Seat at the Table

Perhaps there’s no beginning or end to the old media model. Rather, just a constantly evolving media ecosystem.

Radio did not kill print, television did not kill radio, the Internet did not kill television and the blogosphere is not going to kill off the first half of this sentence. They all feed of each other in an ecosystem that extends from my personal blog, to search engine results, to the international reach of News Corp.

Despite pundits proclaiming otherwise, the so called old media will remain one of the most potent sources of influence. However, it will also be a smaller part of a much larger system that includes conversational mediums such as bloggers and portals, information mediums such as search engines and social interaction such as social networks and buzz marketing networks. If anything, it’s likely that large media companies will not only adapt to this larger ecosystem (as Richard Edelman outlines with some clear examples), but continue acquire a substantial part of it. In the meantime, as Marc Babej points out, media companies are still doing quite well with old media. Their party may be over someday, but it’s not today.

So as the evolution progresses, what skill sets do PR professionals need and what should companies be looking for in PR agencies?

First and foremost, the old media skill sets (media relations, analyst relations etc) are still critical and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Beware professionals that claim otherwise. Consumers still watch the news and read their daily newspaper; executives do the same while also listening to trade media and industry analysts. While there is a growing influential audience getting information directly from new sources such as the blogosphere, it is still just that – influencers and not the masses. But that’s the key role blogs continue to play.

That means that professionals and agencies need fundamental understanding of how the whole media ecosystem works and feeds off itself. The PR profession needs to understand how people use search engines to gather information (I’m still astounded at how few PR professional make search engine optimization and keyword advertising a part of their offering), how journalists read blogs, how blogs connect to each other to steer readers through a conversation, and how the larger part of the public still gathers their information.

So far, I’ve found the average PR professional has a strong understanding of basic reporting media (print, broadcast, etc), a very basic understanding of conversational media such as blogs and discussion groups, and almost no understanding of information media such as search engines. I find this somewhat ironic as these same professionals often use search engines the most, read blogs throughout the day, and read the paper only once a day.

That said, I think this is a temporary problem and one that will have to be solved. With the media ecosystem becoming far larger and more complex, there will be a greater demand for PR professionals that can provide proper counsel.