#45 - Reputation vs. Results: History Isn’t a Strategy

Legacy media isn’t collapsing because digital exists.
It’s struggling because it’s trying to sell digital services it wasn’t built to deliver.

Newsrooms are shrinking. Journalists are being laid off. Entire sections are disappearing. At the same time, many historic media brands are expanding into SEO, website development, social media management, and digital advertising.

The question is simple:

Does a 100-year-old reputation automatically translate into digital competence?

In this episode of Over The Bull, Ken Carroll breaks down:
•The structural decline in newsroom employment
•The pivot from journalism to digital sales
•Why brand equity is being used as a substitute for operational capability
•The difference between selling digital and actually executing digital

This isn’t an attack on journalism.
It’s an examination of misalignment — systems built for one era attempting to monetize another.

History built trust.
But trust alone doesn’t produce measurable results.

If you’re a business owner evaluating digital services, this episode will help you separate reputation from real execution.

SOURCES:

Washington Post cuts a third of its staff: https://apnews.com/article/923f87d4bd319c8a64b278165d0a6e27  

U.S. newsroom employment has fallen 26% since 2008 (Pew Research Center): https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-fallen-26-since-2008/  

Media Layoffs & Employment (Pew Research Center topic page): https://www.pewresearch.org/topic/news-habits-media/news-media-trends/media-industry/media-layoffs-employment/  

US Newsroom Staffing Has Dropped 26% in 12 Years (TheWrap summary of Pew data): https://www.thewrap.com/us-newsroom-staffing-has-dropped-26-in-12-years-research-shows/  

Newspaper newsroom employment fell 57% since 2008 (Pew data summary): https://mustreadalaska.com/newspaper-newsrooms-have-shed-57-jobs-since-2008/  

Washington Post layoffs continued criticism and context (The Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/06/bob-woodward-washington-post-layoffs  

Mass layoffs at The Washington Post reported internationally (Le Monde): https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/02/05/the-washington-post-legendary-american-daily-is-shaken-by-mass-layoffs_6750173_4.html

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken Carroll.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

