I'm an unabashed New York Times fan boy. Warts and all, it remains the best edited daily newspaper in this country. Disagree? Then come find me on Twitter and let's mix it up. (My handle is "coopeydoop").
You won't have a chance to do the same with many Times reporters and editors--on Twitter or any other social network, for that matter. Batting it back and forth with the hoi polloi just isn't part of the drill. Not, mind you, because they lack for opinions or have no stomach for engagement.
The Poynter Institute reposted the text of a memo from Craig Whitney, the paper's assistant managing editor, to his newsroom, in which he urges extreme caution in how Times employees use Facebook and other social-networking sites. For starters:
"One of them is that outsiders can read your Facebook page, and that personal blogs and "tweets" represent you to the outside world just as much as an 800-word article does. If you have or are getting a Facebook page, leave blank the section that asks about your political views, in accordance with the Ethical Journalism admonition to do nothing that might cast doubt on your or The Times's political impartiality in reporting the news. Remember that although you might get useful leads by joining a group on one of these sites, it will appear on your page, connoting that you "joined" it -- potentially complicated if it is a political group, or a controversial group."
Whitney is an accomplished Times veteran whose work I've admired over the years. But this memo sums up some of the very reasons why so many believe the mainstream media is doomed to irrelevance.
The Times achieved primacy in American journalism by getting the story (usually) right and delivering the news with depth and nuance. By itself, the formula that worked so well for the Times in the 20th century may not be enough in the 21st. That's because the fragmentation of media has created a multiplicity of voices on the Internet, some good, others less so, where the authority of the Times depends on more than a prototypical article.
So it is that the decision to separate the Times from its public strikes me as completely arbitrary. What's more, it makes for an utterly boring one-way conversation--and that's no conversation at all. Whitney may not want the chief White House correspondent riffing in public about the failings of the 43rd president, but how about a little give? For instance, I'd be shocked if Frank Rich does not think George Bush was an abject idiot. Or that William Kristol does not believe Bill Clinton remains a skirt-chasing hippy hedonist. Seems they also ought to have the green light to tweet to their hearts' content.
But it's not just Facebook and Twitter. Consider the following:
"Be careful not to write anything on a blog or a personal Web page that you could not write in The Times -- don't editorialize, for instance, if you work for the News Department. Anything you post online can and might be publicly disseminated, and can be twisted to be used against you by those who wish you or The Times ill -- whether it's text, photographs, or video. That includes things you recommend on TimesPeople or articles you post to Facebook and Digg, content you share with friends on MySpace, and articles you recommend through TimesPeople."
In other words, don't write anything that's passionate or pointed in ways that might stir people beyond what the Times provides in its news columns. Pardon my sarong but that's like serving up a diet of rice cakes to people hungry for General Tso's chicken.
Have the rules for PR changed so radically from the days when the IBM Selectric typewriter was state of the art?
The conventional wisdom says yes, though I'm less convinced.
In fact, many public relations folks are still trying to gauge the import of new tools like Twitter and FriendFeed. But they remain unclear about what it means to their profession and what's the best way to approach this new community. That ambivalence was on display at the Horn Group's downtown San Francisco offices Wednesday evening, where an overflow audience gathered to attend a panel discussion with the over-the-top title, "Is social media killing PR?"
A better title would have been "Is PR killing PR?"
Seriously.
As a tool for communications, social media obviously is of keen interest to public relations types. But let's dispense with the nonsense about it being a paradigm changer. Maybe that day will arrive, but to date, the cheerleaders have overstated the results. So it is that many PR professionals have drunk the Kool-Aid to the point where they believe that engaging the community emerging around social media should be their top priority. At the same time, they remain unsure how best to communicate their companies' message in an unfamiliar and often unwieldy new medium.
What's more, they are scared stiff of antagonizing the "influencers." Especially when one or another bloviator from the blogosphere wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and issues a fatwa. But does a relatively small circle of (mostly California-based) bloggers still command the same influence it did a year ago? Ultimately, people listen to trusted voices though, unfortunately, the deepening recession leaves fewer of them all the time.
As I listened to the panelists debate the question, I began to fidget as Forrester Research's Jeremiah Oywang offered a marketing-heavy spiel on the central role social media should occupy in any effective PR strategy. Oywang is earnest about this stuff so I can't come down too hard, and yes, social media has its place. Still, it sounded like so much gobbledygook to me.
Then the predictably prescient Kara Swisher from The Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital cut to the core question which--I believe--outweighs all others: If the message is empty, why bother? There is little point in trying to push a lame product or marketing idea. That's a message some sales and marketing departments don't want to hear. But in the end, doesn't everything come back to value?
That's not a social media idea. It's an old school idea.
Update: You can check out what Sam Whitmore, who moderated last night's panel, had to say about the event.
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