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Online Publishing vs. PR Gatekeepers, Why PR Is Going To Lose The Fight
“The role of public-relations people is to act as the gatekeepers for news and information,” said Andy Plesser, who runs Plesser Holland Associates, the company that handled the public relations for the public-relations awards. Store here.
See, this is what I hate about PR, and what I love about blogging. The mentality that we need gatekeepers, or that PR people should strive to act as gatekeepers is exactly why blogging is going to continue to flourish, and why most PR people simply don’t get it.
While I understand the need for PR “people” in such a manner, it does not mean that I agree with this statement in a general sense. In other words, gatekeepers might make sense in a publicist role for a celebrity, but in the world of journalism there simply is no advantage in my opinion to gatekeeping information.
Perhaps PR people need to stop thinking they can rule the world as this did in the past before we started to take back control of the information. As online publishing grows, with new devices like camera phones, text messaging and whatever else that comes up down the road, it will become much harder for PR to control the messages.
And to that I say… It can’t come soon enough.
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Hi Jim,
You know not all PR people are evil gatekeepers, although I have to say with a grin I’ve sidestepped classic PR for now/for good because I can do without living life in part as a gatekeeper, or worse spin doctor.
I came into PR from a journalism degree and newspaper journalism background, so always had a respectful take on both worlds. These days like yourself I’m in internet publishing, where basically I get to shamelessly indulge what seems to be a lifetime passion for communications. The minute the internet happened I was fascinated at the explosion of possibilities for communications and people online. It’s like some amazing sophisticated toybox with new toys being added every day and we don’t even have enough time to play with them all at once and there’s something even cooler or more dazzling. I’ve deserted PR very happily and for years half our PR work was online anyway.
But when I did do PR, I got to do some cool stuff too, it honestly outweighed the issues management and gatekeeper stuff in terms of hours spent per day. I steered way clear of products and garbage and I got to work on some amazing projects for clients like Eurotunnel, the Guggenheim Museum, the bionic ear manufacturer Cochlear that’s helped all these chronically deaf people worldwide to have reasonable lives, did lots of IT projects too. I had great fun some years. In fact my own gatekeeper analogy, to prove we’re not all manipulative monsters who eat babies, would be the ‘Gatekeeper’ PR booklet I did years ago for the UK anti-suicide charity org. The Samaritans. We did it for all the gatekeepers like social workers and doctors etc who often are working with suicidal people, to help them spot the warning signs and be able to somehow intercede before there’s another suicide statistic.
Even with the journos who hated that part of my day job was to act as gatekeeper at the client’s request, I used to have good relationships and could usually get them into an interview or onto the phone with a client a damn sight faster than trying to get past their PA’s. Now secretaries, there are some serious gatekeepers to get past!
Cheers
Teri