We have clients and employers (who pay us) and ‘customers’ (who don’t). Our customers are the media: reporters, journalists, editors and publishers who decide our fate; if they use the material we offer them, our clients and employers will be pleased. If not, we will face a competitive review or a career appraisal sooner or later.
We all know that PR professionals perform a host of services which are nothing to do with the media. But most of us, most of the time, devote 60 per cent of our working hours to media engagement … writing material and trying to place it in media outlets which will make a difference to our clients’ or employers’ success.
Ten years ago there were 70,000 people working in the UK media and 30,000 of us. Now there are 23,000 employed in the media and 86,000 of us. Nick Davies has calculated that over 90 per cent of the material on TV, radio and mainstream news brands comes from PR departments and agencies (Davies, 2008).
Some of the people working in PR used to work in the media. The most eminent example is probably Colin Byrne, who retired from Weber Shandwick in March 2018. The least eminent is probably myself, who worked on the UK’s first freesheet before turning to PR. But both of us, and hundreds of others, had the opportunity to learn the media’s rules and conventions before we switched to public relations.
It matters. If you know how to produce material that complies with the media’s own customs, your hit-rate rises dramatically. The media no longer have time to re-write and call to fill in the gaps. Unless you’re Apple, Google or Trump, it makes sense to get it right first time.
The aim of this PRCA Practice Guide is to help PR people who didn’t work in the media know more about the criteria journalists and editors use when they look at our stories.
The average news desk gets 400 items a day from PR firms and PR departments. One per cent gets used. This hasn’t changed since 1924.