But of course there is no guarantee and we shouldn’t think that just because news rooms have contracted that this gives PR an opportunity to spin more content. Quite the opposite in fact and more fool any PR practitioner that thinks otherwise.”
Peter Witts: “Beyond the unfortunate reality that there will be job losses from the consolidation of the media industry in Australia, the more astonishing fact about the recent events is that it took so long for it to happen in the Australian industry. Given that the internet phenomenon is global, it is fascinating and perhaps strange that a trend which emerged in the US and Europe more than five years ago ‐ ie news moving to digital platforms ‐ only really bit hard here in the past six months. I recall, in a former life, telling my US PR colleagues for year after year that the media players who really mattered in this country still worked mostly in print. The US guys were amazed by this as they saw THEIR journalist contacts‐print publications going to digital on masse as early as 2002. So, given that this is the case, the question is...why? Personally I believe it's about the lack of competition in the media industry. This fosters slow decision making and margins which are ultimately unsustainable ‐ particularly when a massively disruptive technology comes along to spoil the party. I also note that the clever print organisations in the US such as the NYT, are actually managing to succeed in the print and digital worlds...” As to the second question, the impact on the PR industry, and the possibility of reporters moving into PR, Graham White has this to say:
Graham White: “Good PR people have a raft of skills ranging from the craft, to interpersonal skills, to client relationship skills (external and internal), to their ability to handle pressure, to creativity, and so the list goes on. People often ask me the question – do reporters make the transition to PR. The answer is yes and no, but that would be the case regardless of which industry you are moving away from. The real answer depends on some of the skills just mentioned. But you definitely see reporters make transitions to in‐house press teams and into the political arena – they have a range of skills that PR definitely benefits from. But agency life is quite different from in‐house positions and has been a tougher transition for some reporters. But there are good examples as well. Agency life brings different skills, such as strong business development and client relationship skills. At the end of the day, there are a lot of variables in hiring and you judge every candidate based on their experience and their potential. I’ve heard that due to the volume of retrenchments currently underway at Fairfax may mean a number of them will consider PR as a future career. If that happens, that’s great for the PR industry as I’m sure there are some very talented individuals that would transition to PR, in‐house or agency, extremely well. The PR industry's job is to influence and change behaviour of people ‐ consumers, business folk and other stakeholders. Often this can be achieved without media coverage, and that is the impact that digital and social media is having on the traditional media and is another contributing factor that is disrupting business models. A real problem for the PR industry is that it thinks, or other people think, our job is just media coverage. The truth is that it's just a sub‐set of PR. Whilst the media landscape is going through major change, our industry has to evolve and continue to address the marketing and business needs of the organization(s) it is supporting. Some if the time that will be via media relations, but increasingly it will be direct to the target audience, via social, via web, via face to face and so the list goes on."