Really Sad News from the World of Newspapers
A friend who works in newspapers pointed me to this item in Editor and Publisher — as the economy continues to languish in recession, there’s speculation that some cities may be without daily papers by 2010.
That’s staggering to me. I grew up in a city with two papers (the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer), and I believe the papers pushed each other to greatness and helped define the city. Newspapers are essential to articulating what makes cities so unique. During the Katrina aftermath, I went to the online version of the Times-Picayune to read heartbreaking yet compelling accounts of what was happening. There was great reporting from a variety of sources, to be sure, but getting the New Orleanian perspective was crucial to understanding the magnitude of loss and the possibility of rebirth there.
It’s hard to imagine any city without a paper to capture its essence. We’re in an age where social media can step in and fill the vacuum that a paper closing its doors would leave, but it’s still shocking to conceive of this possibility.
An Invitation to Free Food (If You’re In Austin Today)
This is a day that makes me proud to have Progress Coffee as a client — it’s Progress’s 4th Birthday today, and to celebrate, they’re giving everything away.
Specifically, they’re giving free food and drink to all customers — they just ask that patrons consider giving a donation to Capital Area Food Bank and/or Bread For the World. It’s all part of owner Joshua Bingaman’s philosophy about building community and giving to others. It’s why I sought him out as a client, and it’s why I like having meetings there. (Progress being in our building doesn’t hurt either.)
Here’s this morning’s Fox 7 coverage, if you’re interested in seeing more of one of my favorite haunts in town (covered by one of my favorite news teams in town).
Saying No to the Yes Men
A group calling themselves the Yes Men pulled off an elaborate prank yesterday, passing out over 1 million free copies of a very authentic-looking New York Times — only it was dated July 4, 2009, and its lead headline was “Iraq War Ends.” The BBC article noted the operation took six months of planning and many volunteers to pull it off. In a nod to the Times’ motto, the fake paper declared it contained “all the news we hope to print.”
One of those stories they hoped to print — on a website version that also faithfully recreated the real thing — was “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.” In too-broad brushstrokes, it speaks of well-financed PR giants hyping Philip Morris and selling Americans on going to war. I’m all for good satire, but bristled at this depiction of public relations.
The fake article includes a quote that’s particularly galling — “P.R. companies have been doing whatever it takes to maximize their profit.” That’s certainly news to me. Step inside my office and let me tell you a little about the PR I do.
I’m in the third year of running my firm. I help people who I know are deserving, hard-working people — authors, entrepreneurs, non-profit directors, and educators — get their message out to an audience ready to hear them via a media working on deadlines to deliver news. I talk to the media, but I also help my clients articulate their visions and understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. By focusing on how they present themselves, they get a clearer sense of why they do what they do.
I have great days where I connect clients to reporters, resulting in stories that convey what I’d hope they’d convey. I have frustrating days where all my calls go to voicemail, where I lose a round of edits to a computer glitch, where I’m not as productive as I’d hoped to be. I had one banner day this summer where I stepped off the plane at JFK and my cell phone decided to die on the spot. (Just weeks before, I’d installed Skype. God bless Skype. Skype saved me until I could make it to a Sprint store and sit through a needlessly-elaborate reprogramming ritual, but that’s another story.) But I have never had a day where I have rubbed my hands together in Mr. Burnsian glee, plotting to maximize profits and dupe an unsuspecting nation.
Certainly, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, there are plenty of things to be cynical about. But PR firms like mine — where I make my living on a love of all things media, my natural inclination to write, and sheer perseverance — are not one of those things to be cynical about. Especially not for people who tout themselves as the Yes Men.
Going Treeless
You might have missed it among all the exciting election news of the campaign’s last few weeks — the Christian Science Monitor has decided to stop its print edition in April, becoming the first major newspaper in the U.S. to convert from print and online editions to online only. They’re even advertising a “treeless” subscription option to get readers used to the idea.
I still love the feel of a newspaper, and one of my favorite things to do on Sunday is to work through a Statesman or a New York Times section-by-section. But the reality is that I’m much more prone to read an article online these days than in the print edition. When a client does appear in a print edition, I’m thinking about some quality time with my scanner, whereas an online appearance by a client typically comes to me via Google Alert. The Monitor’s more a trendsetter than an anomaly, here, I’d think — it feels like we’re moving away from paper. Not immediately, of course, but it’s coming.
I’m in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette
I’m quoted in an article on post-election letdown, which I think might be my next column over at The November 3rd Club, where I recently wrote about YouTube and how it’s changing politics and pretty much everything else.
The quote’s just a snapshot of what was a really great conversation with reporter Lisa Eckelbecker. My comparison of campaign staffers to reality show characters didn’t make the cut, sadly, but she did leave in one important facet — I really DO love John King and his magic map.
Election Day!
Confession time: This is my favorite day of the year. I love the passion of a political campaign, I love the creation and evolution of storylines that campaigns bring, and I love watching numbers roll in during primetime.
One of my clients, Pennsylvania Voice, is a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to voter registration and voter protection efforts. Here’s something to marvel about in the age of blog: real-time accounts of what’s happening with the Pennsylvania vote. It’s a reminder that democracy can be messy, and can require hard-working volunteers to keep it all above board, but a Presidential election is a quadrennial event only rivaled by the World Cup Final for sheer excitement and hope shared by so many.
If you haven’t become a part of it yet, why are you reading this? Get out and vote!
“I Want Sprinkles”: When You Don’t Control the Medium
One of my friends recently pointed me to a hilarious site called Cakewrecks, full of examples of “when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.” It’s a really funny site. Then again, I find that store-bought cakes are kind of chuckle-worthy even when they turn out exactly as they’re supposed to.
