Do PR people read enough?
I had some odd conversations the other day with some potential hires. Like a lot of other agencies out there, we are looking for good AEs. That rare person with 3-5 years of experience that is already trained and you can just let go at an account without constant hand holding (unless the AE is Belinda Carlisle, and then she can hold me hand whenever she needs to).Well, getting to my point. I was talking to some folks with about a years experience. I asked what pubs they read on a daily basis. I was expecting to hear the regular roll call of the Journal, NY Times, all the tech weeklies, etc. I kept getting the answer back Google. Google news alerts were there primary source of news. This surprised me and sort of disappointed me.
I believe a good PR person is a news junkie. You read the dailies (the big ones of course). You read the weeklies religiously if you are in the tech industry. eWeek is a constant companion. This gives you pitch ideas, knowledge of the entire industry and all sorts of other intangibles. I always assumed this was a given.
But being the objective person I try to be (and often fail), I said to myself: "Self, can I get all I need from Google and not from actually reading?" Email is fast and I can realy focus searches or make them as wide as I want. But that still lets me miss stuff. And Google I think only gets me 50 percent of the stories out there in the tech space.
So I am experimenting with seeing just how much people are missing by not actually reading anymore. I have used Google news alerts and Factiva primarily as back up tools for the past two years, but maybe I am not giving them enough credit. Still, I still strongly feel that a PR person has to read as much as possible and that reading hard copies of publications makes you think more and gives you more ideas.
Any thoughts on this? I assume all us grey hairs in the industry will react the same and say "in my day, we used to read the actual pubs and got actual newsprint on our hands. And we liked it!"
7 Comments:
Why, back in my day we used to read the newspapers...
Sorry. Couldn't help it.
I think what you're seeing is a perfect example of the diminishing power of media relations to "move the needle."
If young people aren't reading the news, then what good is a story in the newspaper when it comes to changing perceptions or creating interest?
The answer is an unequivocal no. I too have found that not only do many young people in our profession consume too few news outlets on a daily basis, but they read very few books -- and there are plenty of non-fiction tomes that are exceedingly relevant to the practice of PR. It's sad, but true.
Mr. Wagner, the next line should have been: "that's the way it was, and we liked it, ya young whippersnappers."
Third day of my experiment to only get my news from google and factiva. And I officially hate it.
I have found myself drifting to other things while reading the online stuff (reading email, making a call). I can't shake the fact that I think I am missing good stories. This just isn't working.
I just can't fathom how people can do this job without being a news junkie.
Only reading Google news alerts? The future of PR is worse than I thought. I recently wrote an op-ed for Bulldog Reporter's Daily Dog about neophytes' lack of journalism experience. Now I learn that they aren't reading... What's next?
I subscribe to at least ten publications ranging from PR Week to The New Yorker.
And, yes, I have a head full of gray hair.
Wayne E. Pollard
Author, Minds Before Market Share
I have just completed a week of googling for news. The result: Complete failure.
Google got about only 50 percent of the news I wanted. ANd that is being generous. The high tech trades are very badly represented by Google.
And it does not allow me any room for tangential searches.
A complete failure. It is up to us gray hairs (or people coloring their gray hair) to fix this with our youngsters. If telling them to read doesn't help, we may have to reinstitute corporate flogging.
Seriously, this is a problem. I am curious if anyone has good solutions for breaking through to these junior staff.
At my Tech PR firm, we have educational sessions each week, led by various members of our department, to help us build our skills and sharpen our talent as media experts. Last week this was the topic of our ED session. I think a good PR professional should use both methods, G alerts and rigorous print-in-hand reading. They should be news junkies and use the G alerts as an outline or point of departure in more comprehensive reading. As the modern age digitizes print media, we have searching conveniences that limit the scope of what we encounter. I may be a Whippersnapper, but I love reading news, among other things.
Michael Hersh
FusionPR Forum
I think you are right. People do not like to spend time reading because they think it takes too much time on it. Reading can help improve people’s writing and even knowledge. I think even though Google might not be able to give complete information, it does save some busy people a lot of time to know the information. It really depends. If I have time, I would like to read newspaper instead of reading things online.
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