The death of legacy media on this episode of Over the Bull. Boy, it's dying. The legacy media is definitely something that is trying to cling on to something, but the signs are out there. The echocardiogram results aren't that great. And we're going to discuss that today because it's really important because as the owner of a business, sometimes hearing the name of where you could possibly promote your business carries more weight than the actual effectiveness of that particular media. I mean, just pick some of the biggest newspapers in your area, uh, pick some of the biggest names in legacy media, and then just think of the tone that it takes and how easily you could buy into something solely based on the name and the historic reputation of that company. So the question is, what are they doing? Should you participate in it? Or what's really going on? So we're going to explore that a little bit in today's podcast. So the core idea here in the first segment is it's not hyperbole. Newsroom employment has been declining for years. So here's some quotes. US newsroom employment has dropped roughly 26% since 2008 across print, broadcast, and digital. This is by Deep Seek Pro, their statistic. Newspaper newsroom jobs fell 57% between 2008 and 2020, even as digital native newsroom jobs rose, but not enough to offset the losses. This is from Paperless TS. Legacy outlets beyond newspapers are also cutting. Los Angeles Times cut over 20% of newsroom staff and other outlets that have followed suit. This is according to Wikipedia. And one more from the New York Post. Media Industries, News Plus Entertainment, shed 17,000 plus jobs in 2025 with legacy TV and print impacted. So think about that. Legacy TV. So think about the TV that was once dominant in the world, but as the digital landscape is transforming, this is all uh changing how we should be looking at legacy media. So the question is, is how are they reacting? I mean, you see a 26% drop, we see jobs falling 57%, we're seeing uh LA Times uh cutting 20% of their newsroom staff. They don't do this if all is well, guys. They don't do this if things are status quo. And so what your uh media is of yesterday is not what the media is today. So if we look at it, these layoffs are not isolated. Okay, these are tied to revenue decline, audience fragmentation, and legacy cost structures. In other words, they're not evolving, they're not changing. And frankly, it appears that they're having issues transitioning and trying to figure out how to survive in the modern world. So part of what I'm going to argue is that legacy media is dying a slow death, trying to translate and trying to do things that they're really not equipped to do, and they're solely selling you advertising services using the legacy name that is largely irrelevant because the times have changed so much. Plainly said, you probably shouldn't be spending your money in these locations. I mean, think about it. Do you really go home and watch the six o'clock news anymore? I mean, is that really a thing for people with the all the different options and how you can stream content and also the trust? So we'll we'll keep diving here a little bit. So, segment two here I want to talk to you about is the paradox selling digital that these companies are not built to do. So the core idea here in this segment is instead of innovating from strength, many historic brands are trying to sell digital services, websites, SEO packages, marketing tools without the internal expertise to deliver. So what they're doing is scrambling, basically. So they're trying to develop uh partnerships, resell tools, white label tools, do different things in order to try to survive. I mean, if your business is drowning and you see the writing on the wall and you understand where the future is going, trying to respond to that is proving to be a big challenge. Um, and then what you're seeing obviously is they're they're doing a really poor job of it. I mean, some of the biggest tools that are out there uh that do things like optimize Google business listings and things like that. Some of the most popular brands, even though they're readily accessible and can be white labeled, have been largely ineffective in our test. And who do you think these big brands are going to go and try to uh work with? It's not going to be uh boutique agencies that have all the pieces in place and do a good job. It's certainly not going to be your freelancers who are winging it as they go. It's going to be someone who can handle large capacity projects where they can hand the ball off to these other groups and then white label the results. White label means they basically don't do any of the work. All the uh results are just put in their name and they outsource that. Well, now think of the overhead. Where's the best place to outsource it when they form those relationships? Think about how they do that. Think about the support that comes with it, think about the smoke and mirrors that come with that. See, this is the reality of what's going on in legacy media. So the first point, obviously, is legacy media often repackages its brand to sell services like SEO, social ads, event marketing, design, all those things. Now, I personally have seen this with a legacy brand locally, and it's catastrophic. I mean, it's absolutely catastrophic. Um, the people that they have in-house, they're not equipped to be able to even properly answer questions. They even address things from the perspective of using technology that became irrelevant uh a couple years ago. Now, the weird thing is there's a lot of technology that was relevant a couple years ago or even last year that's now irrelevant. And so uh it's just interesting to see that these big media companies, when they're pressed to answer basic questions when it comes to digital marketing, are not able to do it. And because of the relationships they form, they really can't get good, accurate answers. And so they kind of scramble as people on the front line who are not equipped to even answer questions appropriately. So many of these services require specialized skills, uh, agile processes and investment, things newsrooms and agency organizations are not structured for. Bottom line, agile processes, my goodness. In 2026, we have completely revamped. Like in 2025, we revamped our website four times in order to accommodate the rapidly evolving technology. And in 2026, we did it yet again. It's because we're we're basically looking at everything going on, adjusting as we move forward, and cleaning up plans, processes, and even how we work with clients. This requires a lot of agility. And big companies just think of them as like uh big boats, you know, big ships. You can't turn them on a dime versus, say, a speed boat. And so the strategic advantage of a good