Citizen Kane
As the Edelman blogger/Wal-Mart PR debate and dissection continues to rage in the blogosphere and elsewhere — sparked, by the way, by a story in a mainstream news outlet — I was surprised to see one of our industry’s most insightful PR chiefs (and my former boss) appear to be trumpeting the demise of the mainstream media and the rise of PR in the age of blogs. I hope I didn’t hear correctly.
Blogging and blog relations may pose a boon to the communications goals (and fortunes) of PR people and their clients, but a world without the balance provided by the fourth estate would spell disaster. Sure, wouldn’t it be great to deliver a client’s pure message to its constituents without the filter of a trained reporter from The AP or “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer?” Sounds like Karl Rove, doesn’t it? It is.
Transparency in news gathering and reporting is an ideal worthy to aspire to. Courting amateur citizen journalists to bypass mainstream journalistic scrutiny, which (still) serves the public interest, is entirely something else. Is it shrewd to cultivate like-minded citizen journalists to advocate on your client’s behalf? Sure. But I would hope that my clients could also endure the probing questions of a trained investigative reporter. And they would be sufficiently open-minded to post on their weblogs, for syndication, the contextual nuances and factual details that often get lost or edited from a mainstream news story.
We’re still learning about the distinctive and synergistic roles bloggers and mainstream journalists play in the news gathering and reporting process. I only hope (and pray) that the Pulitzer’s and duPont-Columbia Awards will continue to have a raison d’etre, especially in a climate when this vital segment of the media is under attack from those much more nefarious than the PR profession.
March 9th, 2006 at 7:04 am
Peter… you might be shocked to find out that a large number of people believe that journalists have a “license” that can be taken away, or ought to have some type of professional certification.
Scary stuff. We don’t teach the First Amendment like we used to.
Anyway, the only real checks and balances we’ve ever had on journalism in this country have been through competition and credibility. When neither is a factor, Hearst is able to start a war on Spain. “You provide the pictures, I’ll supply the war.”
Today, media-mega-mergers are taking the competition away, and the public pendulum has swung more toward information sources that either reinforce existing beliefs or worship celebrities.
Given the climate, there is no police to police the blogosphere. Some bloggers stake a claim as the universal ombudsmen for the fourth estate — but in reality they are just as susceptible to falling to the dark side.
March 9th, 2006 at 8:55 pm
We’re dealing with the same sort of issues over in the advertising world.
Here’s a good article by Jack Trout in Forbes. It bleeds into your happy world of PR:
http://www.forbes.com/columnists/2006/03/02/gm-harley-marketing-cx_jt_0307trout.html
March 10th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Chuck,
Thanks for sharing Jack Trouit;s piece in Forbes. It’s a good read — not too obtuse — and provides a grounded perspective of some of the new tools now proliferating in the digital marketer’s arsenal.
Ike,
I was very torn in writing this posting. On the one hand, the idea of rallying support for a client’s cause by “seeding” like-minded citizen journalists is a natural extension of the long-time practice of grassroots, third-party constituency-building.
My conundrum lies in the manipulation of bloggers who often don’t check facts and aren’t bound by the need for journalistic balance. Is this a good thing for PR people to be seen as insidiously bypassing objective reporters to advance their clients’ causes? Some may argue yes.
I would like to think that our client’s messages — through all the wonderful new information syndication tools (and some old ones like media training, etc) — can withstand the scrutiny to prevail upon even the most jaded of audiences.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Amen. PR needs pesky journos to ask the hard questions to help them hone the pitch. Swamped journos need the pitch written in clear terms and thoroughly argued so they can critically evaluate it on a deadline. It’s a symbiotic negotiating process by two professionals with different missions–good advocacy and critical objectivity–but a shared commitment to truth and accuracy. I’ve worked with Edelman folks, and they didn’t behave at all like they held the attitudes spouted by their boss.