convention.

Blinder is president of Blinder Group, a multimedia sales consulting company. He spoke to an audience of about 30 people Friday, Feb. 24, the first day of the two-day convention at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel.

Newspapers and other businesses can survive if they learn how to use the digital skills available to them to engage an audience, Blinder said.

“Research shows that people who market do better than people who don’t,” said Blinder, whose Lutz, Fla.-based company trains more than 350 media clients in maximizing sales. “If you’re not advertising, a competitor can steal your customers.”

In a booming voice laced with passion and humor, Blinder shared insight into surviving as a legacy – traditional print – industry while harnessing digital skills.

“It’s a geeky way of saying how to make money using the internet,” he said. “What we do for a living is we aggregate eyeballs.”

Blinder thinks that digital services have the potential to cater to an audience’s specific needs.

“Local advertisers are spending a lot of money on digital,” he said. “I’m pro digital services.”

He highlighted reach and frequency as key components of digital advertising. A business engages an audience and then works to maintain that audience, he said.

“I want to sell that weekly ad, so I’m going to make it sexy,” he said. “We want to earn (a client’s) trust for a full year. If we don’t get frequency, it doesn’t work.”

Developing and engaging that clientele is especially important for a diminishing print industry, Blinder said.

“Selling media is hard,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what kind of media. Forty-six percent of adults read a newspaper each week. That’s down from 80 to 90 percent 30 years ago.”

Blinder recognized that traditional print newspapers might lack the oomph of their digital counterparts.

“People love shiny toys. Our society loves shiny toys. Be excited about something new and exciting,” he said.

“Ladies and gentlemen, newspapers rock. The problem is, newspapers aren’t a shiny toy,” he said.

To get potential customers excited about a product or a service, that product or service must be marketed well, Blinder said.

It is in this spirit that he calls the traditional elevator pitch a “wow statement.”

“When you do your elevator pitch, the response better be ‘wow!’” he said. “The secret to that is benefit-driven. You don’t have readership, you have potential customers.”

“Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle,” he said, adapting the slogan of Elmer Wheeler, dubbed “America’s Greatest Salesman.”

Companies can use this “wow pitch” to emphasize the value that their product gives the consumer, Blinder said.

“We forget that a message is what sells the product,” he said. “Don’t sell the section, sell what’s in the section. Are you truly telling your community what makes you better, smarter, faster than your competitors?”

That practice is known as solution-based selling: What can the product do for you?

“We’re not going to say to the advertiser, ‘Buy this, this, and this.’ You go into a price range that doesn’t scare them,” Blinder said. “I have arrows in a quiver. Mr. Advertiser, I’m not going to pull out an arrow until I know what you need.

“You can’t call the Bureau of Standards and ask for another hour (to advertise),” he said. “You have a limited inventory.

“Find out what they want and give it to them,” Blinder said, quoting showman and businessman P.T. Barnum. “In the first 20 seconds, (customers) are going to find out if they’re going to buy it or not.”

Blinder emphasized that, to reach out to consumers effectively, a company should know how to run its social media pages as well as produce fresh content for those pages.

“All advertisers know they should use social media,” he said. “Fifty percent of business owners do not monitor their Facebook page.

“Social media for local businesses is still cool content. It’s cool and it’s closing deals,” he said. “We’re saying to the advertiser – once a month, report to your executive something cool, social media fodder.”

It’s all about engagement, Blinder said.

“The number one way to build a rapport with an advertiser is to speak their language,” he said. ”If you don’t pump them up, we have a problem. You gotta remind them we rock.”

He held up a pin that said ‘Newspapers Rock!’ and invited the audience to take one.

“Grab them and wear them proudly,” he said. “Get your swagger back.”

‘Local advertisers are spending a lot of money on digital. I’m pro digital services.’

—Mike Blinder

‘The number one way to build a rapport with an advertiser is to speak their language. If you don’t pump them up, we have a problem. You gotta remind them we rock.’

—Mike Blinder

Company-wide changes in approaches to advertising sales, content, and culture led to the success of the Record-Journal of Meriden, Conn., two company executives told an audience at the New England Newspaper and Press Association winter convention.

