IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR DAD, IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME

People Who Don’t Understand That The World Of Journalism Has Changed

            It seems that every time I write an article that suggests that the world of journalism has changed, I get berated by some old time journalist turned public relations professional.

            My articles in The Marcus Letter on wither the five W’s (the who, what, when, why and where we were once taught must be in every lead  paragraph [or lede, if you will] of a news article opened the heavens to thunderclaps of scolding.

            The recent publication in the widely read blog, RainToday, of my article on why you don’t always have to be nice to journalists, horrified some readers, who, obviously, were taught that you always have to be nice to journalists.

            These protests always seem to come from people who were trained in the deep, dark ages of the mid-20^th century or earlier. I was too, but, like a good many others, I was also taught the latest lesson – things change.

            I suspect that when many journalists move into public relations, they are inured to events outside that world. I made my bones as a journalist, and again in public relations, as did many good people, and I respect the many sound practitioners of both arts. My first published articles were in the old Brooklyn (NY) Eagle, a fine but now defunct daily newspaper. I’ve worked for, or written for, the likes of The New York Times and the Anchorage (Alaska) Times. I count as my mentor the estimable Richard Weiner, my boss at Ruder & Finn, (where I won a Silver Anvil for the outstanding international public relations program of the year), who went on to establish his own superior public relations firm. A huge number of public relations practices we rely on today were invented by Richard. And while I now serve the world of professional services with a good many more skills than just PR, it’s still part of what I do in the pursuit of law and accounting firm marketing. Why, I haven’t made a placement since, oh, three or four weeks ago. Dick would have been proud of me -- he taught me how.

            But things have indeed changed, and it’s important to understand why and how.

            Have you noticed that newspaper readership is shrinking faster than the polar ice pack? The reasons are complicated, as is all of life, but more people get their news from blogs and the internet now, than from the traditional media. In fact, I think I read someplace that more people now get their news from Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert than from the nightly news on TV. A mighty wind is blowing through the news rooms of the country, wiping out jobs, shrinking the traditional media, causing mergers that were once unthinkable. That the realm of journalism is now owned by corporations is, I think, not universally true, but it is a valid observation in a great many cases. Rupert Murdoch now has more power over the dissemination of news than William Randolph Hearst ever did. But do you think that he actually controls more minds than do the blogs of such as Ariana Huffington? Or that his papers have more credibility with today’s folk than do the blogs and webinars and the like?

            And do you think that those neojournalists who run the blogs and Podcasts, and who, in probably most cases, never worked in a city room, give a tinker’s damn about the five W’s?

            Have you noticed, in recent years, the intrusion of the once-forbidden personal pronoun in news stories and articles? A practice long considered as outrageous as wearing white shoes after Labor Day. And if it was ever considered appropriate for a journalist to insert him or herself into an article the proper pronoun was we, not I. Now, even in such esteemed journals as the New York Times, it’s hard to know whether the story is about the writer or the written about.

            Yes, the world of journalism has changed. And if the world of journalism has changed, then so too must the practice of media relations change, since, traditionally and in many respect, we who practice the art of public relations are journalism’s handmaidens.

            Dick Weiner notes that the changes wrought by the new journalism obviously mean new delivery systems, more lively writing, and new news values.

            But if the five W’s are gone, how do you write a news story, and by projection, a press release? (Press releases, the wonderfully innovative and original Richard Levick was once heard to say, are now the least part of a public relations campaign. But they still flow like wine into media press rooms, and I haven’t heard that PR Newswire is going out of business.)

“I agree with you,” says Richard Levick, “that the communications playing field has changed dramatically in the last three years in a way that not even the popularization of the Internet did. From 1985 with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, to the evolution of news room as profit center, the role of the Forth Estate has changed radically in recent decades from over-site to interest group. But nothing has had the impact as quickly and dramatically as the hyper-democratization created by the blogosphere, which has its own independent influence as well as its powerful leverage upon traditional media.”

Still, some things are unchanged. Says Levick, “Having said all that, and recognizing that all the rules have changed, have they really changed in the ways you write? We chose strategies in the past as we do in the present, where in one case we flood a story with information and in another starve it of oxygen. We are still polite and think the best, knowing sometimes that our neighborliness is not returned. The mechanics and timeliness have changed, and tactics and strategies have altered, but at their foundation, they still remain largely the same. We now travel at breakneck speed which reveals weaknesses more quickly. We are asked to be more adept at business, political, and technology knowledge than we were in years past when time allowed us greater opportunity to fill in the blanks of our knowledge.

“So our roles have changed. But they changed with blast faxing, professional news wires and mobile telephones. We can still employ an old time one-to-one relationship between a long time journalist turned PR professional and an old friend who stays with the media. And at the same time we might influence a high authority blog. Neither is innately better, as both have value, and at moments, extreme value to a client who only cares about a singular result. Our jobs are made more challenging by requiring that we have in our shops the ability to do both and all well. The popularization of the Internet doesn’t eliminate the need to write well, though many think it does. Nor does it eliminate the importance of relationships. It just doubles the skills we need in half the time. The client’s goals will always determine what has value. “ 

            What works is to find the most compelling essence of the story and put that in the first sentence. That grabs ‘em every time. Let’s face it – sometimes the who is not as important as the what, nor is the why always as important as the who. Dick Weiner suggests that to the five Ws should be added how. But not necessarily, I think, always in the lead. So much for ancient rules.

            Now, while I don’t mind getting mail that disagrees with me, just remember that the essence of this story is not just the change in journalistic style and fashion. It’s that this is a dynamic world, and things are always changing. Coping successfully depends not upon the latest rules, but on understanding the dynamics of change. I think that if you understand that, you never grow old.