Kinja reply list

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EdnasEdiblesHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 11:24am
I'll out myself as someone who works in PR. I've done corporate PR and hated it - it felt too much like sales. I prefer non-profit PR and have worked in that industry for about 10 years. I have a good relationship with the majority of the journalists I work with. I used to be a journalist so I understand what they're going through for the most part and I understand what they need. I try not to annoy them with stupid pitches. I help them when they need help and I gather research for them and find experts.

The popular culture image for PR is Samantha from Sex & the City or that leather faced woman who plowed her car into a crowd in the Hamptons. Maybe it's different in New York or LA but I've never met anyone like that.
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  Hamilton NolanEdnasEdibles
  6/12/14 11:34am
  Yes, a useful point that should be made about PR is: PR people are as evil as their clients. If you're doing PR for a good cause, there's nothing wrong with that.
  
  However, the very practice of PR, no matter who it's done for, lends itself to lying and twisting the truth, so PR can never be considered a complete form of communication.
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  EdnasEdiblesHamilton Nolan
  6/12/14 11:42am
  "PR people are as evil as their clients." is pretty accurate. I agree with this.
  
  In regards to your second point we have to look at whether true impartiality can ever exist. I am cynical and think that even in journalism, people's preconceived notions about life color what they are writing about. Almost everything is twisted to fit your own inner narrative of the world. There is no complete form of communication. There is no truth.
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destor23Hamilton Nolan
6/12/14 11:21am
I think a lot of PR, and a lot of journalism, is worthy of our mocking scorn. If I could lock Thomas Friedman in a room full of 5WPR people and then shake that room really hard, I would.

However, and I say this as a guilty party, for the most part the urge that journalists have to abuse PR people is, when acted on, a complete failure of character. Most pitches, be they lame or off topic, are better off ignored or, if you want to develop the PR person as a potential source of ideas, politely guided to your interests. The impulse to lash out is rarely really okay. I have done it, by the way, and it was pretty much always lame in retrospect.

As to the charge of sexism — I think there's definite merit to it.
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  Hamilton Nolandestor23
  6/12/14 11:29am
  As to when to mock, some of it comes down to power dynamics. If you're a prominent, powerful journalist, spending a lot of effort mocking Nickel An Hour PR is probably not worth your time. If it's Edelman, it should be mocked in all cases. Etc.
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  The_Recession_is_Overdestor23
  6/12/14 11:34am
  Years ago, when the Wall Street Journal wasn't part of News Corp, and I was a PR account executive, I noticed that one of the biggest differences between WSJ and every other national pub was that their reporters would not only pick up the phone but talk me through a pitch, double check that there was nothing of interest for them in it and then tell me why they weren't interested. By contrast, I would call NYT and time after time reporters would say no almost immediately.
  
  I knew it was a shitty job and I was bing annoying, but it make me respect WSJ immensely. They didn't seem any more likely to actually take a pitch, particularly a bad one, but reporters there had to have been getting better scoops than anywhere else if they weren't letting a bad PR person get in the way of finding a good source.
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Freddie DeBoerHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 11:10am
"Do PR people deserve our sympathy? Yes. Does the PR industry deserve our sympathy? No."

Exactly.
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  EnzanFreddie DeBoer
  6/12/14 11:13am
  They can always reimagine their brand tomorrow anyways.
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  benjaminalloverFreddie DeBoer
  6/12/14 11:21am
  Her argument and Nolan's counterargument could apply to any worker in any inherently problematic industry. Ya, it's just a job and that person isn't in control of the whole machine, but that doesn't absolve them of responsibility or invalidate criticisms of the work they do.
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CapponesHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 11:37am
As a PR person, just based on my relationships with reporters and other PR people, I've always felt like some of the animosity you sometimes find between PR people and reporters stems from some sort of latent jealousy of the opposing career.

Most every PR person I've met didn't grow up wanting to be one— they didn't even know it existed. Myself, for example, I wanted to be a broadcast journalist- my parents said that wasn't realistic and I found PR in my intro to mass comm class in college as a 'realistic' alternative. I've met many other PR people with similar backgrounds, their interest stemmed from wanting to be a journalist themselves and they fell into PR somehow. I think a lot of PR people start out feeling like journalists are fighting the good fight that they aren't, then get disillusioned by seeing how the media really works and how much influence PR has.

Then, on the other side, you have reporters who I find often want to become PR people once they see how hard it is to work in traditional journalism is in our current media market. I've met so many reporters that seem to think PR folks make so much more money than them and have easier jobs, which definitely isn't necessarily the case (although I will admit it can be, not in my case though). Then so many reporters end up joining an agency later or even starting their own— and they immediately have a huge leg up on the competition because of their personal relationships with other reporters, so I think that also adds to the problem, PR people sometimes see reporters as future competition.

