Does the 5pm News Dump Still Work?

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I'm pretty sure it's been around since the invention of the printing press. It still works, but not as well as it used to.

The City of Edmonton recently conducted a masterclass in the use of the good ol' 5pm News Dump.

A 7:17pm Classic

We’ve seen it time and time again, it works well and I have to admire the veteran move that gets made when a government news release goes out just as everyone is packing up their things at work and thinking about nothing else other than the weekend.

Here’s how nicely it worked just over a week ago when the City of Edmonton issued a media statement over X at 7:17 on a Friday night, announcing City Manager Andre Corbould would be leaving his position. The statement had Mayor Amarjeet Sohi saying a lot of nice things about Corbould and Corbould saying a lot of nice things about everything to do with the City, but of course it didn’t address the critical issue of why he was leaving or where he’s going. It seems today’s news releases have very little news in them.

By that time, Saturday's Edmonton Journal had been put to bed and since there’s no Sunday edition either, the story wouldn’t appear in the Journal until Monday, which is only a digital edition. The first “real” edition of the Journal doesn’t arrive until Tuesday. The story would make it into the Sunday Sun, but even it wouldn’t be coming out for another two days.

The timing of the release also made it too late to make it onto the evening TV news. That means if people saw the story on TV, it likely wouldn't have happened until the weekend. Problem is, viewership of local news programming on weekends is terribly low. Perhaps that’s why CTV got rid of local TV news on most stations in the country a few months ago. In Edmonton, that leaves Global as the only real source of TV news on the weekend. There are only a handful of radio stations doing news, so even if the story is carried on radio most people won’t hear it there either.

It works like a charm. By the time Monday rolls around and people get back into their routines, the departure of the City Manager is old news, even though Corbould is the seventh big name manager to leave the City in the past couple of years. Alarm bells should be ringing.

Better yet, if there are reporters working on the weekend for local media outlets, they won’t be able to track Corbould, or many others down for comment.

That’s exactly the way it played out and it didn’t become a big story in traditional media until well into the next week when a story popped up suggesting the province may step in because of concerns the City of Edmonton isn’t steering its ship in the right direction.

Just because the 5pm News Dump has been around for decades doesn’t mean it still isn’t effective.

On the Other Hand....

Having said all that, I wonder if the 5pm News Dump makes as much sense as it once did? Perhaps it doesn’t really help at all?

Let’s face it, the number of people reading newspapers, watching the news on TV, or getting the latest headlines on the radio is far less than it used to be.

My parents used to read the newspaper every day from front to back, they watched the 6pm and often the 11pm news and had the radio on all day so they could hear what was going on in the city and the world. Not many people do that anymore – certainly very few under the age of 60.

People do get their news from social media. In fact, more people now get the news they’re interested in from social media than traditional media.

Let’s use that 7:17pm City of Edmonton news release once again. As soon as it came out on X, it was commented on and widely shared. Reporters for media outlets saw the post, shared and commented on it and put it in their feeds. If you were on X on that Friday night and live in Alberta, you likely saw the news about Corbould.

My question is, does the 5pm news dump really matter anymore? Has the game changed because of social media?

It should be pointed out the City of Edmonton didn’t post the media release on its Facebook page, perhaps doing its best to share the news, but not to overly share it, if you know what I mean.

It Works, But Not as Well

Overall the 5pm News Dump is likely still beneficial, but certainly not as powerful as it was a generation or so ago.

There are some people (not many) who still get all their news from traditional media. Those people might not hear about stories like the Corbould resignation until well into the weekend, if at all.

There’s a bigger percentage of people who get their news from both traditional and social media. The news dump likely doesn’t matter much to them, but let’s face it, the more you hear or see a story, the bigger you likely think it is.

Perhaps the biggest advantage is that reporters aren’t chasing newsmakers around as soon as the news comes out. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard Corbould comment on his resignation in the media and it happened on March 22. He just disappeared, so obviously he didn't want to repeat all those nice things he said in the media statement to reporters.

My sense is, the 5pm News Dump will continue to get used by politicians and governments out of force of habit. If it worked a few years ago, it’ll still work today.

Someday though, they’ll realize social media has changed the game and then the childish media relations tactic can be put to bed for good.