Convince CIPR to Offer Online Event Booking

The CIPR needs to update their event booking process so that people can book online. Amanda Rose has been complaining about this for months, as months is how long it took for the CIPR to cash a cheque from Amanda from an CIPR event that took place over 3 months ago

At the moment, if you want to book an event or training course with CIPR, you must send a physical cheque more than a week in advance, which is a bit rubbish. Does anyone actually own a cheque book anymore?

Amanda has started a petition that says the CIPR should integrate an online booking system for their events, a system such as Eventbrite. It's a friendly jab in the ribs for the CIPR and a quiet word in their ear that recommends them to "Say no to writing cheques and hello to 2008."

CIPR members and PR enthusiasts who like the events and training put on by CIPR, but are embarrassed with the archaic system that is still in place to book, should be the first to sign up. By signing the petition, you are telling CIPR that there is a more efficient to offer ticketing for their events. So what are you waiting for? Sign the petition here!

CIPR release a SMNR

The Social Media News Release (SMNR), derided by some as unecessary, has been given a new lease of life.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) has used WebitPR to promote their upcoming World PR Conference and Festival using a SMNR.

Based upon Todd Defren's original idea, the release has all the normal content of a traditional press release, but also contains images of senior executives, logos, related documents, related websites, tags, a range of social bookmarks, and feeds for other releases and comments.

You can view the Social Media News Release here, and presumably we'll see a lot more companies doing them - unless of course they bypass this angle and setup a social media press office or a blog, which some argue has replaced the need for a SMNR.

PR Event: The Media Accused

On Wednesday night the great and the good of PR and Journalism (and a few 'punters') gathered in the LEWIS Media Centre for the 'The Media Accused' event.

The event was centred around the controversial Flat Earth News author and journalist Nick Davies and a panel of media and PR luminaries, gathered to discuss the (alleged) falling standards in the media and the suggestion this has at worst been brought about, and at best been exploited, by the PR industry.

Here are the biogs of the panel:

Nick Davies, author and journalist - Nick Davies has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year for his investigations into crime, drugs, poverty and other social issues. He writes regularly for the Guardian and also makes TV documentaries; he was formerly an on-screen reporter for World in Action. Nick's latest book Flat Earth News sparked controversy in both the media and PR industries. He joins us tonight to discuss the issues raised.

Jon Bernstein, multimedia editor, Channel 4 News – Jon Bernstein has been with Channel 4 since 2005 when he joined to establish the broadcaster's FactCheck website, set up in the run-up to the UK general election to 'sniff out' political spin. Prior to joining Channel 4, Jon was editor-in-chief of the UK government's DirectGov website as well as being a founding editor of IT news service silicon.com.

Elisabeth Lewis-Jones, president Chartered Institute of Public Relations - Elisabeth Lewis-Jones has 15 years’ experience working both in-house and in consultancy. Elisabeth is a former CIPR Young Communicator of the Year and chair of the CIPR in the Midlands.

Danny Rogers, editor PR Week - Danny Rogers has been editor of the PR industry's bible for three years but has been a leading media and marketing journalist for almost a decade. Danny has been a contributing editor to the Financial Times and Media Guardian, as well as deputy editor for Marketing magazine.

Will Sturgeon, Associate Director of Lewis PR opened the event with a tale of a Jaffa Cake shaped like David Beckham, the point being that this was a bad PR stunt that exploited the press to gain the client press coverage (See Will's take on the event here).

Will then left the floor to let Nick explain the basic concept of his book, creating a background to the debate and also allowing him to plug the book fully before the rest of the panel joined him.

Nick Davies has just bet the audience that the story of the Jersey school is going to turn out to be mostly false. This was due to PR and journalists working together to amplify the story, which started out as something small with little evidence into a much bigger scandal and subsequent newspaper coverage.

The media has become increasingly vulnerable to being manipulated by PR. The change in ownership structure means that all types of media are geared twards profit. Thus, editorial staff have been stripped, forcing juornalist's to cover 3 times the amount of content as previously. Therefore 'Churnalists' don't check their stories, Nick says - in fact, it's just 12% that conduct proper fact checking. According to surveys, in 54% of 'home' news stories, the facts themselves were taken from PR.

PR, Nick says, works skillfully to exploit "the inherent, pathetic structural weaknesses of the way Fleet Street works" (targeted mainly towards Hill & Knowlton, who Davies is not worried about naming and shaming). PR is a manipulative profession, but he admits that PRs are clever and desrve their money!

Nick Davies asks, "Why are we running a flaming torch around the world?" Is it because we need to get the torch around the world easily? No - it's a PR artifice, but one that protest groups will also jump on the back of. The flaming torch becomes a pseudo-event generated by groups to create their own PR.

This is all part of the "structurally vulnerable media" that has made the "PR industry big and skillful". "There is a toxic chemistry at work here," Nick says.

Jon Bernstein, multimedia editor of Channel 4 is challenging the fact in Flat Earth News and journalists are filling three times more space than they did 20 years ago. He says that "It's questionable to come up with figures on editorial numbers" and that the numbers are exaggerated and not as important as Nick thinks.

Danny Rogers argues that we will have a healthy media if journalists and PRs are professional in their practises. He ponits out the irony that Nick Davies is a great PR man - he publishes his book on a Sunday, creates many events to promote his book etc, and therefore the difference between journalists and PRs is not as defintie as Nick says it is.

