A PR Guy Becomes a Reporter for a Day

Today, if for one day only, I stepped over the border. As I kept my PR hat on, I added another that read "citizen journalist." It was an exhilarating and, at the same time, extremely educational experience. I glimpsed with my own eyes the future of the new world journalism and, with it, the future of PR.

On May 13, 2004 Micro Persuasion became a living laboratory for participatory journalism. I touched first-hand what I know is happening - tech-savvy citizens with easy-to-use publishing tools can influence public opinion.

Very early this morning I posted an email interview I conducted with Jason McCabe Calacanis. The Q&A contained a few juicy quotes detailing Jason's opinions about the future of the blogosphere. Soon, word spread thanks to a link from Jason himself, as well as from Tom Mangan at Prints the Chaff, the Blog Herald and others. My traffic began to build.

Over my morning coffee, before diving into client work, I quickly played with the new Google Groups beta. I discovered that each Usenet group now has it's own Atom XML feed. A quick Feedster search (thank you, Betsy) revealed that this had not yet been reported/blogged.

I knew this might be significant. There is an ongoing standards debate on the merits of Atom vs. RSS, with Google backing Atom. Was it huge breaking news in the scheme of American soldiers dying in Iraq? No, of course not. However, I did know that it would intrigue those who follow technology closely.

I posted a short item on my blog mid morning Eastern time. Dan Gillmor blogged it and soon did many others, led by BoingBoing and Chirs Pirillo. As of this writing (7:30 p.m. Eastern) some 1,000 visitors have passed through this Web site and read that Google now offers Usenet Atom feeds or saw what Jason had to say about celebrity blogs. That may not be much to many bloggers, but it sure was a lot to me. Behold, Micro Persuasion - at least for one day - became a news medium.

Now imagine in three years there are 5 or 10 million other Steve Rubels in the world dedicated to writing blogs. The difference is: 1) blogs are now mostly entirely ad-supported, giving authors an incentive to build traffic, and 2) blogs have gone more mainstream covering every interest under the sun, from sports and family to restaurants and local news (e.g. not just technology and politics).

Let's say on any given day 100 of them report real news that the mass media begin to link to/follow. Can you imagine the ramifications on the PR industry?

Let's say you are the PR manager for a sports team. Blog A "reports" (with uncorroborated facts) that one of your players is retiring. The news soon spreads like wildfire into the mainstream media. What's your plan to combat this falsity?

Or, let's say your client is a major fashion designer. You want to make a big splash about a new line of swim wear that makes everyone look 10 pounds thinner (remember, this is meant to be forward looking!). Do you issue the press release on PR Newswire or offer WWD an exclusive? Or, perhaps do you instead send a quick note to a fashion blogger with a super-sized Technorati profile.

This is where I sensed PR is heading and my experiences today only confirmed this feeling. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts here as well. Do you feel participatory journalism is really big or is it something that somehow will not quite be as important as I feel it will be?

Comments

[Tom]

I've begun to think about contacting bloggers about press announcements because of the speed to market. While many mainstream magazines do have web presences, they're not updated as regularly as a blog is. Bloggers are looking for news, and when it is handed to them, they are generally more than happy to post about it - as long as it fits within the scope of their site. One should expect that an established blogger would be just as likely to write an honest review of a swimsuit or position the other side of the baseball team's argument, as your examples describe. My thoughts on this are staying consistent - bloggers don't *replace* your usual distributions of announcements, but they can enhance them.

[tom mangan]

m-a-n-g-a-n.

[Steve Rubel]

Tom, made the fix. Apologies. - Steve