"Broken" Washington? Or just more on broken journalism?
This Vanity Fair article <hyperlink in headline> ponders whether Washington is “broken” but I found one of the threads about the “disintegrating media” more interesting and got me thinking (again) about how broken journalism is too.
Todd Purdom, the reporter, cites a few things that seem to stress out the press department.
- Pretty green reporters who lack historical perspective which results in things being blown out of proportion in the reporters mind and in how they report on the issues
- The web has created lots of issues…the always on, always reporting nature enabled by the web has essentially killed what people used to think of as a news cycle - stories post for a longer time period, all throughout the day and night, and everywhere. It’s created a platform and quickness for rumors and inaccuracies to spread and challenge their ability to correct them. And the increase in blogs and the nature of frequent posting of stories has created a climate where PR is asked for comment on every single little thing - if you think back even 10 years ago, there would only be so many articles and publications that covered the news and only so much space for stories, so there was true editing and editorial oversight to decide which issues to cover - now the president sneezes and there’s a blog post on it.
What struck me about this, isn’t that any of this is new, but how much it applies to most PR and news reporting. We’ve adapted as PR people and manage within this new framework, but I rarely take a step back to think - ahhh ‘back in the old days…’. The principles of media and how I was originally taught PR has completely changed. You just get on board and roll with it and keep evolving.
It got me thinking… as PR people, have we started to comment on things that don’t even warrant a comment? Have we become too reactive to this impulsive, unedited environment? Is that good, bad or no change for consumers a readers? Are they getting more transparency and information or just noise that doesn’t really matter? When you take a step back and think about this, would you advise your clients any differently than you do today on press requests?
When I’m thinking about specific press requests, one of the things I always think about is how that story, or that news cycle, will impact the bigger picture of what people read and think about the company. But how big a picture am I thinking about? What’s been written in the past week? Month? How much perspective are you considering? And does longer term perspective even matter for web companies where the landscape changes fast?