boutique agency can outperform these large organizations because not only are they using poor processes, but their ability to react to what's going on with technology, it takes a lot longer. And in today's world, three months is like 50 years. I mean, it's just it you just become antiquated so quick. So this results in servicing by generalist white label tools, repackaging reports rather than deep execution. I mean, deep execution takes a lot of time, a lot of energy, and a lot of effort. Putting some tools in place, putting things on autopilot, right uh uh basically just selling it and then not having to manage any of the processes can be more scalable, but it's not effective for your business. So you can kind of see the difference in the two here. So digital native companies built around metrics, uh, iterative testing, uh, and digital fluency have often filled the gap that legacy media has promised to fill, but they're unable to fill it. So if they're not able to do it, they're just selling you like pre-canned products and just trying to make money at it and then use their brand name in order to make you think they're doing more than they are, what good is it? Okay, so let's talk about where legacy media stumbles operationally. So the core idea in this part is uh selling digital services is different from executing them. My gosh, as far as our agency, the execution of digital services and optimization and changing things, and by the way, this word optimization, it's kind of like the word SEO. I hate hearing it being used because it's such an abused word at this point that people just throw that word around. What I mean by optimization is you get your hands dirty, you talk to the client, you fight, you figure it out, you do all the hard work, the competitive analysis, you show the data, you do the keyword research, you do all the things that have to be done. When I say optimization, that's what I'm talking about. Not some QC word about optimizing your local SEO Google business by using some service that doesn't do the job. So be careful with those words, optimization, SEO, search engine optimization. They're all loaded terms these days, and they're just used as pre-sales tools to make you think that people do more than they do. So make sure you ask the deep questions. So let's talk about some examples. Um SEO without a content plus technical team. This is huge. I mean, they farm out. I can't tell you how many reports I look at from certain uh companies that come to us and it's horrible. It's automated SEO that more hurts the company than it helps it. Or they're using strategies that are trying to give a temporary bump, but long term it's going to hurt the company. Uh, tons of issues related to that. Uh social media strategy without community management. Uh, we're investing more in social media these days because what our goal is is to implement a heavier strategy. Now, SE uh social media, there are two actual components to it from my perspective. One is Signal, uh, which shows that uh you are active and you are engaging. And then the other one is community management, where uh it's not a signal for um for technology to know that you're legitimate, but it's actually making content that actually impacts people and you know engages your core audience. Um, web builds with no conversion optimization. Oh man. We have had SEO companies, organic search engine optimization companies. They come to us, and I met with one of them last year. They had a very interesting strategy where they were inviting me to uh be part of a podcast, and they quickly did that bait and switch thing where they were talking about offering search engine optimization services. It was, it was, it was, they did a good job of the bait and switch. Um, but anyway, they they were offering to run search engine optimization, but they didn't address the fact that we build websites and adjust them based upon what we see with the ads. And how do you bridge the gap between the two? Zero answers. The customers, none. They just wanted to build a bunch of backlinks, not worry about strategy, increase traffic, and just make you think that they were going to do something. And then you give that uh nonsensical language to the client and then hope that the client doesn't ask any deeper questions. So this happens big time in legacy media trying to step out of their uh their realm of expertise, which is a dying realm of expertise. Uh they also do um reporting dashboards that highlight vanity metrics over outcomes. I mean, are people talking to you about impressions? Are people talking to you about numbers, clicks, things like that, but can't really quantify that into viable outcomes for your business? Well, that's what these guys typically do because that's what you can systematize on a scalable level to a bunch of people versus building something meaningful. And uh, because the hard work is where the overhead comes in. So legacy outlets often leverage brand equity, you know, the history and the prestige of the brand to vault into services that demand operational excellence. This is a complete mismatch. This is why if you're advertising on the big brand and going, why am I not getting more out of this? They said they're doing this. It's expected. That's what you expect to do. You're buying the brand, you're buying the logo, you're not buying the service. They're just making you think that they know more than they do because they leverage the brand. You see, that's not exactly where you want to live in today's world. So let's talk about their audiences. Now, their audiences are already shifted. Okay, so when you look at the people that used to watch or read legacy media, these audiences are voting with attention and subscription dollars. So millions have cut traditional cable and print publications, turning instead to search engines, social, and direct platforms for news and information. This is Econo Times who presented this. So think about it. Uh there's been some credibility issues with legacy media, and a lot of people are skeptical about them. And there are various reasons people are turning, maybe it's accessibility, it could be other things too, obviously. But the idea is that what they used to trust, they no longer trust, and where they give their attention now is not where they used to give their attention. That means less eyes seeing it. Plus, today's marketing is about targeting critical audiences. It's no longer the shotgun, let me broadcast an advertisement across the state that you live in or the city you live in because the majority of those people are not using what you want. You want to be at a different place in time and space in order to be effective. They simply don't have the tools. They just incorporate that into their overall plan because they know that it