My friend and colleague Jennifer Hill Robenalt, who has a great blog on PR and professional communication, once ordered a cake for a viewing party for the Survivor Season One Finale — you know, the season that brought rat-eating into casual conversation. Her conversation with the grocery store bakery went something like this: “Yes, I want a rat on it.” (Pause.) “Yes, I said a rat.” (Pause) “You know, like in Survivor?” The bakery worker was, of course, horrified that she was going to have to draw a big frosting rat on a cake, and had no idea why anyone would want that.
What’s funniest to me about the Cakewrecks site is the game of telephone quality to some of the cakes. There’s a miscommunication between the person ordering the cake and the person at the bakery, and the end result of that communication is committed to chocolate and sugar. This is my favorite one. As a bonus, “I want sprinkles” is a great catch-phrase — perfect for when you think you’ve been dealt an unfair hand and want to laugh it off.
As funny as it is, Cakewrecks offers a useful lesson for PR people about the media — you’re reliant on other people to transmit your message, and the responsibility falls to you to communicate that to the reporter or producer or host you’re working with. It’s good to remind yourself of that whenever you’re putting together a media advisory, or making a pitch, or as you’re coordinating with a client to make sure the website has pertinent information. Strive to make things as easy as possible for the media to transmit your information. Streamline. Read what you send out from a reporter’s point of view. And keep an eye out for social media press release templates — Shift Communications has a good one on PDF that you can easily track via Google. Though mainstream media is still used to seeing old-school press releases, with lead paragraphs containing the five Ws and spokesperson quotes embedded in paragraphs, I think there are some elements to a social media press release that are more user-friendly for the media than a standard release. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing some changes in the press release as we know it.
Sometimes, The Magic Word Is “No”
I was on a very interesting conference call last week set up by Peter Shankman, who is known in PR circles these days for his HARO (Help A Reporter Out) e-mail service. HARO is like Profnet in that it helps match PR people with media people looking for story sources, but it’s free and is a little sassier than Profnet. (And I mean that as a complement.)
The call featured a quartet of media people from high-profile news sources (think New York Times, AP), talking about what they liked and disliked about PR people. It reinforced some things we already know about media attitudes toward PR — they like us generally, they wouldn’t be half as informed without us, but we do some things that annoy them. We can be pushy. They really hate getting pitches on topics completely unrelated to what they cover. They can see when we’re calling them via the magic of Caller ID, and if we call them a lot, they tend to notice that. They obviously can’t get to every email, even though they’d like to respond. They all seemed to agree that if it’s been a week and they haven’t responded, it’s because they’re not interested in the story.
Principled PR practitioners know all this, but without hearing a “no” from a reporter or producer, we have to assume the answer is “maybe,” or we’ve sent them the rare e-mail that has fizzled into the ether before reaching its destination, or that they seemly have missed it in the barrage of e-mail they typically receive.
Why do we keep going until we hear the word “no?”
In a word: thoroughness. You want to honor your client. You have researched media outlets and media directories to come up with a list of people you believe will at least want to hear your pitch. You know that PR is sometimes beholden to the law of averages — many will hear the pitch and find it interesting, but only a few have the space and the editorial calendar and the gut feeling allowing them to move forward and transform your pitch into coverage.
I’m fine with “no.” I don’t take “no” personally. It’s disappointing to hear sometimes, especially when I see how happy my client and the media outlet would be together, but it’s part of the information I need to do my job efficiently — and perhaps more importantly, to help the media do its job efficiently.
I promise you that if I hear “no” on a story idea, I won’t come back tomorrow with some “fresh new angle” I didn’t think of earlier. I know that would land me in, as one of my colleagues coined it, the “bozo bin.” I don’t want to be there. No self-respecting PR person wants to be there.
It’s okay to tell me “no.” Of course, I’d prefer to hear “yes.” I’m even fine with “I’ll hang onto it and might use it later.” I’ll even believe you mean that! But hearing nothing is harder than hearing “no.”
It Feels a Bit Meta: Looking at PR Futures with the Austin Business Journal
Yesterday’s Austin Business Journal included an article on the future of PR in Austin during these unsure economic times. It led with a quote from Melissa Anthony — one of the first PR professionals I met upon my return to Austin two years ago — who said her clients saw this as an opportunity to gain market share.
Obviously, that’s exactly the kind of attitude we PR people hope for clients to have. When I worked with Dave Beck from Frost Bank during my six years in San Antonio, he’d talk about the importance of recognizing business cycles. When you’re in an up cycle, he’d say, you want to make sure you’re saving money to prepare for the next downturn. And when you find yourself in a downturn, that’s the time you most need to let people know about your business.
The ABJ article goes on to talk about the cost-effectiveness of PR compared to advertising, citing some of my other PR colleagues in town. I do think the article misses a key point about PR, though — it’s truly at its most cost-effective when there’s strategy involved.
When you’re building a PR plan, you should let your PR team know your wish list of where you’d like to be covered. That leads to some key questions: Who is your audience? Who are the potential new customers you’re trying to reach? What are the needs of those customers being met by your products and services?
And then that should lead to your strategy: Who will you try to reach? Which people at which media outlets will be most receptive to your story? What are all the stories connected to your company and your products or services? How does your company relate to what’s happening in the world right now?
For PR to work effectively, it needs to be integrated with everything the company’s doing as well as what’s happening around it. The rules for PR don’t change during tough economic times, but the storylines certainly do. Think about how you can demonstrate you bring value to customers when they’re looking for that. Think about how you meet an essential need or provide a much-needed reward when people are looking to cut what they feel are unnecessary expenses. And no matter where you’re at in the cycle, think about what makes you different and better than your competitors.
