By Fraser P. Seitel
Normally, I agree with Jack O’Dwyer (Don’t shoot me!). It generally makes sense to be candid with and available to reporters.
The key to media relations, even in the day of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, is still building relationships. The closer your relationship with a reporter, the more he or she “trusts” you, the better it will prove for your client. The more solid media relationships you enjoy, the more valuable you will be as a PR practitioner.
So a front-line responsibility of PR people is to treat journalists amicably.
And then there are bloggers. And that’s where the time-honored advice of getting along with reporters must be modified. For bloggers are, indeed, a different breed.
Bloggers are journalists with less pay, less credibility, and occasionally, more clout than traditional journalists.
In some industries, like fashion, bloggers rule the roost, especially at the various “Fashion Weeks,” where such new media personages as The Sartorialist and Fashion Toast blogs receive coveted front-row runway seats.
As important as some bloggers are getting to be, public relations people still must approach them with great care. Sometimes, that means avoiding them completely.
Indeed, the watchword in dealing with bloggers is, “Cuidado.”
Here’s why:
There are 126 million blogs on the Internet, and 99.99% are virtually meaningless, read by few people and picked up by no news services. But there are a handful – TMZ.com, Gawker, TechCrunch, among them on the national level – which are followed religiously by lots of people, including the national media.
Why?
They often “scoop” the general press.
How?
They care less about “accuracy” than they do about “speed.”
That’s why TMZ is there at midnight when Lindsay Lohan gets sprung on bail, or TechCrunch rushes to print with the news that Twitter is looking for larger office space.
It makes no matter whether these reports are based on rumor or fact. Speed is what counts, whether right or wrong. And that spells “trouble” to public relations people concerned about getting the story correct.
To a blogger, there are no shades of grey. You either did it or you didn’t. Blogs are breathless and categorical. Nuance has no place.
That’s why Baptist preacher Eddie Long, accused of sexual improprieties with male parishioners, is already referred to as “homophobic” on the blogs.
Or why Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to Newark schools is blasted as a “PR move to counteract” a nasty film about him.
Or why a Nicaraguan diplomat found with his throat slashed “may have killed himself because of a recent AIDS diagnosis.”
Unlike newspaper gossip columnists who must show concern for libel and slander, bloggers display little such compunction. Occasionally, a run amuck blogger’s feet will be held to the fire, such as last week’s takedown by Citigroup attorneys of a left wing blog’s publication of a confidential Citi report.
But generally, blogs know no middle ground. They blast and burn, and if they turn out to be wrong … so be it.
- Little formal training plus no supervision.
Newspaper, magazines, television and radio station news units generally insist that recruits have journalism experience or education. Newspaper commentary is no place for a raw rookie.
Conversely, it is the requisite to become a qualified blogger?
One must have access to a computer.
That’s it. No degree. No experience. You don’t even need pants!
Most bloggers, in fact, sit around in their pj’s, typing away in their basements, hoping somebody, somewhere will read their pronouncements.
The danger, of course, is that a blog reader, learning of the latest scandal or mistake or crime or faux pas, reportedly committed by a celebrity or company or cause, isn’t aware that the writer of the expose in question has little experience, training, or supervision and probably has little clue of the veracity of what he has just reported as gospel.
The point is that an awful lot of bloggers ought to be ignored by PR people, because to answer their questions is to empower them with a credibility they don’t deserve.
And there’s another reason to thing twice before speaking with a garden variety blogger.
Like Rodney Dangerfield, bloggers get no respect. Most of the time, they toil anonymously in their dark rooms, with few outsiders paying attention to their ramblings.
Until somebody talks to them.
When a PR person speaks to a blogger, he or she not only gets quoted – often verbatim, to fill space – but also becomes a vital part of the story.
That’s why when Goldman Sachs became the blogosphere’s favorite villain, Goldman’s acerbic PR chief Lucas Van Praag became a frequent blog target.
Traditionally, effective PR has operated behind-the-scenes. More often than not with the blogs, when a PR professional speaks to a blogger, the story becomes more prominent, and PR is pushed out front to center stage.
That’s another reason to think twice before speaking with your neighborhood blogger. |