looks better. All of our tests are showing that that's pretty much conclusive across the board. Local newspapers have closed or reduced frequency, creating news deserts in many regions, a systemic loss of local coverage. This is just a dying company, uh dying legacy way in which people used to consume information. And with the death of it, you're seeing that people are no longer paying attention to it. They're no longer trusting it, they're seeking their own answers because those answers are more readily available in other places. Think no more than all the people who are using Chat GPT. I don't know if I shared this with you, but I've gone from exploring ideas to actually building projects in less than a five-minute conversation with AI. I look for information, I go and I want to see both sides of it. I don't really care to hear somebody spin on it. And a lot of these uh news stations today, they're more concerned about spinning to a certain audience and trying to live rather than just report the news as is. People pick up on this, if not um consciously, subconsciously. They realize that there are things missing in the media and they're looking at other places. And don't think that older people are clinging on to legacy and younger people aren't. That is a mistake, absolute mistake. I mean, as far back as 15 years ago, a dear friend of mine, Bahia Abrams, who uh edited a book that I wrote, she came and uh she was using technology and tablets and doing things even as far back as uh way back when. And so um she was an older lady, and so you look at that, so don't don't let them fool you into thinking that if you're trying to target people who have more disposable income, they're more likely to watch legacy media. Absolutely not. I mean, just think, uh, think of even radio. I mean, just how much that's changed in the recent years. How many people actually tune into it? Um, I bet the numbers are much more staggering than we realize. So audience erosion compounds their challenge. They're not just leaving legacy media, they're consuming content in fundamentally different ways. They're looking in different places, they're they're tribing in in different uh in different herds. And that's just the way people do. Tribalism is a known thing, regardless of your theological or philosophical predisposition, and people are just simply not doing it. So do you really want to invest in a in a dying legacy environment just so that you can say you advertise on a once good brand that could sustain itself under significantly different context? I mean, the battleground has shifted. It's the polar opposite of what they were built on and sustained themselves forever. So here's the deal, guys. Legacy brands attempt to monetize digital services by leaning on their history, not their digital competence. Can you afford that? Can you afford to say I advertise with the company just because I can say I advertise with the big brand? You're feeding your ego if you're doing that. You're not thinking about your business. They can handle it. Period. Um, they pitch trust and reach, but the results, delivery, instructures do not follow what they're pitching because they can't offer it. It's too much work to go in there and define audiences, build custom conversions, make adjustments, do all the things that have to be done to make something effective. And then being able to engage on a personable level. It's much easier to say, give me a few bucks, let me run some ads for you. Here's a portal to go in and look at the vanity numbers just to see the magic that's being made, and none of it is true. Think of the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain. That's what they're doing. So this leads to client dissatisfaction and organizational contradictions. And here we have the layoffs, the signs that it's getting worse for these companies. So a brand trusted for print or broadcast does not automatically equate to effective digital educ uh execution. Now, let's talk about what really works here, guys. All right. So firms that build digital services on digital competences, our competency, uh, not the brand alone. I mean, when we're going through this, I mean, even digital agencies are struggling with this, frankly. Uh, because we're having to shift so much in where we're investing infrastructure, how we're uh building companies' reputations, what we're targeting, how we're targeting it, what we're growing toward. It's different. 2026, it's a world different than 2025. And so the idea is to be digitally competent requires also a lot of research, a lot of homework, a lot of hands-on with clients. It's a lot of overhead, frankly. Uh, not the best model when you're trying to scale things uh and just sell something that's marginally uh acceptable. Even that's being optimistic. Uh specialized shops that say we only do what we do exceptionally. So the idea is that what I mean by this is that um when you look at specialty shops today, and you probably know I'm talking about the Google Ads company that runs ads on your behalf, but they're not looking at the totality of what's going on on the internet, you may still be doing well with those ads, by the way. I'm telling you, that house of cards is collapsing. I've been saying this now for over a year. That is collapsing. And so you want to avoid uh specialty shops that focus on one thing. What you want to do is focus on. Agencies that are able to embrace all the technology, research, are reactive to what's going on, are disciplined, doing their homework and putting in the pieces to stay afloat as everything is changing across the digital landscape. And it is changing fast. So teams that invest in measurement, experimentation, and transparent ROI. This is the name of the game today, guys. If your people are talking again about vanity numbers, vanity metrics, they're not working with you, trying to optimize and change things, well, you're um you're going down the wrong path. So it's not just the legacy media. You've got to find competency within the digital spectrum because a lot of these uh uh, especially freelancers, they're just freelance world, I I feel sorry for those guys today. It's a lot different than it was, you know, 20 years ago. Uh it's just it requires so much more infrastructure than it's ever done, and so much more homework, and it's hard to be competent across the board. So uh I question the ability of freelancers to even be able to sustain themselves. And then on the other side, you get the big legacy media, and so you've got to find a sweet spot somewhere in between, and it's got to consider much more than just website plus Google Ads plus email. That recipe is dead. Um, it's got to be in its totality. It's got to consider modern technology, and you got to leverage a lot of technology now because