PR is dead (part 63)

By Laura Cooper

According to The Guardian's Charles Arthur, PRs are in danger of becoming obsolete as journalists increasingly get more of their ideas and information from blogs. Earlier this week, Charles told an audience of 80 PRs at one of Fullrun's popular Talking Shop events that he no longer reads press releases or email pitches as all his stories now come exclusively from blogs. (On this basis, I did wonder why he'd even agreed to talk to a room full of PRs in the first place, but hey ho...)

He argues that PRs are just not good enough 'story tellers' (au contraire, Charles!), and that what they offer will never compare to accessing all the latest industry news, sometimes right from the horse's mouth ie. the CEO's blog. As such, he predicts that the number of people employed in PR will decrease as journalists gain access through their blogs to the very people - CEOs, CFOs and other key execs - that PRs are supposedly retained to act as gatekeepers for.

There's a couple of points here:

Firstly, which CEOs exactly is he talking about here? Certainly not those in the Fortune 500 list - a recent article in the New York Times revealed that the grand total of Fortune 500 CEO bloggers was... one.

And secondly, while there might well be blogs from CXOs of smaller tech companies out there, who's actually writing these blogs?

It's not just journalists that have cottoned onto the increasing popularity of the blog - much of the PR industry has also realised the influence that blogs can have over the media (not to mention how much they love all that nice free content).  Have CEOs suddenly found an extra couple of hours in their week to express their companies' issues and viewpoints via their own blog? Or could it be that their PR firm has been writing these blogs for them - and effectively fulfiling the same function as a creative pitch to the media.

So, as a PR, all I can say is - let me tell you a story... about blogs.

Comments

[Charles]

I don't think I said I don't read any PR pitches. I do read them. But very few of them ever make it to story level, for the reason I explained - PR tends to be about announcements, while what appears in papers are *issues*.

I think there is a future for PR. But I think it's a more atomised one, as is happening to journalism.

[Laura Cooper]

While it’s true that announcements are an important part of PR, they’re far from the be all and end all of the services that an agency such as Johnson King provides.

These days, any agency worth its retainer knows that announcements on their own will not generate the quality coverage and media kudos that clients want – in fact, it’s increasingly about creative, issues-based work, and laying the groundwork for stories by offering journalists new angles and ideas surrounding the markets and industries that our clients are in.

The point I was making is that corporate ‘insider’ blogs themselves will increasingly be used as a new channel for agencies to deliver these stories in both a more subtle and more direct way.