Dealing with the media

Abstract

Public Relations (PR) people are important players in what amounts to an information marketplace, and journalists are another group of players. They have to trade with each other — even if in most countries no actual money changes hands — and each wants something out of the bargain. PR people want the best possible coverage for their organizations, and journalists want a supply of the best quality news. These two desires are frequently in conflict. PR people often want coverage for things which the media do not deem newsworthy — if, for example, every new product received the kind of coverage in the media that PR people seek then we would read and hear about little else! On the other hand, what journalists reckon to be newsworthy is often exactly what PR people want to suppress or minimize: “bad news,” stories about arguments, problems and even disasters.