As a retort, Nick asks "How vulnerable do journalists have to be to fall for a PR campaign about a book that criticises them?"

Nick Davies:

"Good journalism in this country is not dead. It's just very sick."

"Our press is disappearing into a commercial black hole, and I can't see a solution."

That ended the debate, and the panel turned to answer questions from the audience.

One question raised was whether this book and the events surrounding its publication was a sign of the times that PR has become the story. The answer from Nick was short - No, because part of PR is that it tries to be invisible.

The debate ended with Nick Davies proposing a "Shadow Newsroom", where the media would be forced to publish what percentage of their stories are unreliable in a similar way that food packaging now has to carry nutrional percentages.

For example, the BBC News would go like this:

"Good evening, this is the BBc 6 O' Clock News, where 54% of our stories are unreliable."

It's a great idea and gets a laugh form the audience, but Nick concedes that it would need a lot of money and a government with the courage tio implement it before it would happen.

In a related event that took place at the University of Westminster last week and debated the very same book and ideas, The Guardian journalist Roy Greenslade wrote a follow-up article post titled "Rethinking the Journalsim-PR Divide", Roy Greenslade admitted he was having a change of heart on the debate:

"Ever since last week's debate about the successful grip of PR (see here and here) I've been having revisionist thoughts. I aired them yesterday in my London Evening Standard column yesterday.

I was particularly impressed by a study conducted by Metrica, a media analysis and evaluation company, that showed the growing effectiveness of PR in spite of its practitioners operating within an increasingly fractured media landscape. At first glance, this looks very worrying indeed. At second glance, however, it may be altogether less worrying than we think."

All very interesting, especially when Greenslade recognises of the irony that much of his article was informed from a PR briefing. By the end he was beginning to doubt the extent of the divide between journalists and PR.

Flat Earth News is an interesting book that has given rise to a number of extremely interesting debates. I've got my copy so will be making my decision on the current state of play soon. Perhaps, as Greenslade does, I'll end up thinking we're all in the same boat together. Now all we have to do is to figure out how to stop it sinking.

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!

The CIPR drafts its London Manifesto

The CIPR has just issued its draft London Manifesto, which is what they hope they’ll be saying on the 24^th June 2008 following the World Public Relations Conference and Festival.

Elisabeth Lewis-Jones, President of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and Director of Liquid Public Relations, invites readers of PR Voice to let her know what they think and join in the debate. There have been no comments left so far, so hopefully she'll get more feedback before submitting the final manifesto.

The draft manifesto is as follows:

'Our conference has illustrated that public relations, where practiced professionally, is a force for good.

At its best public relations, unlike other forms of marketing communications, is interactive: by facilitating communication between organisations, in whatever sector, and their customers and clients, the practice of public relations creates bonds between peoples.

Public relations practitioners respect diversity and help minorities access public and other services.

Public relations and public affairs practitioners encourage understanding and access to government and can give a voice to those who would otherwise not be heard.

Our vision of public relations can function fully only in democratic societies that respect human rights. It is thus a key role of all who work in public relations to respect and to promote structures of government that are truly democratic.

Public relations skills must not therefore be the preserve of big organisations: those techniques and skills can be understood and available to all. They do, of course, need to be progressively honed and include the handling of social media, which are in themselves more interactive.

All these claims have been illustrated during the conference; by case studies that have focused on our role in promoting and giving confidence to countries, regions and cities; in celebrating diversity and social inclusion; and in helping companies and organisations in 'difficult' sectors to communicate their case to the public and to interact with them.

With this focus on acting ethically and professionally practitioners across all areas, whether in consultancy, in-house or independent, have drawn from this conference a greater understanding of the unique roles our profession can play at the business, social and economic level both nationally and internationally.

The values underlying our claims are also inherent in the work done by the public relations associations represented at the conference in our Global Alliance. The lessons of this conference are thus particularly relevant to those who are members of such associations and who are committed to the highest standards.

Let our messages, however, also go to those who are not members of associations working under ethical codes and apparently not so committed to professional standards: so that they can be urged to accept their responsibilities and join in the tasks that we as delegates have accepted.'

The manifesto reads very well, even though it could be considered strange looking back at the results of a conference that hasn't taken place yet.

I take issue with the second paragraph in dismissing the interactivity of other marketing communications, especially in the age of the internet and mobile technology - and I'm sure those from other marketing communications have many more arguments than me against this point.

The manifesto is right to point out the CIPR's aim to 'encourage understanding and access to government.' As a trade organisation, this is a vital remit of the CIPR and presumably why many of its members, especially those from Government facing PR companies, have joined.

The paragraph on the ability of PR to function fully in democratic societies scares me a bit with its echo of American democratic zeal, but I think the point is essentially right, especially the part about human rights. But for a London Manifesto, and the last time I checked London was in a truly democratic society, is this point - at this elevated level - necessary? Perhaps it should manifesto should be titled 'World Public Relations Festival Manifesto'?

I'm obviously not the foremost thinker on issues such as these and I generally like this draft of the manifesto, but what do you guys out there in PR Land think?

Let me know in the comments section!

(Actually, maybe some people should leave comments on the PR Voice blog post, otherwise it might get a bit embarrassing...)