The Record-Journal increased its revenue and digital audience growth by 53 and 40 percent, respectively, after making a few fundamental shifts through programs dubbed Revolution 2015 and Opportunity 2016.

The basic premise of those programs was to involve the entire company in devising innovative methods for the newspaper to capture more digital engagement and revenue, according to a presentation titled “Record-Journal’s Revolution 2015.”

Liz White, the Record-Journal’s executive vice president and assistant publisher, and Shawn Palmer, its senior vice president and chief revenue officer, made the presentation Saturday, Feb. 25, to 30 people in the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel.

“Low-hanging fruit to us (were) some things that would increase audience engagement,” White said. “Once we started experimenting with (content) digitally, we saw people engaging with (digital content) more.”

Reporters and editors posted on social media more frequently, and the Record-Journal worked on publishing more engaging content online, such as real-time, breaking police news and photo galleries of property transfers. The staff also began experimenting with alternative story forms such as listicles, and updated the designs of both the Record-Journal’s print paper and website, including a new mobile website.

After those efforts, the Record-Journal’s digital subscriptions increased 11 percent that year, although a large share of the digital market was yet to be captured. Thus, the paper’s Opportunity 2016 initiative sought to involve all levels of employees in generating more digital revenue from page views, native advertising, and video.

On the financial side, the sales staff zeroed in on offering clients comprehensive digital and print ad packages and new kinds of products, including sales promotions, contests, restaurant guides, job recruitment postings, and programmatic ads based on users’ preferred content. Salespeople were instructed to pursue prospects based on profitability, and they were held accountable by way of having their numbers posted on a publicly viewed whiteboard in the office for all to see.

The company also formed the newly branded Homebase Digital, a digital advertising interface intended to show clients that the RJ Media Group, which owns both the Record-Journal and The Westerly (R.I.) Sun, is not just a newspaper company but also a serious digital advertising business offering new products such as website development, search engine marketing, social media promotions, and video ads, Palmer said.

“We are doing things a lot differently and thinking differently about how we do it, and about ourselves, and how we position our business moving forward in the future,” Palmer said. “We did a lot of great things. We threw a lot of things at the wall, and we figured out what worked and what didn’t work.”

One thing that didn’t work, for example, was a short-lived foray last year into marketing video production, which the company moved on from quickly as part of its new company culture, White said.

“We celebrate our successes and we get excited, but some things don’t work and you have to acknowledge that they’re failures and move on quickly,” White said.

“Failing fast” became a joke around the Record-Journal office, which physically underwent some major changes that accompanied the paper’s change toward becoming a dynamic, experimental, and modern organization, White said. The Record-Journal sold and moved out of an office building that was more than 100 years old and had multiple floors that severely affected internal communications.

Its newly leased office space is more compact, places all employees on one floor, and features energizing design and branding as well as a ping-pong table, White said.

“Everything you see in our space is designed to make it easier for people to communicate,” White said. “We want people to see when they walk into that space that (they’re) not in a dying newspaper. You’ll know you’re in a new and innovative company that is excited about its future.”

To guide them on their new changes, the paper’s executives devised what they call “transformation spectrums” to help quantify how the paper is doing in sales and content. For example, the sales staff is measured on a scale that determines how the print sales and digital sales teams work independently of each other. Similarly, the content scale determines the proportions of content published either in print or digital-first.

Since its Revolution 2015 program, the Record-Journal was named one of Editor & Publisher Magazine’s 2016 “10 Newspapers that do it right” and won first place for Best Local Website in the 2017 Local Media Digital Innovation Awards, national awards given by the nonprofit Local Media Association.

White said the company’s changing culture was a way of viewing new challenges in the newspaper industry as opportunities for future growth.

“I’m afraid every day, but I’m also inspired and excited by the challenge and the opportunity of it all,” White said. “If we don’t change fast enough, then we’re not going to be able to capture that opportunity.”

‘We are doing things a lot differently and thinking differently about how we do it, and about ourselves, and how we position our business moving forward in the future. We did a lot of great things. We threw a lot of things at the wall, and we figured out what worked and what didn’t work.’

