Revenge of the flacks

If you're still wondering why the media world is getting turned on its head, consider the following anecdote.

A few years back, representatives from the Industry Standard, Wired, and Upside were invited to a public-relations gathering to talk about how they decide what to cover. After they finished their prepared remarks, a young woman in the audience stood up to ask a question.

"You talk a lot about tricks and tips on what we should do," she said. "But I've done all that and I still can't get you to cover my clients."

The reporter from Upside recognized the opening and rammed a Mack Truck right through it. "Ma'am," he replied, "you need better clients."

So much for winning hearts and minds.

When I heard that story, I bolted upright. Talk about tone-deaf arrogance. Would it surprise anyone if that woman is still seething today? So it is that she may take belated pleasure in knowing how the PR industry has since found ways to go around the gatekeepers.

On Thursday, I put up a post commenting on how raw PR releases increasingly rank higher on feeds and Web aggregation sites than reports from professional reporters and bloggers. In the subsequent 24 hours, my in-box filled up with messages from public-relations pros weighing in on my blog. The Reader's Digest version? I don't know the half of it.

"The truth is that there are fewer and fewer of you guys," said a veteran PR-meister I know who works for one of the bigger technology companies. "You can't call the same reporter and expect him to do five stories on your company in the same month. So we have to have other ways to get out that information."

"Search engine optimization and other tools we have are better than they used to be and we're just taking advantage of the technology," this person continued. "We can go direct to audiences and bypass the filters--like the media--and have it picked up."

Rick Sharga, a marketing consultant who relayed to me the anecdote at the top of this story, also left a talkback on my post pointing out that it's worse than I thought--both from a "news" and press release standpoint.

"One of the reasons you see press releases ranked higher in Web measurement surveys is that an increasing number of releases are written not for the press, or even for consumers, but for search engines. Instead of focusing on the news value of the content, the writers are focusing on keyword density. Writers who focus on actual news don't really have that luxury.

Secondly, after being frustrated for so long by being excluded from media coverage by writers who deemed their stories "unworthy," many PR pros just decided to leverage the Internet medium and disintermediate the journalist entirely--the intersection of direct marketing and PR, if you will.

This approach lacks the credibility given by a third party--always a benefit of good press coverage--but at least ensures that the message gets out. And finally, a lot of your fellow journalists are making the transition entirely too easy. Take a look at what passes for "news reporting" on a lot of sites--and in a lot of publications--and decide for yourself how much of what you're reading has been taken verbatim from the press releases themselves.

Intelligent readers who can now find exactly the same content on a "legitimate" publication site, a blog, and on a search engine figure this out pretty quickly. You're right that the lines between what's news and what's hype (or at least what's corporate-speak) are blurring pretty rapidly. Journalists now have the duel challenge of actually competing with the press release, and staying relevant enough that readers will value their perspective more than the company-issued draft. Interesting times, indeed."

Sharga, who these days is a vice president at Realty Track, later told me that in the last couple of years PR firms have tried to saturate their press releases with keywords that get Internet spiders to push their releases up the rankings. It's all about keyword density.

"You even have a category of releases that may never go out on the wires but the spiders still recognize them and can push them up into the rankings," he said.

Talk about reaping what you sow. For PR pros who have been ignored by the media, this is an extra scoop of schadenfreude to enjoy.

[suyts]

Not only that, but the public themselves had enough. For many of us, we decided long ago that we didn't need some "wanna be" journalism prof. telling us what was important to us. Most readers can discern what's relevant to them and what isn't. Strange concept for journalists it seems. For a brief moment in time, many of us turned from traditional journalism (newspaper, radio, TV) to the net for our news. Sadly, it became more of the same. Now, we are forced to be our own gatekeepers. Probably a good thing, maybe not.

[SherrilynneS]

As in most professions, technology is changing how we operate.

[RegCrowder]

This should also be a reminder for everybody in PR that a well-written press release is a remarkably useful and versatile tool.

But do spend a little time getting some useful information into your press releases. If the press release is obviously mindless, vacant hype, it is not going to do you or your client a bit of good no matter where it shows up.

Fortunately, there are (with some highly entertaining exceptions) a lot of good press releases bouncing around cyberspace these days. And it doesn't look to me as if loading them up with a few extra key words to make them search engine friendly is doing them any harm.

REG CROWDER
Freelance Business Journalist
London, UK & Brittany, France
http://www.RegCrowder.com
http://www.journalistdirectory.com/journalist/TgTQ/REG-CROWDER

[acfow]

Let's not forget that journalists play a critical role in vetting news and providing objectivity. Finding (even more) ways to bypass that process will only do a great disservice to readers. But wait, we can all tell the difference. I disagree. Thanks to Web 2.0, the press release is just one tactic PR people are using to disseminate information about themselves and their companies. It's getting harder and harder to separate fact from fiction. Not everything is newsworthy and most times we need a journalist to tell us that.

[andismit]

In the UK, the just published Metrica 2007 Media Analysis Survey showed: "High message delivery and spokespeople mentions suggest the emergence of a copy and paste publishing trend in online media. Online featured the strongest message delivery of any media type with half of coverage delivering key messages, and an average of three message deliveries per article.There is also some indication of a similar trend amongst regional titles."

Translation - it is getting easier for businesses to have their "message" replayed unaltered online (though not IT/telecom companies, who Metrica say: "struggle to see their messages delivered and spokespeople quoted. This highlights the problem that tech PR often faces in translating marketing messages into PR stories that appeal to journalists. More than half of IT sector coverage appeared in the business press reflecting the strong B2B nature of this sector?s activity."

On the subject of press releases getting higher search rankings, surely that is only one part of the process - if the press release is full of irrelevant, unreadable nonsense then you will disappoint the reader - you will create a negative effect.

I've worked in tech PR for 21 years. Am I happy about the above? Yes and no. Technology has created some exciting new ways to get a client's message out there - at the same time, we need a credible and independent media more than ever. But who will pay for it? Interesting times.

http://escherman.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/is-copy-and-paste-journalism-the-norm-online-evidence-from-metrica/

[LeahPR]

Just want to reitterate this point, "and decide for yourself how much of what you're reading has been taken verbatim from the press releases themselves." As a PR professional (who doesn't appreciate the term "flack") there have been countless times where CNET and other publications have pulled from my press release verbatim for stories and briefs. Not to mention content from pitches and follow-up emails (for business media and trades). Yes, there are unprofessional folks about there who call themselves publicists or PR execs -- but there are many more unprofessionals who call themselves journalists. I sometimes wonder if when reporters sit on their high horse and revel in their power of being a "gate keeper" -- is it really because they wish they make the salary of a PR professional? Is it because they feel special just because so many people are calling them w/ a pitch idea? I'm not sure what it is -- but sometimes it is just plain annoying. Sorry, Charie -- had to vent. Read one too many postings of a journalist whining about PR folks -- when they often depend on us to get their stories out.