PR in the future will have to change

Considering public relations existence and semblance in the future, the only conclusion can be made right now: public relations will have to change rapidly. Below I will purvey some ideas to support it.

Apparently, media recently has been changing fast and has becoming more and more social. Due to public relations works through media, it is stringent to adapt to media changes. The influence of social media is developing and public relations works not only with traditional, but and with social media too. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, virtual environments like Second life is a great arena for public relations to work in. As a result, public relations practitioners should pay much more attention to social media and particularly social networks in the future. Therefore, the practitioners will have to gain more skills to work in social media.

Why do I think that public relations will be working more in social media? Firstly, traditional media (especially press and radio) is getting less fashionable, moreover, young generation in most countries turns to online media, basically Internet. It means that the run on social media will be bigger and all commercial companies will create advertising and public relations company in online environment. Whereas public relations practitioners are forced to adapt to those changes and look for the new ways how to work successfully.

Furthermore, I see here a small challenge to well-experienced and old-fashioned public relations practitioners. Due to rapidly changing online environment the new generation of the practitioners will emerge. Here would be more opportunities to young people who orientate in modern technology faster. As a result, the contact between journalists and practitioners will become less relative, because online they could create their own ‘media’ channel and disseminate the information through it.

Did I act properly?

Last Summer I was working for the Lithuanian Public Broadcasting Company’s radio section as a journalist. During that time I got to communicate and work with the public relations practitioners pretty much. While writing this blog I recalled one example that I’d like to give now about how the practitioners work does not reach the goal – to promote company’s name in media.

All this happened in July when final World Cup matched were played in South Africa. The biggest telecommunication company “TEO LT” broadcasted final games in one of the most visited squares in Vilnius. They brought a portable TV studio (big buss with the largest screen in the country) and enabled football fans to watch the games all together, just sitting on the ground.

The company’s public relations practitioners disseminated the information about these events through all possible communication channels. At that moment I was responsible for the news related to World Cup. The editor gave me the press releases and told me to record one peace of news about this event. We discussed a lot whether we should mention company’s name or not. Finally, we decided do not do that.

As a result, we shortly presented the matches, reminded tournament’s ratings and only at the end we mentioned that the game is broadcasting in the square live. It meant that people are informed about the event, but they don’t know who the organizer is.

Did I act properly? From my point of view, I acted fairly taking care of our listeners. They were informed about the event, the context of the game was also announced. If they want, they could go to the square and watch the game. Moreover, we also furthered the advertisement of the company because those people who came to the square, saw company’s logos and found out the organizer. On the other hand, our decision was unfair, because the company’s name was not announced on the radio, certainly the practitioners would have preferred that. Unfortunately, to state about fair or unfair decision in this case is quite complicated.

Ethics in PR and Journalism

The public relations practitioners and journalists have to pay attention to both moral and legal ethics. It is necessary because of the significance of their activities, as a result, legal ethics cannot define all specific situations what decisions should be made. Let’s imagine: if the practitioner disseminates false facts to the journalist, as a result, those facts would be delivered through all media and to stop the spread will be almost impossible. There moral responsibility should be taken into account.

There are also huge conflict and tension between journalists and the practitioners when collaborating collectively too. Probably most of us know many situations when corruption between the practitioners and journalists emerge. This happens, firstly, because of the practitioners’ wishes to express gratitude for the published or broadcasted information. Usually grateful works in giving some presents, or sometimes even paying money for the ‘partnership’. However, secondly, journalists are grateful to the practitioners for disseminated information too, because they wasn’t forced to work hard searching for the new topics to their stories and all facts are collected by the help of the practitioners, therefore, journalists start to work in closer relations and here a danger for objectivity comes up.

How to solve this dilemma and how to make appropriate and adequate decisions?

Firstly, the practitioners have to be aware of the moral and legal ethical pitfalls in the news media as the journalists are. Essential point is to realize ethical dilemmas raise tough questions about the right of privacy and the public’s right to know. Both must have credibility and must be respected by the various publics who with they interact. In addition, the news media deserve honest and valid use of the channels, so the practitioners should not involve them in compromising situations such as by lying or feeding them insignificant or incomplete information. The practitioners should respond to the news media with a straightforward presentation of the facts, even when the story is unfavourable.

To conclude, everything that is mentioned above theoretically looks exceptionally simple. But both journalists and practitioners should remember that their profession is especially important not only to the companies they work for, but and to ordinary inhabitants too. The reason of that is the publicity of their work. They should also remember that brainless mistakes can cause incredibly regrettable situations where people can be devastated irreversibly.

Interaction between PR and Journalism

Public relations practitioners will not be able to implement their main task (to build positive image) working for organization, whereas journalists will not be able to follow all events without being in touch with agents (practitioners) of organizations creating or influencing those events. In this post I would like to ponder how public relations and journalism interacts.

As a part of public relations practitioners’ technical roles, they deal with the media. They use mass media to get positive publicity for their organizations. The practitioners also supply journalists with newsworthly information for publication or broadcasting. Conversely, journalists get a vast amount of news of public interest for the media from practitioners in different organizations.

Public relations practitioners and journalists collaboration is quite strong and due to it practitioners have to establish good media relations in order to reach the main goal. The practitioners issue newsworthly information in various ways to the media, for example, news release, organizing press conferences, disseminating news through email, personal contact, etc. Here journalists’ work is rewrite news releases prepared by the practitioners, identify newsworthly information by contacting the practitioners who act as news source, interview them, attend press conferences, meetings, seminars to gather information. As a result, the practitioners will not get media coverage without the help of journalists. At the same time, the practitioners greatly assist the journalists in obtaining news.