—Shawn Palmer, Senior vice president,
chief revenue officer, Record-Journal, Meriden, Conn.

‘We celebrate our successes and we get excited, but some things don’t work and you have to acknowledge that they’re failures and move on quickly.’

—Liz White, Executive vice president, assistant publisher,
Record-Journal, Meriden, Conn.

‘Everything you see in our space is designed to make it easier for people to communicate. We want people to see when they walk into that space that (they’re) not in a dying newspaper. You’ll know you’re in a new and innovative company that is excited about its future.’

—Liz White

Educating young journalists about responsibility in media literacy was a key theme of the panel discussion on “Trends and changes in journalism – How it will affect your newsroom” at the New England Newspaper and Press Association winter convention.

“I ask (my students) to spend a week tracking and analyzing everything that they consume in mass media,” said Amy Callahan, a professor and program coordinator of the Journalism/Communication Department at Northern Essex Community College, which has campuses in Haverhill and Lawrence, Mass.

“Coming out of it, most of them realize that consuming mass media has to be an active thing. So much of what they do is passive, and it’s coming at us, as we all know, in a saturated environment. I really try to hammer it into them that it has to be a very active activity that they do consciously.”

The panel included Callahan, who moderated the discussion; Melissa Zimdars, assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass.; Monika Raesch, associate professor and department chair of communication and journalism at Suffolk University in Boston; Laurel Hellerstein, dean of the School of Communication at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass.; and Peggy Dillon, associate professor of communications at Salem (Mass.) State University.

Zimdars expanded on the idea of media literacy and gave examples on how she encourages her students to consume a wider range of material.

“The only answer that I have found that works is by convincing (students) that their media diet should never be one source,” Zimdars said. “Media literacy is about pointing to credible sources.”

The panelists also stressed the importance of differentiating in their classrooms between the concepts of communications and journalism, so students can recognize the difference in real life.

“(Public relations) is, in many ways, at odds with journalism, even though it uses the same set of skills, primarily,” Callahan said. “I do try to be conscientious about it, but I understand that it would be confusing for students … I think there’s something to having students be more educated, as long as we can make it clear that they’re not the same thing.”

Hellerstein said communications and journalism departments can coexist because they have some of the same goals.

“The focus we like to talk about is that we’re all about storytelling,” Hellerstein said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a communications major or journalism or marketing.”

The panelists also touched on their goals of informing their journalism students about opportunities that exist in local, community journalism.

“(Journalism programs) should be working more closely with the local journalists,” Callahan said. “(Journalists) can also bring people in and make newsrooms more open.”

Another helpful tool for budding journalists is going out in the community and covering real events, according to the panelists.

Raesch gave the example of when her students covered the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013.

“It’s unpredictable,” she said. “But when these moments happen, they’re such good learning lessons, and I think those are the best moments to learn.”

The discussion ended on the issue of the importance of solid journalism during the current presidential administration.

“At a broader level, I’m just talking to my students a lot about the relationship between free press and democracy because, for some of them, it’s the first time they’re ever considered that,” Dillon said. “So that’s the level at which I discuss it, and what the potential outcomes could be if we don’t have a free press. It’s more than just the president criticizing the media. We talk about the consequences of all of it.”

The panel discussion, which took place Saturday, Feb. 25, was attended by about 25 people.

‘At a broader level, I’m just talking to my students a lot about the relationship between free press and decomcracy because, for some of them, it’s the first time they’re ever considered that. So that’s the level at which I discuss it, and what the potential outcomes could be if we don’t have a free press. It’s more than just the president criticizing the media. We talk about the consequences of all of it.’

—Peggy Dillon, Associate professor of communications,
Salem (Mass.) State University

‘The only answer that I have found that works is by convincing (students) that their media diet should never be one source. Media literacy is about pointing to credible sources.’

—Melissa Zimdars, Assistant professor of communication,
Merrimack College, North Andover, Mass.

