Media Catching and the Journalist–Public Relations Practitioner Relationship: How Social Media are Changing the Practice of Media Relations

Abstract

With the changing media environment and the evolving online atmosphere, traditional media relations strategies (e.g., news release and media kit preparation and distribution) are shifting to practices that are more relevant to a social media environment. The purpose of this article is to define the changing interplay between journalists and public relations practitioners and to analyze the phenomenon of “media catching,” a reversal of the traditional media relations' communication patterns. Given its rapid increase in the past 2 years, journalists are eager to turn the tables and target large numbers of public relations practitioners for specific content for story ideas. The researchers employed content analysis, and the units of analysis were 3,106 reporter requests sent through the Help-A-Reporter-Out (HARO) list and media-related Twitter updates from HARO founder, Peter Shankman, during a 6-month span. Analysis revealed that traditional news outlets more often used the Twitter venue, yet new media outlets preferred the LISTSERV technology. The importance and value of this study for public relations practitioners and scholars are in the study's attempt to profile the trend of media catching, and to discuss the importance of fielding media requests from a variety of news outlets because of the importance of intermedia agenda setting.