Thanks for the mention!

At my last firm a number of journalists came through, but so many also burnt out on PR pretty quickly, the skillsets, while close, weren’t close enough. I think the new environment offers tremendous opportunities, both for journalists and PR folks. A lot of our clients are marketers, so they are used to creating content that sells. You know, “Always Be Closing.”

But compelling content is more altruistic in nature. It’s not there to sell, it’s there to inform. Along the way it benefits the publisher. In a way it’s a shift from a central journalism point (like a newspaper) in which business indirectly supports the work through ads, to a scattered model in which each business (or group pf businesses) can be its own news publisher.

I find this movement tremendously exciting.

Thanks for including my post. Yes, the big changes in media do mean a lot for PR. One choice for a displaced journalist is becoming a “flack”- another is to become a writer on the corporate side, especially as more companies become content producers- and publishers- themselves. We have seen this happen at Kaspersky, among other companies, and very smart people like David Meerman Scott caught this trend early.

To Chuck’s point, it has always been an advantage to have an “ex-hack” in a PR agency for the reasons stated. I would like to see the traditional journalistic ethic fused into the “new media” landscape- I think that is more imperative. It just has to be worth the journalists’ time to be in that space, setting good reporting examples (that is, there needs to be a livelihood under the hood).