Are public relations practitioners dependent on journalists?
Maybe 10 years ago, we would say Public Relations Practitioners are dependent on journalists. Now we live in a digital world where everything is connected or linked together. Years ago, when you wanted publicity you had to build a relationship with a journalist or even pay him so that your story could be published. PRP's needed to write long Press Releases (they still do) to send to Journalists. But journalists have a lot on their plate. They should keep up with the latest trends to keep information going and interesting. Therefore, they do not have time to go through hundreds of press releases, so what they do is put your press release aside and focus on other important things to them. Times have changed, with the power of social media we are now able to reach our target audience for free with a click of a bottom. PRP are now able to generate publicity for free using controlled and uncontrolled media.
Let’s have a look at what is PR
PR has to do with branding, that is to keep a positive image of the Organisation. It's building relationships through communication, internally and externally.
What is Journalism?
Journalism is the act to give or provide useful information to the citizens so that they can make a better decision about their lives, societies, communities and mostly importantly their government.
Advice; the world has changed. Take advantage of social media.
Are public relations practitioners dependent on journalists?
Maybe 10 years ago, we would say Public Relations Practitioners are dependent on journalists. Now we live in a digital world where everything is connected or linked together. Years ago, when you wanted publicity you had to build a relationship with a journalist or even pay him so that your story could be published. PRP's needed to write long Press Releases (they still do) to send to Journalists. But journalists have a lot on their plate. They should keep up with the latest trends to keep information going and interesting. Therefore, they do not have time to go through hundreds of press releases, so what they do is put your press release aside and focus on other important things to them. Times have changed, with the power of social media we are now able to reach our target audience for free with a click of a bottom. PRP are now able to generate publicity for free using controlled and uncontrolled media.
Let’s have a look at what is PR
PR has to do with branding, that is to keep a positive image of the Organisation. It's building relationships through communication, internally and externally.
Public Relation in my own explanation is like a mother, someone who is always there and will never leave you in hard times. PR deals with crisis management, whenever your company or brand is going through a crisis, the mother is always there to stand by your organisation and fight for you. PR scans the environment. For instance, you cannot build in a dry place without water, you need to build your organisation where you know the public is there to support you and use your product.
Externally, PR deals with the public what PR does is give information to the public via controlled and uncontrolled media. It is all about communicating with the public, having campaigns build awareness etc. Internally, PR is the bridge between employees and employers. What he does is to communicate to the top management what the employees are voicing out and to take the message from the top management to the lower level which are the employees through controlled media (emails and newsletters.)
What is Journalism?
Journalism is the act to give or provide useful information to the citizens so that they can make a better decision about their lives, societies, communities and mostly importantly their government.
Going back in time, when no one used social media. It was hard for a PRP or another person to generate publicity for himself or for the company without the help of a journalist. When a PRP wanted publicity for the company you had to build a relationship with a journalist so he can feature your content in the newspapers or magazines.
Everything has because of social media, one is able to generate publicity.
It’s a waste of time busy writing content which no one will read. One may say, "You cannot bombard information to a journalist or even do a follow up on the stories you send him or her" Therefore, the best way to have control is by generating your own publicity, by taking the advantages of media.
Advice; the world has changed. Take advantage of social media.
Follow me on twitter; @n_kwanele
I must complement you on your layout it is very attractive. But explain to me are you saying that we dont need journalist if so I suggest you read http://goo.gl/I16z7l where the author argues the point that journalist are still relevant in the social media age. Another thing is you do not mention in your blog how much social media influences Public Relation apart from PRPs creating their own publicity.
ReplyDeletethank you! One thing you should know is when we compare journalist and public relation we don't compare them about the news etc we compare them about the works or Public Relation. my point and opinion is that we don't need them anymore i terms of publicity, we don not need them to send our work to the public. PRPs are now capable of doing that, they are able to generate their own publicity because of social media.
Deletei do not know if i understand what you mean i the last sentence of your paragraph, but since you took your time to visit my blog i will also take my time and try to understand what you trying to say.PUBLIC RELATIONS IS WHAT WE STUDY AND PRP IS WHAT WE BECOME.. therefore you cant say''apart from''
What i mean is that you say that in your blog you state that we use social media to generate publicity right, my question is, is that the only way we use social media or are the other ways we can take advantage of social media as you do not mention it in your blog.
Deleteyes we use it to generate publicity, you got that right! lets not move from the topic Gcin; what do journalist do for us? they only generate publicity for us or our organizations we work for! therefore i was only touching on the publicity part! if you need more information just stay tuned on my blog and will keep on posting new posts on my blog,,,,,,,,,,so if you would like me to touch on a specific topic let me know on my email(kn.kwanele@gmail.com) then will gladly write about it
Deletehey kwanele no they dont depend on one another personally i feel that journalists are the ones that make everybody's life miserable including prp's
ReplyDeleteYou have a very good argument but I still believe we need journalist because they reach out to a lot of people,a greater medium...come to think of it,not everyone is on social networks or this digital media thing. You still get our grand parents and some of our parents who still can't keep up with this technology,they still depend on TV and newspapers as source of information so lets consider them as well
ReplyDeletehey Phakiso, you also have a good argument there! but :) one should have a target market and lets say i am a PRP for Eskom and i want to communicate with Parents who do not use media; thats where our newsletters get in. i will send out newsletters to my target audience.
DeleteJournalists are still an important part of the media,and as Public Relations Practitioners we still need them because some of our stakeholders are not on social media and rely mainly on newspapers.
ReplyDeleteHey Sifiso, which stakeholders are you talking about? because if you talking about UJ stakeholders they do use social media.
DeleteI totally agree with you on this one, social media has given us the platform to reach out to our targets without necessarily the involvement of journalists or any other middle man whatsoever.
ReplyDeletehey Zama! really appreciate your comment...
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