PR Studies

Prediction: 2010 will be the year of the blog

You might think I'm five years behind the times, but the impact of technology is not linear, nor is it always predictable.

The Economist tells how commentators predicted in the 1840s that the telegraph would challenge newspapers. Instead, faster transmittal of news led to the era of the great newspapers.

Today, newspapers face bankruptcy. As The Economist article concludes:

The internet may kill newspapers; but it is not clear if that matters. For society, what matters is that people should have access to news, not that it should be delivered through any particular medium.

So we don't have a crisis of news; we have a crisis of news distribution and the need for a viable business model.

Here's my thinking about blogs. The first phase, championed by Blogger, Typepad and others enabled easy personal publishing. Yet growth in and buzz around personal blogs slowed as first social networks (like Facebook) and then microblogging (Twitter) satisfied most people's needs for expression and interaction.

Blogging hasn't gone away, but it has become less visible as the early adopters have been exploring new new tools. Yet quietly, this personal publishing platform has been developing into professional publishing. Open-source WordPress has been leading the way in this, as personal blogs give way to group blogs and sophisticated content management systems.

This development should not be surprising as it has a precedent. Newspapers emerged from the explosion of pamphlets enabled by the printing press (a disruptive technology in its day). At first, these pamphlets were personal and amateurish; in time, they became more professional and evolved into the newspapers whose names we're still familiar with.

So, in predicting that 2010 will be the year of the blog, it's not personal, amateur blogs that I have in mind. It's well-researched, professional blogs in specialist niches such as politics and business. The UK general election campaign will provide a local boost to the political blogs, and the challenge of the recession will boost the adoption of low-cost approaches to marketing and communications.

There's another factor in this trend. For many individuals, social networks and Twitter are alternatives to blogging. For the more professional bloggers, these networks provide valuable 'push' channels for attracting readers and encouraging the creation of communities of interest.

We've long been familiar with the role of the public relations practitioner as content creator. There's work here for those who are far-sighted enough to establish strategies and rationales for blogging engagement along with robust systems for writing, editing and moderation, while avoiding the obvious pitfalls of ghost-writing and the constant conflict between transparency and disclosure.

Then there's the emergence of a new role: the public relations practitioner as community engagement manager (with a blog one possible hub for the community).

Is WordPress the future of the printing press?

Today's Media Guardian tells of a magazine run by enterprising journalism students at Goldsmiths, University of London.

It's WordPress-based publication EastLondonLines. 

The students are 'to build an audience from scratch, market it, make it attractive to advertisers and make contact with ... potential sources of revenue.'

It's clearly an active site with an emphasis on breaking news, as you'd expect from journalism students.

Our effort at student magazine journalism is much less news-driven, but this article vindicates my decision to create a WordPress-based niche magazine, Behind the Spin, two years ago.

I've had some interest in the vacancies on this magazine and will be announcing who has been appointed very soon.

Build a network, not a company

In discussing the future of newspapers, Jeff Jarvis makes an articulate case for a new business model for the post-industrial economy:

"When you think of news instead as the province of an ecosystem that is distributed and owned at the edges by many players operating under many means, motives, and models, then the notion of contribution, ownership, and control changes. People own their own stakes but they benefit by joining together cooperatively. They create a tide upon which all their ships rise. That’s a network, not a company."

Among the comments, someone points out that this is idealistic. Yet Jarvis cites some thriving examples of the community model (Wikipedia, Craigslist) and idealism begins to look realistic once all other avenues have been explored.

Apart from the importance of news channels to public relations, there are wider implications here too. It's possible to see public relations in a community engagement role; its purpose being legitimacy and licence to operate over the longer term rather than short-term profits.

You only spin when you're winning

It's a potent criticism of public relations. That we shout loud when there's good news to tell, but go very quiet when there's nothing new to say. Kevin Moloney calls it 'hemispheric communications' because the PR sun only shines on one side of the globe.

There are new updates to Behind the Spin, focused around the themes of consultancy and technology (as well as the usual advice for students and graduates).

Our cover picture illustrates a PR consultancy in Second Life.

That was something worth shouting about in 2006; but what's happening now?

I can't blame the consultants for treating Second Life (and other social spaces) as a playground - nor even for shouting about this - since how else can they attract and advise clients?

But I'm left wondering what happened next.

It's about knowledge, not format

John Naughton retells the story of some great encyclopedias in The Observer. The rise of and fall of Britannica, then Encarta and the present debates over Wikipedia.

