French blogger Loic Le Meur writes how media companies need to adapt in the new world of journalism. He comments on ideas from Dan Gillmor's forthcoming new book on grassroots journalism, called We The Media. I am in the process of reading the book now and will post my review once I've completed it.
Loic reiterates one of the book's key themes - that journalism is evolving into a two-way conversation - but he is wrong on one key conclusion he reaches.
Loic writes:
How to communicate to Journalists in this New World ?Traditional press releases are going to die soon. Journalists get hundreds of them everyday by fax and email. This is one of the reasons why we (companies) pay PR agencies to call the Journalists and try to get their attention. This is not the way to go.
How many people are still interested in the Official Story ? Not that many.
Loic is right in pointing out that there will be greater transparency into corporations - especially larger ones - and in saying that press releases may die, which I have said in the past. However, he is wrong in saying the official story won't be important anymore. It will always be important. The situation is not that black and white.
The difference is that in the new world the official story will rival the unofficial story in importance and certainly in credibility. PR people will play a key role in continuing to help companies shape the official story, while also setting sound blogging policies that enable employees to tell the unofficial story in their own voice - as Microsoft and others have done. Dan even gives some good advice in his book on how to go about doing this. So I think Loic's thoughts on PR at least are a bit short-sighted here. Nevertheless, it's an interesting post.
