pr-media-blog.co.uk

Hello again and Happy New Year!

After a short hiatus, PR Media Blog is back on the beat.

And what better place to start than today’s Media Guardian, whch gives a pretty exhaustive forecast of the new world facing the media in 2009.

Here is a sample of the most interesting views from the massed media commentators. Have they got it right? PR Media Blog will be keeping an eye on things as the media circus rolls on into another year.

“Leading web thinker” Clay Shirky with his media forecast for 2009: “Newspapers are going to get more and less elitist…a small, niche publication that says: ‘We’re only opening our mouths when what we say is demonstrably superior to anything else on the subject.’ The populist model is: ‘We’re going to take all the news pieces we get and have an enormous amount of commentary. It’s whatever the readers want to talk about.”

Gareth McClean on TV programmes: “As money becomes scarce, ratings will become more important…drama finds itself under siege from light entertainment - and factual entertainment and anything else that’s cheaper, which is basically everything - like never before.”

John Plunkett on Radio: “If ever there was a time for commercial radio to strike back in the ratings war, then surely this is it…expect more commercial stations to go to the wall, expect BBC radio to be less sure of itself, expect uncertainty over DAB to continue - expect a bloody battle.”

Roy Greenslade on newspapers: “The importance of online journalism cannot be stressed too often. It is foolish to call it the future because the future is now…the fight that counts in 2009 is the one for online eyeballs seeking news and informed comment, not for the passive audience handed a freesheet with the minimum of journalistic merit or public benefit.”

Peter Wilby on journalism: “Mass market journalism - short, snappy news items alongside gossip, glamour and articulate prejudice - is by definition doomed…serious journalism will triumph by default.”

Oliver Luft on magazines: “Business publishers may look at greater innovation online to find revenue that goes beyond the blunt approach of either subscription or open access…consumer titles will focus on ways to deliver more audience to print advertisers they want to bring over to the web.”

Danny Rogers on PR: “PR helps organisations create ongoing dialogue with their audiences. The growth of blogs, social networking and Google made this essential if today’s companies, products, governments, celebrities and charities were to impress and thrive. And despite the current recession, this underlying trend remains.”

Jemima Kiss on Digital media: “One of the most powerful technology trends of 2008 was the shift from sites as destinations to open, sharing platforms…Big media needs to start thinking like this…it’s about being resourceful and flexible in order to survive.”

For an industry accustomed to delivering predominantly bad news, journalism has taken more than a mouthful of its own medicine this year.

There was a time in not-too-distant memory when it was possible for regional journalists to move between jobs to escape a particularly tyrannical news editor, a punishing shift system, the grimness of doing “death knocks” on recently-bereaved families, or even advance their career.

Things are not looking so good now. But Sarah Hartley, blogger and journalist at the Manchester Evening News, has captured some positive vibes for journalism in 2009.

To borrow from Oscar Wilde: “The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.”

And long may it be so!

Credit: cartoon care of Attack Cartoons.

Despite the abuse hurled at the trade of journalism for some of its less appealing practices, there are times to be thoroughly proud of it.

The drug, Thalidomide, put onto the market in the late 1950s to help pregnant women tackle morning sickness and insomnia, caused appalling birth defects in thousands of children.  The drug company had failed to carry out adequate testing before releasing it and then offered paltry compensation to the Thalidomide children who survived.

The Sunday Times, under the editorship of Harold Evans (see pic) and the paper’s investigative Insight team,  took on the company in the early 70s and helped to secure a new compensation agreement, while losing advertising revenue and paying legal bills. As an article in this week’s Sunday Times supplement claims, the thalidomiders have an “almost holy reverence” for the newspaper team which fought their cause.

The 50-year anniversary of Thalidomide’s release in the UK is marked by an exhibition of portraits in London in October. And the work of Evans and The Sunday Times remains one of journalism’s finest hours.

Budding journalists and people writing for journalists (that’s you, PR people) could do worse than read the Guardian’s writing guide to journalism out today.

The introduction by columnist and former Times editor, Simon Jenkins, is a must-read for anyone tasked with communicating news via the written word.

He recalls a “ferocious sub editor” at The Times who would - after a reading a draft report - pose the million dollar question: “What is it you are really trying to tell me?”. Exactly what PR people should be thinking before they lay a hand on a keyboard.

Great tips for crafting a great story include:

- make every paragraph a single idea.

- Make nouns and verbs the workhorses of each sentence.

- Delete all adjectives and adverbs unless absolutely essential.

- Never use sloppy words, such as “interesting”.

- Begin every story with who, what, when and where.

But excellent writing - a skill which Jenkins sees as deplorably absent in today’s society - is the lesser part of the journalist’s armoury; the signs of the natural reporter are curiosity, the desire to communicate experiences, cunning and the gift to narrate. As he says, there is “no substitute for the person who saw it happen”, which opens the door for what we now know as citizen journalists.

When I hear colleagues talking about “the press release” or even truncated to “the release”, I shudder. A press release is merely a tool, a medium for the really important element: the story - that is what journalists are looking for.

Maybe that’s pedantic. Maybe I should’ve been a sub editor.

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Following on from a recent post about how some professional journalists in the US are adopting a different model online in order to survive, this latest departure in web journalism takes it down to an even more local level, with MyBallard being an online news service for a neighbourhood of Seattle.

Still, the couple behind it are life-long professional journalists, which raises the question of how good a news service as opposed to a blog - any news service - would be if there were no professional journalistic input.

 Maybe the demise of journalists has been greatly exaggerated?

First, a declaration of interest - I am a fan of The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade. That aside, his comments on the uneasy relationship between journalists and bloggers articulate exactly the dilemma of journalists pre-internet: writing for an invisible body of readers whose views on what you’re writing remain largely unknown. Not so now. With bloggers and, well, anyone with broadband, able to interact with the news and pass comment, the monopoly on the message no longer lies with the “fourth estate”. With the abundance of online channels and social media to participate in, the conversation is gaining currency.

Sally Whittle over at journalism and PR blog, Getting Ink, tells it as it is when it comes to receiving junk (i.e. irrelevant or badly targeted) PR material from so-called PR professionals.

But how many companies buying in PR support are aware that the antics of their agencies might be getting their stories - and hence their reputations - blacklisted by journalists?

Asking who and why agencies are talking to on your behalf (and how) is too important a question not to ask.