Archive for January 24th, 2009
Really, It’s Not the Itchy and Scratchy Show: PR-Journalist Relations
If you follow PR through blogs, you might have run across these three posts in the last few days — What PR people should know about journalists, and this companion piece, and this response. I concur with Thomas Lee, who makes the point in the response post that good PR practitioners know how journalists operate and act accordingly. I also like that Lee points out how it’s a two-way street between journalists and PR people — we depend on each other to a large degree, especially in the current economic climate.
My latest round of befriending some of my favorite media contacts on Facebook reminds me how much I genuinely like the people I’m contacting. I’m certainly not the only PR person to have come through journalism school to get to PR. I’m watching the Seattle P-I’s struggles, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s recently-declared bankruptcy, and the #journchat tweets on Twitter with genuine concern. While I think it’s useful for PR practitioners to be mindful of the climate under which journalists and producers operate, and while I think online dialogues about them can be instructional for new PR practitioners, I find most of my contacts with journalists to be respectful exchanges between colleagues and even, in some instances, friends — all invested in a common goal of telling stories and providing information and insight.