‘The focus we like to talk about is that we’re all about storytelling. It doesn’t matter if you’re a communications major or journalism or marketing.’

—Laurel Hellerstein, Dean, School of Communication,
Endicott College, Beverly, Mass.

‘(Public relations) is, in many ways, at odds with journalism, even though it uses the same set of skills, primarily. I do try to be conscientious about it, but I understand that it would be confusing for students . . . I think there’s something to having students be more educated, as long as we can make it clear that they’re not the same thing.’

—Amy Callahan, Professor, program coordinator,
Journalism/Communication Department,
Northern Essex Community College,
Haverhill and Lawrence, Mass.

Mobile forms of communication are not going away anytime soon.

So Lee Little’s “Mobile landscape for publishers” presentation at the New England Newspaper and Press Association winter convention explored the benefits that mobile forms of publication have in reaching a growing audience, and how to help achieve those benefits.

The presentation, held Friday, Feb. 24, at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel, encouraged the audience of a dozen people to consider mobile applications and their special features as the main medium for their publishing. Little, founder and chief executive officer of Bar-Z Mobile De-velopment of Austin, Texas, has experienced the benefits of going mobile.

“Local newspapers are best served (by) mobile” Little said. “It’s where the audience is.”

Little said 81 percent of Americans have smartphones, with the common user checking his or her phone every six and a half minutes on average. Ninety percent of the time users spend on a mobile device is spent using mobile applications.

Because a majority of users get their news on screens, it is necessary to publish quality content. A good general screen appearance and proper marketing and monetizing is also crucial to that content’s success. To properly achieve that, Little suggests using two critical forms of mobile publication:

• Responsive design websites — websites designed to fit the screen of the device. Com-pared to a regular mobile website, responsive design websites automatically switch to accom-modate for the resolution, image size and scripting abilities of the device, allowing for a better user experience.
• Native apps — mobile applications developed for a particular platform or device, such as iPhones. A user downloads the application from an app store on his or her device, and the ap-plication’s software compatibility provides for fast performance and high reliability.

Native apps, although more expensive to develop, are the best, Little said.

Little took the audience through several examples of apps created to cater to unique audiences. Those specialty apps are mostly city or community portal apps, on which readers can download and learn about the food, travel and leisure options of a specific locale. Many portal apps in-clude secondary sections for sponsors of the application to advertise their content.

“Including sponsors in community portals is a great way of keeping them from developing their own app,” Little said.

To increase the frequency of audience engagement on such apps, features such as coupon of-fers, social media-sharing capabilities and interactive polls can be used.

Little said the most effective tools are iBeacons paired with push notifications.

iBeacons are small devices placed in local areas such as shopping malls or other public venues in a community. When the GPS tracking in a mobile device comes within range of an iBeacon, it triggers content to appear on the device, commonly in the form of push notifications that engage with a mobile user.

It is beneficial to keep the content provided in those push notifications relevant to the user. Keeping the subscriber from becoming irritated or disengaged with the content being presented is crucial, Little said. That means updating the content regularly.

“If you have consumers using mobile, they don’t want to look at the same content all day,” Little said.

When using mobile tools to reach new audiences, evaluating the progress of those interactions is key. Little advised taking a trial-and-error approach to mobile publishing as the best way to extend a publishing brand.

The most important thing is improving on prior models of content presentation, Little said.

“You have to look at what you have and ask what is a natural way to go about relaying that,” he said. “You look at version 1.0, version 2.0, and then version 3.0.”

‘If you have consumers using mobile, they don’t want to look at the same content all day.’

—Lee Little, Founder, chief executive officer,
Bar-Z Mobile Development, Austin, Texas

Al Getler, former publisher of The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, shows  during a convention session Friday morning, Feb. 24, how to position a smartphone in shooting Facebook Live video.

Al Getler brought a friend to the session he organized for the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s winter convention.

Facebook was the figurative friend Getler, former publisher of The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press, brought to the two-part session, attended by more than 60 people Friday, Feb. 24.

In the first part of the session on “Facebook, newspapers and journalism,” Getler introduced the speaker, Peter Elkins-Williams, leader of Facebook’s news partnerships. Elkins-Williams discussed the Facebook Journalism Project and its efforts to create better ties with the news industry.

