Does this apply to all forms of press release, or just the ones written by Marketing? I’d say a statement released by the State Department about the IT mishap that led to the social security number of every person in the country named Bill being accidentally emailed to L. Ron Hubbard or something deserves just slightly more attention than some nonentity in a suit bragging about how awesome his company is.

Here’s an appropriate quote about the kind of “conversations” corporations want to have, from http://www.maxbarry.com/2006/02/18/news.html

“They spend billions of dollars to get their names on our lips and their logos in our eyes, but letting us talk about them is dangerous: we might say something they don’t like. They want what Naomi Klein calls the “one-way conversation:” to be able to speak to us—endlessly so, through billboards and television and radio and product placement in your movies and the back of your bus ticket—without allowing us to speak back. Unless, that is, we’re saying positive things about them; unless we’re “on message.” And so they seek complete control over their names, to ban us from uttering them unless it is to speak praise.”

By far I am not somebody who knows exactly where all the PR biz comes from, but I do know the science of it.

Most large corporations or organizations have huge chunks of cash for advertising and public relations. Sometimes these sums are larger than a productions budget and designed to con customers to buy their product or service.

The people that work under these budgets have a single mission…get the word out to the customer base in any way shape or form and trample anyone who gets in the way or don’t get paid. Kind of like a garbage collector who’s pay incentive is to collect as much garbage as possible even if he/she has to generate it.

Hence the nature of the PR response to the blogger of ‘here it is, just put it on your site so people can see it’ period. The blogger will look at it and, because there is no incentive to post it like a check for several thousand dollars, they toss it. (Not to say thats an issue here on Techdirt…but I am sure it is elsewhere)

The problem with these PR people is very simple really, they cling to the old business model that has no evolutionary possibilities. They cling for their dear professional lives because it is:
a) Proven
and
b) All that they know.

The ‘b’ answer is the true problem with the PR person and not the issuing of Press Releases. As long as these people are stuck in the past and happy, the evolution of mankinds information sharing and commentary will continue to be anchored in the past. But, things do change and as their numbers are begin to dwindle and the corporate reigns are passed on to the next generation who’s more tech savvy, the PR people will get the idea and play the game.

Those that cannot make the change into the linked world will soon find themselves on a one way street and no horizons other than the corners of the box they create.

Half the content on any good blog is in the comments. The bloggers understand this, but other people seem to miss it. Without comments, a blog would be no more interesting than an old-line news site.

As a PR professional, I’m constantly surprised at how slow the industry is to catch up. I think a lot of the challenge stems from the client/agency relationship: truly engaging in personal, real, bi-directional conversations takes a lot of time and thought, and most clients don’t understand or want to pay for that work. They want to be on > yesterday and agencies are under the gun to make it happen. Combine that with PR people on several accounts, and there literally isn’t enough time in the day.

The onus is on us to better educate our clients about the shift, and the importance of interacting with people as people, and not targets, and then to rearrange our business models to fit the new reality. Some companies will get it, and for the ones that refuse to learn…they are best left to their own devices…

Pete is half-right about bloggers — they are not either “news organizations” (being mostly individual people) or “members of the 4th estate” as that was originally conceived.

They’re superior.

OK, maybe they’re biased, but every bias is out there, and with comment feedback as a reality check, and the biases are generally out in the open. Unlike with, say, FOX news which calls itself “fair and balanced”!

Mike, on the other hand, didn’t go far enough regarding PR people sending out press releases. All such are essentially asking for free advertising space, pure and simple. And, sometimes, not asking for it so much as demanding it.

Let’s see if I understand what the PR guy was saying:

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that you have an obligation to actually write about what’s in press releases. The world will go on whether you tell your readers about XYZ Widgets or not. But understand that you have an audience and people are going to want your ear. Accept that as a compliment, and don’t be indignant when it happens.

So, I guess he’d be OK if we told him:

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that you have an obligation to actually buy the C1@lis and V!@gr@ that this e-mail is hawking. The world will go on whether you have a small p3n!s or not. But understand that you have an e-mail address that I can send to, and people are going to send you stuff that might shock a hardened ex-marine. Accept that as a compliment, and don’t be indignant when it happens.