The new media ecosystem - Ignore at your peril; ignore old media at your peril as well
- Posted by Ephraim Cohen on February 24th, 2006 filed in Agency Management, General, Online PR, Public Relations, Search Engine PR
Perhaps there’s no beginning or end to the old media model. Rather, just a constantly evolving media ecosystem.
Radio did not kill print, television did not kill radio, the Internet did not kill television and the blogosphere is not going to kill off the first half of this sentence. They all feed of each other in an ecosystem that extends from my personal blog, to search engine results, to the international reach of News Corp.
Despite pundits proclaiming otherwise, the so called old media will remain one of the most potent sources of influence. However, it will also be a smaller part of a much larger system that includes conversational mediums such as bloggers and portals, information mediums such as search engines and social interaction such as social networks and buzz marketing networks. If anything, it’s likely that large media companies will not only adapt to this larger ecosystem (as Richard Edelman outlines with some clear examples), but continue acquire a substantial part of it. In the meantime, as Marc Babej points out, media companies are still doing quite well with old media. Their party may be over someday, but it’s not today.
So as the evolution progresses, what skill sets do PR professionals need and what should companies be looking for in PR agencies?
First and foremost, the old media skill sets (media relations, analyst relations etc) are still critical and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Beware professionals that claim otherwise. Consumers still watch the news and read their daily newspaper; executives do the same while also listening to trade media and industry analysts. While there is a growing influential audience getting information directly from new sources such as the blogosphere, it is still just that - influencers and not the masses. But that’s the key role blogs continue to play.
That means that professionals and agencies need fundamental understanding of how the whole media ecosystem works and feeds off itself. The PR profession needs to understand how people use search engines to gather information (I’m still astounded at how few PR professional make search engine optimization and keyword advertising a part of their offering), how journalists read blogs, how blogs connect to each other to steer readers through a conversation, and how the larger part of the public still gathers their information.
So far, I’ve found the average PR professional has a strong understanding of basic reporting media (print, broadcast, etc), a very basic understanding of conversational media such as blogs and discussion groups, and almost no understanding of information media such as search engines. I find this somewhat ironic as these same professionals often use search engines the most, read blogs throughout the day, and read the paper only once a day.
That said, I think this is a temporary problem and one that will have to be solved. With the media ecosystem becoming far larger and more complex, there will be a greater demand for PR professionals that can provide proper counsel.
February 24th, 2006 at 11:01 am
[...] B2B Insight Blog: Ignore new media at your peril; ignore old media at your peril What are the skill sets for new PR people - should we ignore mainstream media (as some PR bloggers seem to think) in favor of just blogs? Should we ignore blogs (as some old-school PR people think) because they don’t have that big a reach? What is the perfect balance? [...]
February 24th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Great piece, thanks for writing it.
You wrote:
“First and foremost, the old media skill sets (media relations, analyst relations etc) are still critical and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Beware professionals that claim otherwise. Consumers still watch the news and read their daily newspaper; executives do the same while also listening to trade media and industry analysts.”
That’s true — I agree that mainstream and other forms of traditional media (such as trade press and analyst reports) will continue to be influential, and PR pros would do well to continue cultivating relationships with journalists and editors at those organizations.
That said, it seems to me that traditional press releases have generally lost their value an effectiveness with journalists and editors. Even if well-crafted, the fact that journalists and editors get so overwhelmed by them daily has relegated them collectively to the status of spam. I’m thinking PR pros would do well to lay off the press release and instead focus energy on more constructive and effective ways to connect with media pros in order to get story placement.
What do you think?
- Amy Gahran
RightConversation.com
Contentious.com
February 24th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
I completely agree that press releases have lost substantial value with media as a source of news. Beyond the volume that editors face, there’s also the fact that press releases are directly accessible by the public, thus weakening their news value for media (which wants something others don’t have).
That said, information releases (including press releases) have gained tremendous value in other ways - as news items for targeted audiences, as search engine content and still as the best form of official statements of record.
