The subject of objectivity

Objectivity and its implications for ethics in the PR and journalism communities is an issue at the moment and has been neatly covered by Peter Brill at Net.Mentor.

Ethics seems to be one of the new battlegrounds in the media industry. While PR and journalism have always had a love hate relationship, it seems to me that things have been worsened by the advent of social media. It was easier when you were defined by which side of the publishing fence you were on, although as Peter describes there has always been that grey area in trade/business to business publications.

But now, PR professionals and journalists are meant to be all things to all men and also have to compete with all men when it comes to breaking news, spreading news and having an opinion about. It's difficult to feel sure about yourself when the basis for your existence starts dissolving. The results?

• Established media pour scorn on bloggers and social media sites for their lack of professional rigour and pandering to the lowest common denominator
• Bloggers ridicule PR people for treating them like a 'channel' and publish their names to shame them
• Bloggers condescendingly refer to the 'msm' (mainstream media)
• Traditional PR people ridicule those who are experimenting with and even developed social media tools
for drinking too much 'Kool-Aid'.
• 'New' PR people can't quite seem to work out whether they are in PR, marketing or advertising and are trying to grab as much territory as possible to make sure they don't get overrun by the departments with the big budgets.

All in all it could be pretty depressing - I for one have a foot in all these camps and I know others as well. After years of knowing what to do and how to do it, its hard to be confronted every other week with a new idea you have to take a position on. But, you know what? I think it is pretty exciting. We are on a moving escalator and no amount of whinging or complaining or disagreeing is going to stop the escalator. (Although sometimes it is difficult to see whether it's going up or down).

I'm not depressed because I try and look for the wood and not the trees. I have a sneaking sympathy for all sides. So until things change again I'll carry a newspaper because it is still the ultimate format for readability and portability, I'll keep a tag on my industries through trade mags and the growing number of web sites that complement them, I'll post on forums, receive messages on email subscription lists, follow my friends on Facebook, keep tabs on my professional life through LinkedIn, read opinions on blogs fed to my RSS reader and use Twitter and Jaiku because I might need to know about them in the future.

Despite their differences, most people in these various camps, despite what their detractors say and what they say about others, are not looking for what's best, but what works. That can only be positive.

Death of an ad salesman

I've commented before on figures that show falling adsales for newspapers and how some think that means the end of the industry. Figures from this week show that advertising sales are continuing to fall.

I've never really understood why so much emphasis is placed on advertising in the newspaper business model - alright I know why, I just think that the emphasis is misplaced. On a very basic level it makes up for all the times as a journalist I was told by ad salesmen that they "pay my wages" with a superior air. All my spluttering anger trying to justify that it was my fantastic words that sold the paper or magazine are now coming back to haunt them.

Because if anything is proven by the downward spiral of ad revenues it is that content matters.

Papers aren't precious, but journalists and other content creators are. It is time for publishers to realise that there's nothing wrong with the reading public, just the publishers' business model.

While ad revenues drop for newspapers, the picture is different for business to business magazines. However, there aren't many media correspondents or pundits that focus much attention on the b2b number sector. In fact, the number of new magazines remains stable with a slight increase. While ad revenue is falling, b2b magazines are actually increasing revenues when you include online, trade shows and other spin-offs.

To underline: yes, paper editions may soon be lining the bottom of the budgie's cage. However, the content lives on is RSS feeds, on blogs, in databases, on social bookmarking sites.

Now who's paying whose wages?

Taking web experiences into the social sphere

Just kicked off a very exciting web project with the International Business programme at Copenhagen Business School. What started off as a web writing project is developing into something a bit special.
Copenhagen Business School is one of the leading business schools in Europe, but hasn't always had the awareness it deserves. So, together with a group of present students, I'm working on polishing up the web site so it can attract the attention of future students.
From the initial chats we quickly decided that instead of just brushing up the copy we would try and incorporate external blogs, social bookmarking, linking and all sorts of web 2.o bits and pieces to give an idea of the life of students.
The CMS the site uses is a bit restrictive - but has a nice right-hand column that we can use to tuck away bits of code and links off the main site.
The idea is that the main site will carry much of the information needed about studying at Copenhagen Business School, while the outside links will be about the 'experience'.

26 reasons to click here

26, a group for business writers in the UK, has just launched its latest project that aims to bring creativity into business writing.

"As part of the 2007 London Design Festival, '26 Posters' set a challenge to twenty-six pairs of writers and designers. To create a six-word poster that somehow comments on or reflects its immediate location. That's it. Simple, but devilishly tricky."

Have a look at what words can do - you can also see some of the other projects on the web site