The debate is only partly about accuracy of content; it's also about suitability of format. For centuries, books were the only suitable format for a comprehensive encyclopedia. For a few short years (the Encarta age), CD-ROM publishing seemed to be the future. Now we know that it was replaced by the web.

"Of course Wikipedia has flaws, of course it has errors: show me something that doesn't. Of course it suffers from vandalism and nutters who contribute stuff to it. But instead of complaining about errors, academics ought to be in there fixing them."

Good times for PR Week

Those who can remember the 'PR Weak' taunts of a previous satirical blog and the welcome given to PR Business, a short-lived competitor, should acknowledge the recent improvements to our weekly trade paper.

Here are some of them. The industry sector focus (on technology, healthcare etc) - though the paper still has a blind spot when it comes to education and training; the improved features (there's a grown-up debate on the future of PR in the current issue); the weekly interview-based profile of a prominent practitioner; the availability of news via RSS; but above all the recent news scoops around the 10 Downing Street communications team. This has culminated in a piece by editor Danny Rogers in today's Media Guardian.

Magazine 2.0

Now, after a short hiatus, we're publishing Behind the Spin magazine. Please take a look, leave a comment, help spread the word - and consider writing for us. There's a forward features list and the online format means we can update more frequently than this. I'm also keen to appoint a news editor.

Print isn't dead. (We aim to produce an annual print publication derived from the best of the online magazine.) But the WordPress magazine format we've chosen ('blogazine') has the advantage of speed, reduced costs, global reach, automatic archiving and Google indexing for authors' names and keywords. The format also allows for an ongoing discussion that was never possible in an infrequent magazine.

I'd welcome your ideas (a good suggestion I've received is to establish a network of international contributors). We can get bigger and better but that we've made this start is entirely thanks to a team of volunteers: writers, photographers, editors and, above all, our website developer Simon Wakeman.

Putting blogs in their place

When blogging first became popular (2003 was the point of take off and by 2006 bloggers had become Time's person of the year) the fear was that the public sphere would be swamped by trivial, undigested, self-obsessed rantings.

Compared to newspaper or magazine journalism, blogs seemed ill-considered, ill-informed and unaccountable. What was the point of all this chatter?

That was then. We were comparing blogs with what we'd previously known: print journalism. Now, there's a more favourable comparison. Compared to the semi-public (and barely literate) conversations on social media sites like Facebook (2007's 'new new thing') blogs seem considered, valuable and highly literate. The froth has gone, but there's something substantial left. Yet rather than being too quick and easy, the criticism now comes from those who find the process of blogging too ponderous, too dull and without an immediate feedback loop.

It's time to take a fresh look at where blogging stands in the publishing ecosystem, first in terms of 'immediacy' and 'interactivity'. Click to enlarge image.

Next, let's look at different means of communication in terms of 'speed' and 'reflectiveness' (a measure of how considered the communications is).

I think this places blogging in a unique position in terms of combining speed with a high degree of reflection. (This rare combination has also been the strength of the traditional diary, reflecting on recent events on a daily basis. Does anyone keep diaries today?)

Behind the Spin: call for contributions

Issue 18 of the UK's 'public relations magazine for students and young practitioners', to be published in March 2008, will have two main themes:

• Public Affairs (eg lobbying, political PR, issues management)
• PR for transport (bicycles, cars, planes, trains, space rockets etc)

Proposals to write articles on these themes are welcome now. We also welcome articles on perennial themes such as careers in PR and the value of a PR degree. As well as writers, I'm looking for photographers and editorial assistants.

You can contact me (the editor) via the comment box or by email r[dot]s[dot]bailey[at]leedsmet[dot]ac[dot]uk or through the email link on the right.

The food issue

Food is nutritional, fashionable, cultural and political. It's also big business.

Now that issue 16 of Behind the Spin (the environmental issue) has been published, we're looking for ideas for issue 17 of the public relations magazine for students and young practitioners. You could write about:

• Campaigns (eg Jamie Oliver and school dinners)
• Organisations (eg The Soil Association, Fairtrade)
• Issues (eg obesity)
• Small producers or big retailers
• Celebrity chefs
• Restaurant openings
• Polemics (eg Fast Food Nation, Supersize Me)

That's without mentioning drink. But what are your ideas? Brief proposals are welcome now (copy deadline will be in August). Please send your ideas to John Hitchins or to me.