Don
Monday, April 30th, 2007Journalists tend to spit when PR is mentioned. But having worked on both sides of the fence, you appreciate that PR has just as much reason to curse.
I’ve just spent three days working with the PR and press departments of Greater Manchester Police. Many have radio or local newspaper experience, but have crossed to the “dark side” because of poor pay, boring work or both.
It’s fair to say they are all astonished to discover just how lazy journalists can be. Typical examples are news releases put in exactly as they’d been sent, even though a cursory read would have revealed a basic error; phone calls to check when or where something had taken place when the information was in the release (“Er, have you read the next paragraph?”); rewriting and getting the core facts wrong.
In my salad days on a local paper, the latter especially was a hanging offence. Is the training poorer? The senior journalists allegedly checking copy less able? Or is it the sheer pressure of the job, the demand to fill acres of space in print and online, that welcomes anything to fill a hole?
Of course, it’s not true everywhere. But I suspect every newspaper, local, evening or daily, operates with fewer staff than it did 30 years ago. Yet those journalists are expected to produce more copy, as well as supplying daily copy for the website. Small wonder that quality control becomes a luxury.
In such circumstances, PR plays a key role. Some of it is undeniably crap, stuff rewritten by a marketing director who got a B in GCSE English and thinks he’s Hemingway. But plenty is sharply written with the story in the intro.
Treat well those who produce such copy. They make your life easier.
But you get more from those in press offices if you treat them well.