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Working with Journalists - What You Should Know
By Renu Kakkar on Jun 2, 2008 in mediarelations
After years and years as a career finance journalist I shifted into a industry operations unit and quickly realised that:
Creating is tougher than commenting (…on the creation).
Creating is more enriching than profiling (…the creation or the creator).
Creating is much more powerful than criticism (…of the creation or the creator)
Comments, Profiles and Critique remain nevertheless essential tools of reaching the creation out to the public . Therefore we in Public Relations of a brand, a technology, a service use these tools a lot to create “stories” in the media to reach out to our respective TGs and for brand building. But despite the high decibel almost unbelievable level of PR and coverage created through these tools , they are not what journalism is about
Best to stay on uncontroversial ground and quote a personal example: as a journalist I got pleasure from and specialised in creating ’stories’ through investigation and discovery of information hitherto unknown for the benefit of the common man. As idealist as it may sound being the instrument of positive change was reason of entering journalism and giving up on my IAS studies on the day I was to give Interview. I had a strong aversion to commenting or profiling. The editors would rarely if ever put me to these tasks. I reckon any journalist worth his weight today has not made a career out of commenting, profiing or criticising.
Therefore its important that people in Corporate Communications, Corporate PR functions or PR Agencies use different yardsticks when dealing with the press. The yardsticks are completely dependent on the kind of orientation each category of journalists bring to their work.
This is easier said than achieved. Picture this – a journalist is writing a story on a brand. He has the entire story and needs nothing from the PR agency / Corporate communicator – Is it so impossible for us to digest that we mean nothing to him in the “story chain”. For instance corporate communications heads and the public relations agency of my beats disliked me with a vengeance. They disliked me for one simple reason - I took no cognizance of their existence. Furiously well networked I remained oblivious of their presence or even their sheer requirement in a story chain. So basically I was the dreaded kind of press – who bypasses the corp com people and creates a lot of internal problems for the department head including loss of credibility internally. They then struck back by entertaining the other category of my beat colleagues who commented and profiled and gave out so called “exclusives” to competing newspapers.
Today on the other side of the table as a corporate communications head, I find my kind of journalists quite a tiresome breed indeed. But lets give these thinking devils their due. One can respect them only if we know what drives them. An example of one thinking devil I knew who literally was dreaming up a rough draft of history for an industry segment :- In the mid 90s those investing into the mobile businesses were visionaries (…just like the owners of IPL franchises today will be hailed as five years from now) . The entry block was the handset cost of 30,000 and biggest irritant was all incoming calls were charged. A senior editor wrote a note to all us beat reporters covering telecom ..the note said and I quote since Ive kept it for all these years, ” Sunil Mittal is trying to buy a Modi Telstra (or was it Command) in Kolkata. Spice is getting out of the business down south, Vodafone is the biggest international player and has stake in Z company but its not yet flexing muscle. Reliance is busy setting up a backbone and has made no attempt to launch services…these are threads that I see now . These threads lie in your respective cities. In pretty short time these threads will be pulled together to become a braid that runs through India. We want to be the first one to pull these threads together.”
Today, You have a Vodafone as the biggest force along with Sunil’s Airtel!
So if I look back we beat reporters were also particpants to this rough draft of history because of the type of journalists we were. I was leading the pack from Kolkata writing on who was buying out whom in the mobile business and who was stalking whom and what would happen if things went this way or that. I had no clue who the corporate communications heads were. Sunil Mittal was just a phone call away and in the quickly written well researched “stories” was the pleasure of being a journo.
For this kind of journo a corporate communicator is really a coordinating clerk and a PR agency is one notch lower in this coordination chain for one simple reason – they know more about your industry and brand than you do, they can get to the “spokesperson” quicker than you can..and that’s the Achilles’ heel for PR professionals. This is relevant now, and for times to come. Mind you Im quite aware of reporter profiling and risk assessment done by PR agencies as part of strategy for clients. All things remaining equal corporate communicators need to respect the journalist’s profession slightly more than they do…maybe not all but some of them.
To my mind, seven things we can do to strike up a rapport with a good reporter who will then loop you in whether they need your assistance or not.
1. Never hardsell the brand you work for.
2. Own up to the mistakes and don’t demand / expect positive stories inspite of them
3. Have information about your company/industry on your fingertips
4. Be strongly networked within your management ranks so that you can quickly get the feedback – No. Yes. No comments – whatever it be.
5. Respect that the journo’s product goes to bed at a certain time so speed up reverts.
6. Ensure your internal corporate stakeholders take the press and your job seriously.
7. Ensure that your internal stakeholders have standing instruction to always loop you in when contacted by the press directly. Be upfront, confess to them that you lose credibility if they respond directly. This stakeholder could be the CEO therefore this could get really tricky!
As I said before, true there is high decibel PR but if you look carefully there is high level of disbelief on what is written, why it is written, whether its an advertorial or not. All about the press and journalists is not good just as all is not good with brands, technologies or services. They however remain invaluable. When they do their jobs well, our jobs get done well too..most of the time i.e.
On Jun 2, 2008, himanshu kapadia said:
well i just read your first 3 lines and a thought came to my mind- Creation is sometimes a thankless job.now reading the balance article….
On Jun 4, 2008, Shael Sharma said:
There are no perfect PR people, just as there are no perfect communicators or journalists. The relationships are pretty symbiotic and there are very few of the ilk who works stories without sources, a majority of these being PR contacts and Corporate Communicators. What I dislike is most journalists trying to knock PR people, this snobbery is plain hypocrisy and stinks of large egos and as much as some of the PR ilk, zero brains or business or industry knowledge.
Case in point; look at Gujarat and TOI; you get them, they get you back and that is how the game is played, so why cry foul, when the hunted turn the hunters. Both the Police and the Media have started to display mafia traits.