honestly, we don't know who's gonna win. You know, the analogy I like to use is back in the 1980s, uh Kmart was huge. And now you look at it and we see Walmart is huge. Uh, you would not have guessed that in the 80s, so we don't know what's going to happen in the digital landscape. From what I've seen as far as numbers go, it does look like uh Google's lost some traction, but they are still the 10-ton gorilla. And so we're seeing the the new uh stuff coming up. We're seeing now even the the uh larger tech companies are even being referred to as legacy in ways now as well. Now they're not as legacy as uh television and news media and magazines and some of these things that haven't evolved. Uh, but but there are problems. You can you can imagine what what uh could happen if you don't do your due diligence and you just try to sell these packages. Um okay, so what do I mean by this? You need to look for digital service providers who explain why they do what they do with logic numbers case studies and not legacy brand power, because that will get you nowhere. Also, I want to add to this that you need to ask practical questions in a way that you can understand it. You need to make sure that if they use a term like search engine optimization, what are you referring to? Now, most people think that's related to their website coming up higher on Google. Believe it or not, search engine optimization by today's standards can mean a lot more than that, and there is often bait and switch into those very definitions. So don't assume anything. You're the customer, let them explain it, let them put that in writing as to what they do and what you can expect. That is a uh very common, the bait and switch thing is phenomenally huge today as well. So let's wrap this up. What have we learned today? Um signals, technical signals, not just an assumption or just trying to sell you something, we see the legacy media is dying. And we see that it's dying quicker and there's more layoffs occurring, and we see them trying to shift into the digital landscape, and they're using um large entities that are just as bad as them, and all they're trying to do is package something up that they can sell to you in order to add to their bottom line, not help your bottom line, period. So quit buying into legacy media brands just because they sound big and they have a historic reputation. Just because they were good, let's just call this out 10 years ago, five years ago, does not mean they're good in 2026. So imagine one that's still resting on their reputation from this started in 1950, 1960. I mean, they have long-standing reputation. Don't assume that they connect the dots and they're still effective today. They're not. The data shows that. Uh, so that would be your one ditch. Chasing brands. You don't want to chase brands anymore. What you want to do is you want to find someone who or a group. You want to find an agency. Uh, you don't want to do do-it-yourselfers, that's the other ditch. The do-it-yourselfers, I can manage this, do this myself. You want to find an agency that can help build the best plan for your businesses using the resources that you have and understand competency across a larger bandwidth of places to advertise online. That would have to transcend social, local marketing, web, paid advertising, you name it, and it goes on and on. Content marketing is huge. Um, making sure that the content is being created correctly, making sure that it's not just a bunch of jumbled up messes from artificial intelligence, make sure that it's real stuff. And so you can't go freelancer, you can't go big brand. You need to find a good agency that has those core competencies, work with that agency, and also likely you're going to have to be patient with that agency because they're going to have to untangle a lot of really bad things that have been done from either one of those ditches, which is possible. So uh quit signing those contracts, quit chasing those big brands, stand back, watch them collapse, and uh enjoy it. You know, there was a book, um, I forget the name of the book, this was years and years ago. And one of the things that it was talking about was um it's talking about branding campaigns for small business. And his comment, I wish I could think of his name, but his comment was something along the lines of that kind of advertising is for board members who you're trying to appease. It's not for effectiveness. And real marketing is much different in the real world versus just trying to get something out there. Now, there's something to be said about Toma, top of mind awareness. There's something to be said about all these things and these big engines, but there's also a truth to what he said as well. So the take-home is find somebody that knows how to use awareness campaigns and also a way for you to maximize your conversions and exposes you to the right people that you need to be exposed to in order to grow your business. The shotgun effect is dead, which means the weapons that legacy media once had at their disposal is also dead. Or we'll just call it dying. We'll try to be a little bit more polite here. All right, guys. So uh hopefully this will help you out and understand a little bit more what's going on within the uh legacy media world. At Over the Bull, we've been um crazy busy um with them expansion and growing new tools and new ideas and just seeing things. And frankly, it's it's just kind of hard to composite some of these ideas into a podcast because of the complexity and ever-changing nature of it right now. Uh so as we watch it evolve, we're doing our best to kind of give you material that's going to help you make better decisions for your business. And this um this is very important because you don't have unlimited money. No one has unlimited money. Uh you've got to focus your money where it's going to mean the most for you and your business. Period. And if you focus it, spend a little bit of money with someone who's not competent, you lost money. You didn't save money. And if you spend a lot of money with a big agency thinking that they're going to deliver something and you're disappointed, you should expect that because they don't know what they're doing. Like agencies who specialize in this and have the overhead, understand the data, work through it, uh, actually work. Okay, that should do us for today. Hope that helps you out, guys. Thank you so much. Please make sure to uh what do they say? Like, subscribe, blah, blah, blah. Make sure to do all those things. Um, and uh, stick with us. Hopefully, this will help you out as we move forward. And uh really appreciate you tuning in today. Until next time, this is Ken with Over the Bowl.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

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