The alternative to PR 'spam'

There's been lots of chat over this long weekend about PR people "spamming" bloggers and journalists with press releases. The kick-off to this was the decision by Gina Trapani of Lifehacker.com to blacklist PR companies because they sent press releases to her personal email, rather than to a specific address at Lifehacker.com Gina has chosen to blacklist whole domains (i.e. stopping emails from the entire company) rather than individuals as Chris Anderson, editor of Wired did.

I panicked when I saw this because only a day or two before I had sent a story pitch to Lifehacker on behalf of a client. I checked the blacklist and I wasn't on it; going back to my email client I could see that luckily I had sent it to the 'right' address.

However, if I had the option, I would have sent it to Gina Trapani on the basis that if it wasn't right for her she would send it on to the other journalists. I did this on the assumption that that's what an editor does.

On the whole, I can appreciate her frustration and to some extent her reaction. But the incident underlines that the rules are changing for both sides. Bloggers, journalists and blogger-journalists also have a duty to make it clear what they will and will not accept and how they will accept it.

I have more or less dropped buying in mailing lists from the usual suspects. That means I have to do a lot of research to hand-pick the right journalists and their publications. Generally that means ringing up beforehand to ask if they want to be part of a mailing list. It is hard and time-consuming work and I don't charge anything more than a flat rate for it because I see it as an investment in my business and my clients' business.

That experience has made me realise how poor most magazine and newspaper web sites are in dealing with their own relations. Few give a clear idea who edits the publication, what they are looking for, their deadlines, upcoming features etc. (Mind you, if I want advertising I have to beat them off with a shitty stick...). No wonder that PR people use mailing lists from Cision and PRNewswire.

On a wiki page Gina gives detailed instructions on how to set up a filter to stop unsolicited emails from PR companies. Perhaps her time would have been better spent setting up an automated response telling PR companies that they should really be sending their releases to the other email address and giving more detailed information on the web page.

Who's afraid of the big, bad PR wolf?

The double-page spread in today's media supplement in the Danish business daily Børsen about the defection of journalists to PR in the country will nourish a feeding frenzy of media academics from years to come. What messages, what metaphors - what a load of rubbish.

Slap bang in the middle of the page is an illustration showing big business (yes he's smoking a cigar, yawn) ringed by faceless PR people in suits to keep away the poor, bemused journalist (yes, he's got a press pass in his hat bad).

And the headlines: "Media loses ground to PR", "Press departments threaten balance of power", "Course leader: We will not teach PR".

And all this comes on top of an excellent post by former FT journalist turned blogger Tom Foremski, MediaWatch: Why Some Journalists Won't Transition To The New Journalism  who references an excellent article by Amy Graham at www.poynter.org called Journalism: A Toxic Culture? (Or: Why Aren't We Having More Fun?)

Both the posts are about the inability of journalists to adapt to the new culture of internet-based media because of their unwillingness to accept change. One of the six reasons given by Graham and commented on by Foremski is:

• Priesthood syndrome: Traditional journalists are the sole source of news that can and should be trusted -- which gives them a privileged and sacred role that society is ethically obligated to support.

Now let's look at that Børsen story again in the light of the fading light of the priesthood of journalism and the growing legions of faceless PR people.

Well, as Gruppenführer in a PR company (actually,that's not my real title, but if we succeed in crushing journalism forever, who knows?) I think that the Børsen article is one-sided and under-researched.

That the demand for communications people is growing in Denmark is not in doubt, but the article fails to look at some key facts such as:

• Compared with other western, liberal economies, Denmark has a conservative business culture and has been way behind in their use of PR and communications people. The explosion of media outlets and the growing aggressiveness of primarily news journalists has meant they are playing catch-up.
• The article doesn't say how many of the newly appointed communication people are internal or external. Denmark excels in internal communication that is inclusive and comprehensive; the faceless PR people are in fact concerned and committed colleagues who have been known to walk rather than communicate badly.
• PR people on a global scale are also being challenged by the reduction in the number of journalists. We actually like journalists because they are the people we send our stories to.
• The whole traditional media model is breaking down and that will effect all aspects of the business. PR people are also struggling to embrace new PR or PR 2.0 or web PR, call it what you will.

I started in this business as a journalist on a local paper more than 20 years ago and that has always informed my work in internal communications and PR. The "us and them" model doesn't work anymore. In the networking society where PR people and journalists live side by side on a LinkedIn profile, we are just kidding ourselves if we think it does.

Why social media is like newspapers - not news stories

Chris Brogan has an interesting take on social media. He suggests companies look at Sunday newspapers when considering how to approach social media. It isn't as daft as it sounds.

Its good to see some more nuanced discussion about the different forms of media instead of the whole "dead tree" mainstream media diatribe. I really get annoyed when people from the online media world trash newspapers on the basis of comparing their business models. For me this is quite wrong. I have spent a lot of energy arguing against the dreaded "web writing is sooo different from writing for newspapers"

Yeah, right. Try telling that to a sub-editor (copy editor in the US) who has to cut down a 700-word outpouring to a 150-word brief, or to write a grabbing headline or standfirst that will advertise the story and work graphically as well. Or a magazine editor who has to work with pictures and typography to create a compelling layout. There may not be hyperlinks, but the good print journalist writes in the hyperlinks so you don't have to go somewhere else to get the story.

It's true many news stories are not suitable for publication on the web - but in the same way that broadsheet articles aren't suitable for publication in a tabloid. A good sub-editor could soon sort that out though.

Too many people look at the newspaper as a content delivery system instead of looking behind this to see a content creation system. Too many people judge newspapers on their circulation and advertising revenue - the business side - rather than the dynamic process of how content is created.

Of course the role of paper is going to be reduced - but don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

A Sunday Newspaper Strategy for Traditional Companies : [chrisbrogan.com]