In the second part of the session, Getler discussed how Facebook Live, a feature that allows users to stream video footage instantly on Facebook, can help make news coverage more efficient and interesting.

Getler’s presentation aimed at educating journalists who work mainly in print about the benefits of using social media to promote news stories and receive instant feedback.

“Facebook is your friend,” Getler said. “That is my belief, and hopefully that will be yours too.”

Getler said that if journalists want people to read their work, they need to go where people are: social media.

Getler said that by posting stories on Facebook and paying the platform to boost those stories, journalists can expose users to their publication in hopes that those users will continue to follow the publication on different platforms.

“A little boost goes a long way,” Getler said. “If you pay a bit of money for Facebook to drive your story, it can instantaneously get 80,000 likes.”

Posting Facebook Live videos can help print journalists compete with broadcast reporters without the need for heavy production equipment, bulky microphones, or multiple team members. Journalists can share “breaking news, explainers, and sports highlights” with the touch of a button on their personal phones, Getler said.

Facebook Live also offers instant analytics and metrics that can be helpful for journalists to gauge the reactions and questions an audience might have.

“You know how many shares, likes (a story attracts) … the story performance all in live time versus waiting two weeks for the numbers to come out on how many newspapers were bought,” Getler said.

Those instant analytics can be helpful for journalists to answer questions the audience might have about a story, to think of alternative facts to investigate while still at the scene, and to know how to delve deeper into a story, based on comments made immediately about your Facebook Live video.

While speaking during the session, Getler was simultaneously filming a Facebook Live video of his presentation.

He urged the audience to “take a risk in the industry,” and gave them several tips for shooting videos. The tips included cupping a hand over the microphone for sound clarity, buying a tripod to prevent “wiggly” footage, editing clips via iMovie, and experimenting with technology to become more confident in using tech tools.

“I do believe in technology a great deal,” Getler said. “We need to get over thinking that ‘risking nothing is genius’.”

‘Facebook is your friend. That is my belief, and hopefully that will be yours too.’

—Al Getler, Former publisher,
Burlington (Vt.) Free Press

With this mounted smartphone, Getler shoots a Facebook Live video of his presentation.

The disruption of the newspaper industry began with the advent of the internet as a consumer technology in the 1990s. In the decades since, online news aggregators, digital advertising and social media giants have chipped away at the business model of news. But that process is not inevitable nor irreversible, according to Thales Teixeira, a professor in the marketing unit at Harvard Business School.

There is a recipe for disrupting markets, and newspapers can put that to use for themselves too, Teixeira explained in his keynote speech Friday, Feb. 24, at the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s winter convention in the Boston Long Wharf Marriott hotel.

In his speech, entitled “Responding to digital disruption,” Teixeira revealed the key to disruption, which he learned from studying startups. He calls it “decoupling.”

The traditional consumer process is like a linked chain. Consumers evaluate the different options available for some product, pick one, purchase it and use it. Teixeira likes to say the events in that chain are coupled, or bound together. Disrupters work by decoupling the chain.

Twenty years ago, a reader would buy The New York Times and receive a bundle of products — news stories, classified advertisements, restaurant reviews and more. Today, those services have been decoupled by various disrupters. Google has become a source for news stories. Craigslist provides easy access to classified ads. Yelp handles restaurant reviews.

A similar process occurred in broadcast news. Traditionally, viewers watched news shows and sat through the commercials that generated revenue for those programs. Now, viewers can use TiVo or DVR to bypass the ads, or they can turn to Netflix to stream video. The old business model for broadcast television has been decoupled.

Teixeira said disrupters are successful because they find the weak link in the coupled consumer chain and decouple it. Those companies find ways to create new value, such as WhatsApp, which provides free text messaging across borders, or to reduce hassle, such as Fresh Direct, which delivers groceries to a customer’s door.

Consumers prefer anything that can reduce monetary, time or effort costs, Teixeira said.

