I recently shared coffee with a public relations colleague who asked me if we still pitch stories and try to get our news into the local media. I would have thought it a strange question if I hadn’t already been experiencing the decline of news releases, news conferences, and basic story pitching.
In Syracuse, our local newspaper has declined to only handful of printed copies per week. Its online presence is greater but lack of sufficient editorial coverage and time makes stories thin, and at times, inaccurate.
What’s more, reporters don’t seem to respond to pitches anymore, and when they do, the stories rarely include the depth of information we want them to. So I was curious to read the New York Times’ take on politicians’ actions to get the word out instead of basic media relations.
The editorial points out how easy it is to create and distribute your message. I feel this is the future wave for public relations, as well. We can now develop our own content and disseminate it, if not better than our local and national media. But, at what cost? Where is the credibility if we send the message directly to the masses? The media has long been the watchdog, questioning big business and government and asking the tough questions. It will be incumbent upon them to continue to do so, even if the message is generated elsewhere.