If you take a look at my post on the X release (http://b2binsight.com/blog/?p=15), I’ve laid out a number of ways the format known as a press release can be used, with media being just one.
That said, many journalists still prefer to see a press release in certain instances. For example, when we pitch technology product launches it is common to have a journalist request a copy of the press releaes. This is due to the release still being seen as the main statement of record. So don’t count the traditional press release out, just realize its value has evolved into other areas while becoming more narrow as far as the media is concerned.
February 24th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Interesting dialogue. We need to keep in mind that the news release is a key tool that assures companies fulfill their fair disclosure requirements. I’m not sure there is a way to get around that today, even if someone wanted to. Need to disclose material information? Distribute a news release and you’re done. Sometimes it has to be about more than what the media wants but companies are going to have to find a way to provide the color and insight to individual reporters that a general news release can’t.
February 24th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
I would say there’s no need to get around the news release. It’s still the best way to release official statements of record (such as those needed for fair disclosure requirements). Even if there were other options (such as a blog), the larger market, and especially the financial and regulatory markets, still want to see releases. And they have not given any indication this preference will change in the near future.
February 25th, 2006 at 9:58 am
To be honest, I only ask for a release when someone has rung up to pitch because the pitch itself is not going anywhere. “Can you send me the release and I’ll let you know if I need to do an interview”, for me, is generally code for “All you’ve told me so far is that it’s shiny and new. I need to see some specific claims before I’m prepared to go any further”.
If I’ve done an interview, there is generally not that much need to refer to the release, unless the interview and the release conflict and then that just means you got to go back and check.
That does not mean the release is useless, however. In those situations, there can often be something in the release that does not make sense or looks to be a real claim and needs following up. The others just get tossed. Also, when researching a story sometime down the line or starting to follow a particular company, it’s useful to be able to refer to when Company X said it launched Product Y, or made an appointment - releases help build a timeline.
February 26th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Thank you, Chris. You make an important point in your last paragraph about a release not only being an official statement, but one that acts as a historical record for researching a timeline (though in many instances I think blogs may replace this in the long run).
Your point about pitching is an important one and something to be addressed in a separte post (one of these days…). The lack of skilled media relations people making appropriate pitches is a common, and deserved, complaint from journalists. It’s a mix of laziness (take the time to know your journalists) and discipline (take the time not to pitch everyone under the sun). And it’s a problem that no part of the media ecosystem can resolve.
March 1st, 2006 at 11:25 am
A bit of a delayed response: I forgot where I posted that last comment. Oh for a usable comment-tracking tool.
I think it’s fair to say that a lot of the pitches where the PR ends up better off sending the release do tend to result from doing it to too many people. However, I’m not sure personalisation is as much an issue as the PR’s knowledge of the client and the market they operate in.
I spend most of my time on electronics-related subjects where most of what pops out of companies is long on obscure technical detail and short on context. So, you will get a lot of people pitching who do not understand what they are pitching. I don’t regard that as a problem in itself - I think that not enough PRs get straight answers from the client by asking: “So, what’s different about this product or announcement that will make people pay attention?” or my favourite Q for when an interview has descended into Nuspeak, “So, why is that good?”
I guess the second element is that clients often ask PRs to pitch sub-par material “to boost sales for product X”. That’s never going to work well - the stories that pitch the best often don’t need pitching. But all too often have I heard PRs complain about product managers moaning that their group hasn’t had their fair share of press and, therefore, PR attention.
March 1st, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Chris, you raise an important point in product managers complaining about a lack of PR attention leading to painfully useless pitches. Here I’ll spread the blame around. I think marketing and product executives need to spend far more time understanding public relations and its key components such as media. At the same time, I think public relations people do a terrible job explaining why something’s not newsworthy and giving alternative ways of reaching the audience (e.g., SEO optimization, sponsored articles, blogs etc).
By the way, I’ve been told Cocomment.com is a good way to track comments (and one of these day’s I”ll try it).