Hoodwinking reporters: Don't talk with Journalists but listen to your customers

“As months pass by, public relations executives from across the world are coming up with innovative ways to feed their version of 'finger-licking-news' to reporters. We have seen those who directly pitch stories, others who demand stories, but the latest way, this new breed of PR 'professionals' have employed is certainly shocking,” wrote Sheetal Sukhija on her column “My View” published in the Mid – Day on June 21, 2011.

The columnist went on saying, first they praise your story for the day, 'like' all of your status messages (even when your status message reads 'blah') on social networking sites, drop comments like 'oh so cute' on all your facebook photos and just when you start scratching your head wondering where you know this person from they go for the kill. A badly written press release hits your mailbox and your office direct line and mobile phone does not stop ringing each time the same question. When you are about to pull your hair off and tell the PR off, you stop and think they have achieved what they set out to do, grab your attention for a longer time than you would have given them otherwise.

The writer has also mentioned the interesting way on how PR professionals have taken the route to call the editor-in-chief before the press releases reaches a reporter. She wrote: Yet another interesting way many PR professionals have taken to is calling your boss, before the press releases reaches you. Not only does this make you look like a reporter who is unavailable to the outside world (because otherwise why would you call the editor-in-chief for a frivolous event?), but also makes your superiors think there could be a possible story in it (again, why otherwise would the PR try to reach the editor of the newspaper for such a small event).

But, the process of calling and following up in between Reporter – PR are well known and widely acceptable for mutual benefits. When there is a big event or some celebrity makes his / her presence in any event, it is the reporter who run after the life of a PR professional.

Is it really a new PR tactics or a personal revenge against a specific PR professional  or a mere gossip, let’s not enter into that controversy. But, it is the fact that there are journalists who pull up PR guys for not following up for a Press Release. Furthermore, there are journalists who are hungry for free bees (like cash, gift, food and favour etc) but thanks God there are very few and very nominal in count.

Ironically, there are good, intelligent and sophisticated journalists who have also entered into the profession of PR and Lobbying. Does that mean that they are behaving the same way as the columnist presume? For a journalist, news is the main concern, so there are enough smart PR guys who would only feed what is relevant and newsworthy to journalists and that is not a crime. It is also true that Journalists are in the best position to take a call on what is relevant for its own publication.

Reporter and PR need each other. They are like two sides of a same coin. If a Reporter does not receive any call from a PR guy for a day, the reporter would be like a fish out of water. These two communities need to work together for the benefit of the reader of viewer as a whole.

Keeping the debate aside for a moment, we don’t and can’t understand why PR guys are after Journalists only. Social media has gained and is gaining its popularity. Collectively, social media is having much more reach and acceptance that all print and broadcast media put together.  But it is the old and traditional method followed by our fellow PR guys to chase journalists and reporters for getting the Press Release published.

Since its inception, IDSTPR, a division of IDS Technologies (www.idstonline.com) is advocating to change the mindset of PR professionals. Going before the time, IDSTPR has evaluated what is existing today and what should be the ideal scenario.

As per the analysis of IDSTPR, the existing scenario in the PR profession:

•Talk to Journalists, Media Professionals
•One-to-Many
•Control the Brand
•Push the Message
•Speak as a Spokesman

But, we propagate to change the scenario from the existing one to:

•Talk to Customers, People
•One-to-One & One-to-Many
•Manage the Brand
•Engage the Community
•Speak as a Peer

If the changed scenario is accepted, there would be no journalist who would dare to write a column on “Hoodwinking reporters”. Let’s get together to accept the change.