DWPub Sporadic

Raising the debate on PR pollution

The issue of journalists being bombarded by irrelevant material is not a new one, I remember 100 press releases a day landing on one newsdesk I worked on - and they were paper. That was a big pile of dead trees every day.

But the ease of distributing press material online is causing this issue to get more serious (Mark Borkowski asked if it could be 'the new chlamydia') and as a consequence there is evidience journalists are beginning to block certain senders. Which is no good for anybody, least of all a balanced media. That's why I'm supporting Realwire's 'An Inconvenient PR Truth' campaign. I'm aware the campaign could be percieved as a little patronising but I'm behind it because it is a genuine attempt to lift the debate from the occasional journalist gripe to a decent industry discussion on the matter.

What really grabbed my interest was the research behind the campaign. It found that although journalists believe about 75 per cent of stuff sent to them is irrelevant, the consensus among them was that 50 per cent irrelevance would be acceptable. If that is the case, PR professionals don't have to reinvent what they do, it's just a matter of being a bit more precise.

SourceThatJob takes a stand over exploitation

[Update: also see my podcast on internship exploitation]

You might be familiar with our media job site, SourceThatJob, which has been running for some years and has a loyal following.

I guess it's not surprising given the state of the economy, but in the last year or so there has been an increase in the number of 'internships' being offered in the media, many of these advertised on SourceThatJob. These positions are almost always unpaid and often run for long periods - three to six months - and are sometimes open-ended.

We had some feedback about this trend from journalists, so I took a closer look at it.

There is a need for young, inexperienced journalists to gain work experience, but there is also a serious risk of what the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) warns against - 'bogus' work experience 'used by employers to get work done for free'. That's a simplification of a complex issue which is potentially damaging in a number of ways, check out the NUJ 'Work Experience?' campaign for full details.

SourceThatJob is run by media people and is part of our family of media services, including Response Source, FeaturesExec and SourceWire. I was concerned that the site should represent the best interests of its audience, primarily journalists and PR professionals. So we've decided that from now on we will only include paid positions on SourceThatJob.

The downside to this decision of course is that we won't be able to advertise real work experience opportunites (see here for the NUJ guidelines on work experience). That's a real shame.

This policy may cost us in terms of revenue, but I think it's the right thing to do until the media industry can find a way to deal with the risk of work experience exploitation.