These are hard times in the newspaper business. Besides the flurry of layoffs, we have newspaper bosses sacrificing content for snappy graphics, rearranging the ad-to-editorial ratio and even cutting the size of the paper. That's bad news for PR folks, who have seen business sections shrink to just a couple of pages, and home and travel sections reduced to mostly freelance and syndicated columns.
Now comes the disheartening news that papers are sharing content, as in the recently-announced agreement at the Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Palm Beach Post. Are we doomed to USA Today clones, with little, if any, local coverage and no in-depth stories? Perhaps blogger Jose Leal was right when he wrote a six-part series predicting the demise of newspapers.
There is certainly a rise in virtual communications--with over 100 million active users on facebook, this medium of communications is cheap and effective.
Nevertheless, this doesn't necessarily mean reducing PR. It only means PR projects should offer more ways to communicate a company or NGO message.
Posted by: Erica Grigg | October 01, 2008 at 11:48 AM