When media and PR collide

I'm up to my neck with reading about and listening to journalists complain about PR people. Because having been on both sides of the fence, i really think its a perfect case of pot calling the dog's nose black.

Yes, the average PR person is uninformed and underexposed. And yes, they haven't read their client brief completely. But the average media person is no better.

Having had to interact with them on a professional level, i now know a thing or two about their work ethics. Only after working 'with' them (although a lot of them think PR people work 'for' them!) have i realised that journalism as we used to know it is almost dead.

I was shocked at the quality of journalists i found in newspapers and (horror!) some international magazines. Whatever happened to quality and serious writers?

Reporters from top newspapers have insisted that (and i do not exaggerate) the PR person handling that particular client write the entire interview for them. Not just that, they now include generic questions that should form part of their own research in the list of questions directed at the client. So now, apart from wanting to know their turnover for Q3, they also ask how the food service industry is doing and who the other players in the market are?

Hell, they're lazy too! After talking to a CEO of hotel group on the phone for 15 minutes, the journalist had the gall to tell her to 'please email me your replies' so she wouldn't have to look for the scribbles she made in her non-existent notepad.

I have even lent a bony shoulder to the copy editor at one of the top newspapers (it has 'Times' in its name somewhere) who is fed up of reporters sending her a bunch of quotes for a 'story'. That doesn't even include the name of the reporter. So since she is the 'desk', she has to actually write the story and even give them a byline!

I was therefore pretty surprised to find that there were writers who could slip further. Despite a half-hour phone interview with the erstwhile royalty of an Indian state who was at that time in London, a journalist decided he just 'didn't want to write the story' when i called him after four months. No 'there was not enough matter' or 'I need to talk to someone else'. He just didn't give a damn. And we're talking about a senior writer at an international magazine which starts with Forbes and ends with India. 

The level of sheer recklessness of journalists these days astounds me! But it shouldn't; this was bound to happen considering the way media is pampered. 

So when media and PR collide, all you're left with is an equation that refuses to be balanced.