However, in all cases the practitioner is the first source of information for journalists. Everything in contact between journalist and organization is gathering through practitioner who arranges interview with organization’s employees and is in charge of contacting with media. As a result, a tension between the public relations practitioners and journalists exists, because journalists may want to interview other persons working for an organization, but they are not allowed to do this because of internal rules and every time the practitioner is included in collecting the information.

Proceeding about journalism and public relations interaction, journalistic skills also are included in the practitioners’ work. According to Clear and Weideman, the public relations practitioner successful work includes these journalistic skills: interviews conducting; writing articles for own publications; producing publications that require editing, page layout, photography; conducting research for articles; rewriting information received to comply with the style and nature of in-house publications.

While in collective working with public relations practitioners journalists have to deal with interviewing sources; writing news reports and articles; editing news reports and articles, doing page layouts, taking photographs; conducting research for background information.

In conclusion, all facts and descriptions of situations mentioned above affirm the existence of public relations and journalism interaction. The only way for the practitioners to create and maintain positive image of organization is dealing with media, whereas journalists gather information easily and at the same time create wider reflection of events that are delivered through mass media channels.

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PR and Journalism duties

As a fifth post in a cycle of public relations and journalism convergence, I would like to give the table made by Clear and Weideman stating the main duties of the public relations practitioners and journalists. The data illustrates a close relationship between public relations and journalism as the processes.

Here I would like to emphasize the only strong divergence between public relations and journalism. Public relations concerns itself with developing an organization’s image by creating effective, two-way communication channels between management and employees and between management and the organization’s external target groups. Two-way communication implies sending a message, receiving feedback from its receivers, and establishing a mutual understanding of the message. The sender can use various channels to send a message to the receiver. The channel of choice depends on who receiver is. Public relations uses different channels for internal and external communication.

Whereas journalism usually implies one-way communication conveying information information to the general public, be it readers, viewers or listeners. However, letters to the editors of the print media and ‘phone-in’ programs or panel discussions in the electronic media establish two-way communication channels. 

What is Journalism?

What is journalism and what are journalists’ functions? Here I would try to answer these two questions in order to understand it and be able give a wide comparison of journalism and public relations, therefore, to discuss about those two communication offshoots convergence in depth.

What is journalism? Usually scholars define journalism as collecting, writing, editing and presenting news or news articles in newspapers, magazines, radio and television broadcasts. Others state that journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues, and trends to a broad audience. Although there is much variation within journalism, the ideal is to inform the citizenry. Besides covering organizations and institutions such as government and business, journalism also covers cultural aspects of society such as arts and entertainment. Journalism also is a process of informing and satisfying a large, diverse audience. The media satisfy people needs to gain knowledge and become aware of national and international events most appropriately because of the variety of information they convey.

What are the journalist’s functions? Scholars acknowledge that the central figure in media is journalist. The media use trained journalists to gather and present newsworthly information. A journalist’s or reporter’s (the terms are synonymous) main responsibility is to identify and gather newsworthly information and to present it in a clear and understandable way through media. The journalist’s aim is, therefore, to convey important information to the general public using the mass communication media or channels of communication.

The journalist gathers information in several ways including personal or telephone interviews, news releases, news conferences, etc. Journalist also takes photographs although a media channel employs professional photographers. As a result, journalist has to be especially modern and be familiarized with modern technologies, not only be acquainted with interview techniques and work up into presenting elicited information. Definitely, journalist needs good interviewing skills to ensure that he elicits the correct information for publication or broadcast, also be familiarized with aspects of the language in which he presents the reports.  Summing up the main journalist’s functions, apparently the main function is to inform diverse audience including gathering and presenting information from various sources. 

What is PR?

In order to discuss about public relations and journalism convergence, firstly, we should define both concepts. In this post I would like to summarize the ideas of what public relations, public relations practitioner are and to name their functions and define the most important terms. The summary is based on book ‘Dynamics of Public Relations and Journalism. A practical guide for media students’ written by Clear and Weideman.

What is PR? Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa defines public relations as the management, through communication, of perceptions and strategic relationships between an organization and its internal and external stakeholders. According to authors, it is clear that effective communication has to take place, because it is the backbone of public relations that familiarize themselves with the many communication forms and techniques available for establishing effective communication with their organizations.

What are the functions of public relations practitioner? Public relations practitioner is appointed by an organization for an important task, namely build the image of the company and to improve communication. Those tasks, according to the authors, can be implemented by carrying out few functions. Firstly, the public relations practitioner has to deal with the mass communication media. Practitioner’s aim is to gain publicity for an organization. It is necessary to have sufficient experience and knowledge of, at first, what the media consider newsworthly, second, preparing material in a way acceptable to the media and, third, dealing with journalists. Furthermore, practitioner has to aware electronics and print media, mainly, to publish or broadcast information that can be constructed as news. Identify newsworthly information and presenting it appropriately to the media is essential. If publicity is to be gained, each news medium has to be approached in its preferred manner. To conclude the functions of public relations practitioner, the main task is to handle the media and act as a link between them and management, because he or she plays a major role giving journalists access to newsworthly information. As a result, practitioner should take care of providing factual information and be credible at all times.