Stop the presses (and walk away)

It's been said that, for every General Motors employee laid off, another 10 will lose their jobs elsewhere. At first that might sound like some UAW hyperbole, but as everything from major dealerships to custom upholsterers close, the ratio seems quite credible.

So it is surprising that a parallel hasn't been drawn with failing news outlets, especially given their penchant for reporting about themselves in soporific detail. In that light, perhaps no industry will bear the brunt of this decline more than the media's second-oldest profession: public relations.

This should be painfully clear by now, but evidently some agencies are just now waking up to the fact that their fate is tied inextricably to dying newspapers, magazines, and broadcast stations. That, at least, is what we would believe based on a spot-on post by SiliconValleyWatcher headlined, "The New Rules In PR--The Old Model Is Dead."

In this item, Tom Foremski recounts conversations he has had with PR professionals that apparently included a few glaringly obvious points that somehow eluded them. "So what that you emailed 50 journalists? You are charging for outputs and not outcomes," he writes. (This is STILL an issue? Ever since the mid-'90s, I and countless other reporters and editors have routinely spiked or filtered out press releases, digital or otherwise.)

But it was another of his incisive points that really pushed my buttons. "Why do PR agencies bring in their 'social media experts?'" he asks rhetorically. "Shouldn't they all be social media experts by now? Why make the distinction?"

Amen. This is directly analogous to the problem that continues to beset mainstream media even to this day: The arrogant insistence on maintaining a caste system that relegates "web journalists" to second-class citizenry.

In both journalism and public relations, the notion of integrating new forms of media into their core operations bafflingly remains a foreign concept. I recently met a senior executive with an East Coast-based PR firm who was in charge of digital media. He heads up a separate division that was created to "handle web stuff," in his words, indicating that his co-workers hadn't a clue what to do about the tectonic changes rocking their professional landscape.

The bottom line is that, just like the news industry, PR needs to incorporate all aspects of emerging media at every level. Everyone from junior account reps to senior executives needs to think first about the most effective methodology of exposing their information, then chart the straightest course to that goal using whatever means are available, regardless of the vehicle.

To that end, we offer a few starting points for PR professionals in the new world order (with the emphasis here on "starting"):

• Stop relying on traditional media to disseminate your content. Do it yourself with well-crafted, search-optimized sites and blogs that serve as both destinations and distribution hubs.
• Require everyone you work with to handle all facets of their campaigns, from Twitter accounts and Facebook pages to face-to-face meetings. There are no "digital guys" to fall back on anymore--you're it.
• Don't think of your work as public relations. That inevitably conjures a raft of subjective definitions, most of them probably obsolete. Today we should all be thinking only in terms of information, in all its iterations and modes of transportation, and let others decide whether it's news, advertising, marketing, or PR. What difference does it make, as long as you write and deliver it compellingly?

And please, stop writing those useless press releases. Thank you in advance.