Incumbents in any industry can recognize that and try to prevent disruption in two ways: recoupling or rebalancing. Recoupling, which refers to maintaining the traditional consumer chain, often involves forcing contracts on customers to keep them committed to a service or lobbying the government to outlaw a separation of activities.

Teixeira recommends rebalancing instead.

Rather than waiting for the purchasing stage at the end of the consumer chain, rebalancing involves companies monetizing as many stages in the chain as they can.

Teixeira used an analogy to explain: “If you are at the beginning of a pipeline and don’t capture value until the end, then a disrupter can drill a hole in the middle and get all the oil.”

He pointed to Best Buy as an example of rebalancing at its best. Realizing that many customers were testing out products in store but then buying them online from Amazon, the company decided to find another revenue stream. It recognized that it was creating value for suppliers such as Samsung by showcasing their products in-store, so Best Buy turned to those suppliers and began charging them a display fee.

The New York Times is doing that in some ways, Teixeira said. When the newspaper realized it was creating more value for online readers than it was for online advertisers, it switched from an advertisement-based revenue model to a subscription-based one. It put up a paywall to charge readers for the value of its content. It is also trying to create additional value through new apps, blogs, crossword puzzles and more.

Local newspapers, which have been hit by disruption in the industry, can also learn from disrupters.

“Local newspapers have as their best monopoly community news,” Teixeira said.

They need to harness that monopoly to create value. Local newspapers can facilitate conversation between people and local officials about what the town wants and needs, Teixeira said.

“People will pay to have that conversation,” he said.

The key to a successful business model is recognizing the value you bring to a customer, Teixeira said.

“If you disappear from the map tomorrow, who would most miss you? Use the answer to figure out who will pay for your services,” he said.

‘If you disappear from the map tomorrow, who would most miss you? Use the answer to figure out who will pay for your services.’

—Thales Teixeira

‘We believe more than anything that your journalism is the founding point for a healthy news ecosystem. We take our role seriously … We get that social media and Facebook, in particular, has become an increasingly important part of the business and traffic.’

—Peter Elkins-Williams
Head of news partnerships, Facebook

After an election cycle in which Facebook received considerable backlash for providing a platform for fake news, Facebook recognizes its role in the media landscape and is taking active steps to engage with journalists, according to Peter Elkins-Williams, leader of the company’s news partnerships.

The company launched the Facebook Journalism Project in January to broaden and deepen its ties with the news industry, Elkins-Williams said Friday, Feb. 24, in a session entitled “Facebook, Newspapers and Journalism” at the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s winter convention.

Through the project, Facebook plans to collaborate with news organizations to develop new products, provide training and tools for reporters to mine its site for information and events, and combat the spread of fake news by improving users’ news literacy.

“We believe more than anything that your journalism is the founding point for a healthy news ecosystem,” Elkins-Williams told an audience of more than 60 journalists and students at the Boston Long Wharf Marriott hotel. “We take our role seriously … We get that social media and Facebook, in particular, has become an increasingly important part of the business and traffic.”

Facebook is one of the world’s largest distributors of information, with millions of stories passing through the site each day, according to The New York Times. Now, the social media giant is creating online videos and resource guides to help journalists harness that power in their reporting.

The company recently acquired CrowdTangle — a tool to identify stories and measure their social-media performance — and decided to make it available free for publishers. More than 500 newspapers have begun using the service, Elkins-Williams said.

Facebook has also created a fake news reporting tool that allows users to flag posts with dubious information. Once third-party fact-checkers from various news organizations have confirmed that the story is fake, it will be labeled as such and users will be warned when they go to share it.

“We’re excited about that first step, but there’s more to be done,” Elkins-Williams said. “We’re going to keep working on the product as long as it takes, but we think it’s starting to show results.”

He also offered general tips on ways journalists can optimize Facebook for their work. He recommended focusing on video as a way to engage the 500 million people who watch video on Facebook daily. The popularity of videos has risen steeply in recent years and is expected to continue, especially with the success of Facebook Live, he said.