Just seems like a negative cycle, PR people & reporters both need each other to survive but both somehow see the other as competing or holding them back from doing their job well. Just my personal two cents.
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  PseudoHermesCappones
  6/12/14 12:12pm
  Yea, I've met a lot of ex-reporters who went PR, and I don't totally understand it. I assume it's just because there are a ton more jobs. But it doesn't sound like they actually have all that much in common in terms of skillset.
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  Gillian HolroydCappones
  6/12/14 12:30pm
  As someone who has freelanced for both media outlets and PR agencies, I'd say you have the most accurate view of the situation.
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howtocompensateHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 1:08pm
In my 7+ years as a journalist, 99% of the PR folks I dealt with were ex-journos who left the biz because PR pays better. And to their credit, most were willing to acknowledge that we (hacks) and they (flacks) were operating at cross-purposes.

Given the current state of journalism, where a lot of "journalism" is just poorly compensated PR work anyway, I imagine this trend will continue apace.
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  batbogeyhexhowtocompensate
  6/17/14 12:37am
  Yeah, I saw a lot of smart capable people leave newspapers because they couldn't feed their families on journalism salaries.
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  howtocompensatebatbogeyhex
  6/17/14 10:01am
  Families?! I could barely feed myself. I was embarrassingly broke during my entire journalistic career. I loved journalism and I'd still be in the trenches if it weren't more lucrative to do ALMOST ANYTHING else.
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opiumsmabytchHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 11:31am
Just wonder about the ego in this field. They sure do love to hear their own voices.

Never go to a beer tasting with marketing/PR people.
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  PseudoHermesopiumsmabytch
  6/12/14 12:27pm
  I go to beer, wine, and spirits tastings with PR people all the time (to be fair, they're the ones organizing them). I am perpetually impressed with their ability to get pretty drunk and stay 100% on their game.
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  opiumsmabytchPseudoHermes
  6/12/14 1:59pm
  That is impressive.
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zombiepandaHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 12:01pm
#NotallPRpeople! But seriously, I work in a position that falls under the umbrella of PR and even I hate most of the shit that comes out of "PR people's" mouths (seriously, if I have to hear one more perky 20-something tell me about their "luxury lifestyle brand", I'm gauging my eyes out with fuckin' spoon). But that being said, "PR" is really an umbrella term that covers myriad functions. Do you include public affairs and nonprofit PR in your definition? Because we're not so bad. Really! I got into it because it's the only way to make money writing these days, and it's a good fit for both the creative and wonky parts of my brain. You just don't hear about the good stuff because when we're doing our job right, you never know we were there. It should definitely be more "leave no trace" thank "look at me!" And I feel pretty good about the fact that I'm able to secure funding for some really great programs and advocate for policies I care about.
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YourExFutureWifeHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 11:51am
I'm a 15 year PR person, who specializes in a "glossy" industry (fashion and beauty). Random thoughts:

* My clients always enjoyed perks and corporate culture that doesn't exist in agency life. The reason is that they're squeezing the agency for every last cent, and the agency then makes the young 'uns (the ones pitching you) work holidays, weekends, and late nights. I once had to drive 2.5 hours into Manhattan on a holiday weekend at 6:30am to change toner, because the VP couldn't figure it out.

* Agency culture is ridiculous. I worked for a very reputable agency, with one of the most famous companies in the US on their roster. The agency was paid handsomely - 6 figures a month - but the agency brass chose to break fire code, labor, and basically every law you could think of in order to milk every last ounce of work out of their staff. (And this isn't sour grapes - I was in management at that point, and tried my best to change things, but had to leave when I couldn't)

* I hated agency life, I was "meh" on my job. But I love the fact that I am promoting products that women (and men) loved/made them feel more confident. Even the people who really believe that the fashion/beauty industry is victimizing women end up falling in love with a particular deodorant or lotion.
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  VGIRollerYourExFutureWife
  6/12/14 12:30pm
  It's why I left agency. In-house is much more satisfying, and there more incentive to actually believe in your job.
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  YourExFutureWifeVGIRoller
  6/12/14 12:57pm
  I'm in-house now, and love it. Talk about a work-life balance!
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Cristobal JuntaHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 11:34am
On some level, sure, some of those people are just cogs in the machine and probably deserve our sympathy. Everyone's gotta eat and pay the bills, after all. But so many of these people come across as willing participants in the charade, so I'm not super broken up about them receiving extra scrutiny. If your job is to protect the image of horrible people, that's bad and you should feel bad.
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Captain_CrutchHamilton Nolan
6/12/14 12:11pm
I will always mock PR people for the same reason I'll never trust cops: It's impossible not to question the motives of someone who makes the conscious decision to enter the profession in the first place. And to take the analogy even further, both go into the job seeking the romanticized version of it and thus most often fall short of being able to do the real version of it very well.
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