My friend, sj, disagrees with me on my last post and says that we as PR people should not resort to blackmailing and let our press releases stand on their own merit. I agree with him. I am a complete endorser of the fact that as PR people we should let our strategic thinking and information management ability be our strength rather than on how well do we know a journalist.

Come to think of it, I often wonder that suppose we go to a new city, what would be our strength as a PR professional? We wouldn’t know anybody there and can’t boast of how many journalists we know well enough to plug in a story. The strength we would have then is our communication, planning ability, understanding of the media expectations in that area, and the industry scenario, or in other words- how we can make a news item of a particular unstructured information chiplet from our client. Maybe as communication professionals, the challenge would also be on how fast can we adapt to the media-PR scene there and get ourselves acquainted with the local journalists. Going on with this school of thought, we can say if a press release or a story peg has merit, it will get picked. If it doesn’t, it won’t ever, no matter if you know the journalist well or follow up a dozen times.Our ability as PR people limits to what goes into the content of the press release, and making sure that the appropriate journalist on the beat gets to read the release, and of course explaining to the journalist the importance of that particular development mentioned in the release.

But then again, there is another school of thought that says it is the relationship with the media that counts, especially in a country like where daru-and-gifting are still so relevant terms. This especially works with the regional media and trade media wherein if you know a journalist well enough, they will find a news angle just out of anything and do a story for you. Many media heads in PR agencies will agree that it is because of their good bonding with journalists that have saved many PR accounts at crisis situations. Or when a global spokesperson of your client suddenly drops in one day and informs you just the day before that he would like an interview, but doesn’t have anything substantial to say in particular – another instance when there is no time for the usual pitch process and one of the few ways that could save you is calling up your journalist friend and invite him over to meet your client. Maybe some PR agencies have figured this out early that it pays to have good relationship with the media, so they have dedicated media teams that go off to meet the press everyday.

So I wonder would it be true if we could say story angles works on good ideas and content, but good media relationships can give these story angles a push into becoming print items. So may be PR works on 80% content, 20% relationship; or a 90:20, or 50:50, or 60:40.

This is a topic, I suppose, many will have differing opinions. PR agencies work on the same principle and but they also have their own distinct beliefs and work styles. But am I glad that we are saying what we feel and starting a discussion. So, keep it coming, sj.

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