August 14th, 2008
Bloggers vs. PR - the broken record continues to skip
Yet another blogger vs. public relations brouhaha. Can you stand it?
Two days ago Steve Rubel set the industry chatter wild yet again when he posed the question, “Is PR becoming obsolete?” It’s a bit of a broken record but one worthy of an attempted listen. So my quick answer, of course, is no. And truthfully if one reads Rubel’s blog in depth he’s saying no as well. What he’s done is made the exceptional point that traditional pitching efforts are being perceived as spam and that the current model needs to change. With this I wholeheartedly agree. I do not think he’s ready to grab a pitchfork and run PR out of town — as if he’s going to viciously bite the hand that feeds him?
At the heart of it I think the piece of Rubel’s post that ruffled so many PR feathers was his reference to Robert Scoble’s blog lauding a “PR-less launch.” Rubel doesn’t necessarily agree with Scoble but he does call out the point that some bloggers may not want PR’s help anymore. In his post, Scoble wrote:
There’s no reason to go crazy with a PR firm if you build something that people want.
The broken record soon after made the noise of a screeching halt; soon followed by screaming and even some bandwagon jumping from Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. Some of the PR types with the loudest megaphones — such as Todd Defren and Brian Solis — immediately responded to the issues posed by Rubel, Arrington and Scoble, making yesterday the day that the PR industry went into crisis management mode for itself.
I happened to be talking last night with George Hulme, former InformationWeek senior editor and now primary security blogger, who has been a tech journalist since 1992. It occurred to me mid-conversation that he would be a good person to ask about whether or not tech bloggers need PR (having rejected my pitches many moons ago, I knew he was very discerning). I asked him, is PR obsolete?
“It’s complete bunk. The more bloggers the greater the need for PR,” Hulme said.
In fairness of full disclosure I do not practice traditional PR any longer but it’s still a craft close to my heart and one that is terminally misunderstood. I don’t claim expert status but I’ve been on all sides of this issue from daily news journalist to copy editor to PR agency professional to in-house PR professional to independent blogger to where I am now.
That said, I am not going to spend the next 600 words or so defending PR. Mike Volpe of HubSpot already wrote a fantastic primer on how PR agencies should be used and Jeremy Pepper, the oh-so-soft-spoken blogger that he is, published a fiery and spot-on piece about the craft itself. What I want to do is put some of the onus the bloggers.
Scoble did publish a second post yesterday that attempts to explain his position on PR and what he thinks tech bloggers really want out of it. Unfortunately, while he made some great statements about the need for true innovation and gave due credit to a couple of good PR folks, he only further muddies the issue at hand.
A couple snippets:
If we just go to press conferences, or only deal with embargoed news, and report on the same news everyone else is reporting on, well, then, just what reason is there for our business to exist?
PR people are doing themselves a disservice when they just treat journalists and bloggers like cattle. Every time I get an email pitch it reminds me that I’m being treated like cattle.
I wouldn’t take issue with this if he had kept it to solely what he wants from a PR professional but he spoke for all tech bloggers. Which made me think, “Maybe Scoble doesn’t know how PR people can really benefit him?”
Next: A short primer on how to use PR people –>
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Jennifer Leggio, aka "Mediaphyter," writes about the "social business" side of social media - including enterprise, security and reputation issues. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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| 08/16/08
