journalism // Danny Whatmough.com

Paul Carr is at it again. The notorious columnist, who I have written about before, has authored one of his NSFW opinion pieces on TechCrunch covering the recent Fort Hood shootings. It’s a long post but worth a read.

Suw Charman-Anderson has written an interesting reply in which she pulls Carr up on some rather glaring factual inaccuracies:

This is not, however, a reflection on social tools so much as it is a reflection of human nature: Some of what gets done with social media is good and some is bad. This is not news, nor new.

Suw’s post is well researched, but it also misses the underlying debate which Carr starts (these are, as usual, obscured somewhat by the sheer length and often rambling nature of his post). A debate that I think is both relevant and important.

There is a debate here to be had about ethics, about our social moral compass. There is a debate to be had about citizen journalism and its value. There is a debate here to be had about the role of journalism and the increasing speed in which so-called pro journalists are overly eager to jump on any tweet and big it up into front page news (read: Stephen Fry).

I agree with Suw: this is not a debate about the social tools, it is a debate about the realities of humanity and society (and journalism) that these tools reveal. Back to Carr:

As I’ve already said – and I’m even starting to bore myself now – the answer isn’t censorship (which won’t work), but rather in our social evolution catching up with the state of technology. We need to get back to a point as a society where – without thinking – we put our humanity before our ego.

For me, there are three big takeaways here:

1. We all need to stop and think before we tweet

2. We all need to stop and think before we read a tweet (and respond and write about)

3. The news industry (and I include Carr here) needs to get back to rigorous fact checking and investigative journalism, otherwise it won’t survive

Social tools and their immediacy are incredibly powerful – used rightly and wrongly – and this is something that we all often forget. The wisdom of the crowd can easily turn sour…

If we are all to become citizen jounalists, then don’t we need to try and adopt (or put in place some of our own) some of the ethics to which journalists should subscribe?

(hat tip to Eb, Suw and Euan)

picture credit

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make the online PR debate organised by NMK last night, but I’ve been following the fallout today on Twitter and entering into the fray myself, as well as catching up on the blog posts that are now starting to trickle through.

It looks like it was a good event (as Ian’s always are) that tossed around some interesting arguments.

For me though, I get slightly annoyed by the need to define everything. Often we go out of our way to define something which then loses its meaning or is interpreted in a different way. It’s all just semantics really.

And the jargon of new media certainly falls into this space. It is why PR is so synonymous with media relations and journalism. Why SEO and social media seemingly also exist (or feel they need to exist) within their own spheres.

I’m not saying that specialisms aren’t important but that rather than PR v. SEO v. digital etc., we should be looking at the wider, bigger picture. I’m sure this is how many of our (as agencies) clients see things; the bottom line is everything for them. [And I note that it was pretty agency-weighted last night]

This is what we are attempting to do more and more at Wildfire. We are seeing the blurring of disciplines and are also identifying areas where the traditioanl media aspect of PR is dying very quickly. Our venture into new realms isn’t driven by shiny new toys and networks, but by an attempt to get results for our clients and influence the publics they are attempting to reach.

Now to me, this feels very much like a definition of PR. But, I am aware that it is equally true of other disciplines, e.g. advertising, as this Ad Age article demonstrates.

One thing underlines all these tactics though, and that is establishing a message and conveying this to an audience – and this is something that PR professionals are usually very well placed to do. The conveying might be through traditional media, it might be through engagement or conversation on social networks or it might involve search engines and advertising.

As a PR (and marketing) professional (caveat: who is and has been immersed in digital and social media), I am excited and thrilled by the opportunity the internet and digital affords us practionners and our clients or businesses.It’s refreshing to be able to knock out the middle man, to ‘go direct’.

And in order to achieve this effectively, the more tools we have in our tool box, the more options we have and the more potential we can achieve.

The future is bright. It might not be PR as we know it. It might not be called PR. It might even be called social media and be carried out by ‘social media experts’