Elizabeth Albrycht paints a depressing picture on the current state of media relations.
“When I do media relations, I am representing small, emerging high-tech companies. Not the IBMs of the world, who the press pretty much has to cover. When I did PR for IBM at least editors would listen to you for a minute or two. With unknown companies it is virtually impossible.”
There’s some excellent comments on the post:
Trevor Cook: “More broadly, media relations for small clients has always been hard work and it gets harder all the time with more companies chasing the same few pages. Many end up disappointed.”
Mike Manuel: “As a result, one of the most important PR takeaways from the dot com boom fell to the wayside � creativity. I think a healthy dose of creativity has been missing the last few years and it needs to be re-infused in all media relations efforts.”
Elizabeth comes to the conclusion that she’ll increasingly be involved in the marketing communications side of the house. I think it’s a great observation. In my view, whilst media relations will continue to play a very important role, the future success of Public Relations depends upon practitioners’ ability to take their undoubted skills in communication, strategy and implementation and apply them to a much wider range of areas.
The prime suspects right now are any area of online communications whether it be websites, newsletters, corporate blogs, search engine optimization etc. The common theme is these areas require an understanding of how to communicate be it with staff, media, analysts, customers prospects, business partners etc..
Media relations isn’t going anywhere (in fact blog relations may even bolster what we call “media” relations) but we all need to continously understand the new tools that are becoming available and how they impact our professional life.
Murphy's Law 