Day: November 17, 2003

Today’s UK Guardian has an article on the inter-relationship between journalists and PR people.

The article won’t surprise anyone who has read any of the previous Journalist vs PR pro pieces, though the quote from the UK Sunday Times last May is a little on the shocking side:

“Hacks still naively pursue something they like to call the truth. Their problem is that it no longer exists. For truth has been destroyed by public relations executives, or ‘scum’ as we like to call them.”

The author, who is from the PR side of the argument addresses this view and comes to the conclusion that:

“But the uneasy marriage between PR and journalism is far from over. We need to spend more, not less, time together, and remember why we need each other in the first place.”

Which does make sense.  However I do wonder if we need to continue to highlight the extreme views on either side of the PR-Journalism debate.

Yes there are unprofessional, incompetent PR people

Yes there are ‘difficult’ journalists

Yes some industries do as a rule attempt to manipulate the media more than others (think Politics, “A-List” celebrities etc..)

However, the simple fact is that for all this hysteria, we have to work together. Everyone of the PR side of the house has to work harder to ensure we provide what journalists need and that we (and our colleagues) perform professionally. That’s the job folks.

(Thanks to Joanne Coffey for the link)

CNN has a short feature on how blogging is being adopted by businesses.  Some interesting quotes 😉

As Weblogs continue their lazy progress across the Internet there has been a lot of new research appearing that looks at the number of blogs or weblogs and what the biggest new trends are.

These research reports are interesting, though not something I’d hang a business plan on.

But what’s more interesting is actual numbers.  Rather than taking a sample and extrapolating the Internet, there are some interesting stats emerging that are based on actual numbers.

David Sifry is the brains and the brawn behind Technorati – the web service that allows you to track the hot topics being covered in blogs and more importantly for bloggers the sites that are linking to your content.

Anyhow, David has some really interesting statistics on blog growth:

• November 2002: Technorati was adding 2,000 – 3,000 new blogs a day
• March 2003: That figure had grown to 4,000 – 5,000 new blogs per day
• November 2003: Technorati is adding 8,000 – 9,000 new blogs daily
• They are currently tracking in excess of 1.2 million weblogs (1,229,516  to be precise)
• Based on their figures a new weblog is created every 11 seconds and a weblog is updated every 0.86 seconds

Now that’s growth!

[Link courtesy of Boing Boing]