Elkins-Williams tried to allay fears that a rigged algorithm for Facebook’s News Feed was promoting content from some news sources over others. It is only built on relevance to the individual viewer, with the goal of informing, entertaining and showing authentic communication, he said.

“There are no tricks and games to really game that system. What does best (in the News Feed) is what’s authentic to your paper and community,” he said.

Facebook is also thinking about how to help newspapers monetize their content on social media. While it is still early in the process, the company is looking into improved advertising and display options for Instant Articles, as well as the incorporation of ads to videos and Facebook Live.

The company plans to continue exploring options to create a mutually beneficial partnership with journalists, Elkins-Williams said.

“It’s time to deepen and broaden our relationship,” he said.

Facebook seeks a stronger alliance with news outfits, and is offering new products, training, tools, and steps to stop fake news, one of its executives told a convention audience.

With new threats to the First Amendment, journalism’s role is more important than ever, Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for The Washington Post, told those attending the seventh annual New England First Amendment Coalition awards luncheon Friday, Feb. 24, in Boston.

After accepting the Stephen Hamblett First Amendment Award — given to someone who has promoted, defended or advocated for the First Amendment throughout his or her career — Sullivan advocated for a relentless pursuit of the truth and a dogged defense of news organizations that promote it.

“Just as the First Amendment protects us, we must return the framers’ great favor and protect it,” Sullivan said. “We do that by insisting on the truth, seeking it relentlessly and standing up for those who provide it.”

A sense of urgency to fight against potential threats to the First Amendment from President Donald Trump and his administration permeated the awards luncheon, held at the Boston Long Wharf Marriott hotel during the New England Newspaper and Press Association’s 2017 winter convention.

NEFAC hosts the event to honor those who have advocated for the First Amendment and freedom of information. This year the coalition also honored the Sun Journal of Lewiston, Maine, and Donna Green, an open government advocate in New Hampshire.

Each of the award recipients expressed a fear for the future of the free press, mentioning new obstacles standing in the way of the public’s right to know at local, state and federal levels.

Sullivan detailed threats posed by Trump. He has blacklisted news organizations, including the Washington Post, deemed unflattering stories to be fake news, called reporters scum, and asserted that the press is the enemy of the people, she said.

“President Trump shows no understanding of the role of the press in our democracy,” Sullivan said. “I’ve lost some sleep over it, worried about the very survival of American democracy when one of its foundations, a free press, is already under attack.”

That’s why it is more important than ever to seek the truth and protect those who do, she said.

As a sign of hope, Sullivan pointed to a Washington Post report into national security adviser Michael Flynn’s interactions with Russian officials. The story led to Flynn’s resignation, illustrating the power of honest journalism.

Judith Meyer, the Sun Journal’s executive editor, who accepted the Michael Donoghue Freedom of Information Award on behalf of the newspaper, told a similar story of hope resulting from solid daily reporting.

In April 2016, a Sun Journal reporter went to county court to access files for a manslaughter case the paper had been following. The reporter was told that the case file didn’t exist. Confused by that, editors reached out to the court for clarification and discovered that the state’s judicial branch had made a quiet, internal decision to seal all dismissed criminal case files after 30 days.

Recognizing that as a violation of public record laws, the Sun Journal launched a campaign against the policy. After six weeks, dozens of phone calls, and more than 100 emails, they were victorious. The court ended the policy.

“The fact that the courts were able to do this without anyone knowing is frightening,” Meyer said.

But the case also offers hope for reporters willing to fight for the truth.

“Know when you’re right, and when you’re right, do not crumble,” Meyer said.

Green, a member of Right to Know New Hampshire, advocated for persistence as well. She needed it during a long battle with Timberlane Regional School District and SAU 55 over an interpretation of public records law that allowed officials to refuse to distribute records in electronic format even if they already existed as such.

Green was awarded the Antonia Orfield Citizenship Award for challenging that interpretation and winning her case in state Supreme Court.

“I worry about the future,” she said. “It seems a culture of the ends justifying the means is taking hold.”

But the dogged work of reporters is a reason to hope, she said to the audience of more than 250 people, which included journalists, lawyers, students and others.

“I won one important case. You fight every day,” she said