PR Event: Social Media - The Assassin or Saviour of Traditional Media?

On a night where only the red wine being served was colder than the weather outside, the CIPR Greater London Group brought together a panel to debate the current role of social media in journalism and PR.

Titled as "Social Media - The Assassin or Saviour of Traditional Media?", the panel consisted of:

- Pete Clifton - BBC's Head of Editorial Development and Multi-Media Journalism

- Shane Richmond - Communities Editor of Telegraph.co.uk.

- Stephen Davies - Webitpr, Social Media and PR blogger at prblogger.com


The Facebook event page, where most people found out about the event, introduced the night as follows:

"The rise of Social Media, whether it be blogging, social networks or YouTube has created a new generation of consumer content creators.

Individuals now have tools to publish and broadcast their views on your organisation, brand or industry and potentially reach an audience of millions with the simple click of a mouse.

As the content creation generation matures, what are the implications for traditional media? Will today’s news organisations whether in print, TV or online survive and more importantly retain their authority and influence? How are media outlets adapting to the rise in ‘citizen journalism’ and reaching out to the public to help create the news?

Above all, what are the implications of Social Media for the symbiotic relationship between the media and PR industry that has endured for so long?"

The event was centred around three questions that were sent into the Facebook event page. Below are the key points that I took away from the event, structured around those questions:

1. Are the days of traditional journalism numbered?

• The traditional journalism on offer is changing and will embrace the services that are on offer, e.g. Facebook, Twitter et al
• There is still alot of value in expert commentary and analysis from traditional journalists and it is a service that journalism will continue to offer
• Traditional media channels cannot be inward looking - they must link out to other sites, e.g. YouTube, blogs, etc
• On the other hands, these online services are becoming valuable to traditional media for pictures, videos, case studies, etc
• Ulitmately, people don't want for tomorrow's paper to arrive, which means that news publications now have rolling deadlines
• Any embagroes on press releases now become redundant - a 6 hour embargo might as well be 6 months
• PRs are being pushed into social media rather than embracing it
• Stephen pointed out that an advertising company has been reaching out to bloggers, even though the online PR community has been claiming this space as their own
• Emily Bell of The Guardian has said that 50% of the website's traffic comes from articles over a year old
• This has led to a realisation that what aoppears online will stick around for much longer than in print

2. Does social media have the potential to restore trust in traditional journalism?

• Stephen thinks it can't, but it should come at the issue of trust from a different angle
• Social media builds a link between the public to traditional media
• Social media helps the public to think about journalism's accuracy and reliability
• Traditional journalism has taken a while to build a relationship with its community, but now has a good relationship with its audience
• At the core of this relationship is a trust in traditional media that has always strived to be impartial and balanced
• Before the internet, trust was taken for granted by traditional journalism
  
• Blogs have brought the idea of transparency into the media, as editor's now blog about their editorial decisions, whether people agree with them or not
• Ultimately, good journalists still use good journalism skills, sourcing solid information, checking their facts and finding the newsworthy angle, no matter where they get their information from
• Blogging is about being transparent - the ones that are highly influential and widely read are the ones that are most open and transparent

3. Is the press release dead? Should it be used when contacting bloggers?

• The press release is generally dying a bit
• The principles of PR are the same, there are just different ways of doing it now
• When approaching bloggers, PRs must individualise their approach and think "What can I give them that will create value for them?"
• We need to be more flexible with the term 'citizen journalist' - obviously you wouldn't go to a citizen dentist
• Indeed, someone in the top 100 most influential bloggers is to all intents and purposes a journalist
  

Post event, it was good to finally meet Stephen (@stedavies) in person and had a good chat with Amanda Rose (@amandita). There were also a curiosu assortment of canapes doing the rounds, a sort of petit anglaise chique cuisine, including mini-hamburgers, mini-fish & chips, and mini-bangers and mash (obviously Stephen's favourite by the way he slurped them down on one!).

On another note, the Property PR sector must be booming as the room seemed to be packed with Property PR people and in-house PRs at estate agents - luckily the debate still managed to steer clear of falling house prices.

Also, and alot of the other people at the event told said the same thing to me, the CIPR needs to sort out the way people pay for these events. £20 is a bit steap and why am I sending someone a cheque when some kind of online booking system could be setup? how about using eventbrite.com, as suggested by Amanda?

Overall, this was a very good event with interesting and insightful speakers. Apparently, this is the third year in the row that an event on this subject had taken place - I'm looking forward to next year's already!