Well, after my first blog I feared I would be disowned by the entire PR industry. I sat back and prepared myself for the backlash but what happened? The opposite! Phonecall after phonecall and email after email inviting me for coffee, lunch, and even beer (for future reference, I prefer wine). From the most senior agency owner/MD calling to check it wasn’t his PR people who had rubbed me up the wrong way, down to the people I work with every issue wanting to know (honestly) if it was something they’d done. These are all PR people so they’re in the business of being nice to me; flattering me even. But I must say I’ve met some genuinely lovely and switched-on individuals over coffee and lunch (still waiting for the wine) during the last fortnight. Maybe PRs and journos aren’t that different after all (ok, let’s not go too far!). I should also add that there were a fair number of PR people who, after persuading me to sign something not unlike the Official Secrets Act, freely admitted they agreed with the points I made and said they hated that kind of PR person giving them a bad name.
So while I’m by no means saying I take it all back, I hope that first blog opened the lines of communication and I’m definitely grateful for the recent lack of “just calling to check you got my press release” phone calls. Like any other relationship in business, the one between journalist and PR takes time and effort to build. But let’s remember we’re here to do each other favours. Whichever way you look at it, one will struggle to do their job without the other.
Last week was a good week all in all. The last remaining technical ‘bugs’ in the new backend.dynamicbusiness.com were fixed, which means you can now comment and add your feedback to all our articles and blogs. We encourage a good debate, so please get involved and have your say. On the subject of all things Web 2.0, I also went on a web-writing course to get a bit more up with the 21st century and away from the rigid print journalism rules ingrained in me over the last decade. I like to think there’s not a lot I don’t know about writing but I was wrong. There was a lot I didn’t know about web writing and it was interesting stuff. Through being involved in the relaunch of this site, I’m starting to appreciate the opportunities of the web and what I love about online writing as opposed to print, is that you can track it; running a simple analytics report can show you just what people are reading, how often and when. While I’ll always see a place for print journalism, I’m coming round to the idea that the online version is an excellent complement.