On Jun 4, 2008, Palin Ningthoujam said:
A lot of the journalist requests can be attended to at the PR agency level. This saves time for the CEO. Plus he doesn’t have much time to attend to media queries. For quick turnarounds, PR agencies and corporate comm depts have been set up in the first place. Of course, CEOs can attend to all the social calls he receives from media friends or whatever or to satisfy some egos, but when it comes to work, my clients CEOs have been forwarding me all media queries.
Also the time has now come when the corp comm decides what the CEO can or should say. I have seen such scenarios in many MNCs and Indian companies that are my clients. Corp comm people are no longer just running around with press releases but play the board room part in planning a product launch or building an annual corporate strategy. I have seen many like this as well among my clients.
Would love to hear what others say.
On Jun 5, 2008, Renu Kakkar said:
Himangshu : Agreed that often creation is thankless job but would like to stress from personal experience tht more often than not its so very rewarding. where is the fun being the moon when you can be the sun :-). Also if the post held your interest to the end lines..would like to hear any updated comments.Given a choice today, Id definitely go for creating than commenting.
Shael : “News” has become our daily “fix” and commentators are milching the cow. Its the era of feature writers , commentators and profilers who based on information feed are used as compaign spearheads… but its really got nothing to do with “journalism”! If that statement is too difficult to beleive today , one can only take heart in the fact that it will not stay in the guise of journalism as the news industry matures. Media behemoths can be neutralised.it takes a strong strategist and on ground activism by a person with his ear to the ground to do so. I like to refer to it as Surround Sound
Palin : No PR agency can have a quick turnaround time unless the questions asked fall into the pre-prepared Q&A sheet discussed, finalised and pre approved by the management. A well drafted and researched Communication Policy will include a spokesperson list and the type of press queries they speak on/ are quoted on. The CEO is the main spokesperson of a company but cannot be and should not be the only one.These spokespersons including the CEO need to be media trained on a regular basis so that s/he understands the implications and learns to control response. As for your point about corp com being on board level, its true for a few lucky few…for the rest .”I wish” ..its stay an euphemism to say Corporate Communications has reached the Top Management table across industries. Not when half are still reporting in to Marketing, a portion to HRD and the rest are called Marketing Communications!
On Jun 5, 2008, Palin Ningthoujam said:
Exactly my point, Renu. There are other spokespersons that the corp comm or PR agency can reach out to depending on the need of the journalist, and get the questions answered. So who is the better contact.
PR people joining board room talks might be few, but it is definitely a huge step forward for the industry. Today most of the corp comm people go from agency backgrounds and this is what I think is making the big difference. What’s wrong with corp comm reporting to marketing…
On Jun 5, 2008, Palin Ningthoujam said:
Another thing I notice is that our office gets over two dozen interview and information requests from journalists, verbal and written, everyday. Little hard to believe PR is still so insignificant.
On Jun 5, 2008, Renu Kakkar said:
Everything ! but then I could be wrong . I often am! Yes its a topic for yet another blog entry but in one line Communications is not a LINE function, it cannot be handed over to a department to run, It’s a corporate value at par with business ethics. Invite you to read what I wrote for ET last year
http://economictimes.indiatime.....127853.cms
On Jun 5, 2008, himanshu kapadia said:
agree with you renu, yes i did read the whole and a poem which i just wrote fyi
A New Search
By Himanshu Kapadia
Moon is searching the sun
Stars are searching the night
Mirror is searching the reflection
Rainbow is searching its illusion
Touch is searching the hand
A tear is searching an eye
Eagles are searching the flight
Horizons searching the sight
Tomorrow searching today
Soul searching for a bay
Answers are searching questions
Death is searching life
—————x————–
we are searching for pegs
jounalists are seaching breaks
himanshu
On Jun 5, 2008, Renu Kakkar said:
Nice poem Himanshu and Luckily and in your last two lines is the answer to Palin’s second comment..
so here goes Palin …
PR is certainly not insignificant..absolutely not…Does your agency also get disgruntled journalists calls to complain on why a certain story appeared wondering whether you handed out the exclusive to a competitor? Often you may find that 1. Agency did not hand over the exclusive. 2. Agency did not know about the story at all and 3. the corp com of your client who Agency calls next is also as helpless about it. The reason is - the smart journo who wrote the story took it from the horses mouth directly!..and thats a break which needs no positioning and no peg!
I will give you an example from a recent instance at IPL on exact same issue. A sports editor, an old friend of mine, and a solid pro, lets call him X, published an interview with a player on the day of a crucial match. Another sports editor, also a pro, lets call him Y, also wanted the same thing but was working through the corp com and PR agency was furious to see X’s interview come out. Now X’s story chain did not involve the PR Agency or Corp COm and in Y’s story chain corp com and PR agency were the main links. The agency was working on a guideline..no interview on match day which is a logic Y was given ..but guess what! X knew nothing of this guideline as he was bypassing both. So Y escalated it to me and one got him what he wanted despite a pretty tight schedule. My logic was Y could have also tried his luck directly with player too - an option he did not exercise because he was waiting for the PR agency and corp com to connect him and was told way too late of the rule.
On Jun 5, 2008, Palin Ningthoujam said:
I am liking this thread. I think PR is both a line function and a management function both. Mkt comms and corp comms. That’s the way it has been working depending on different requirements.
On the second topic, what smart PR professionals do is, as part of the standard comm flow, intentionally keep their spokespersons in reach of some top journalists to give out exclusive stories like that.
On Jun 29, 2008, Msn said:
Another thing I notice is that our office gets over two dozen interview and information requests from journalists, verbal and written, everyday. Little hard to believe PR is still so insignificant.