My eyebrow raised this week when I read PR Week editor Danny Rogers’ assertion in MediaGuardian: “There’s a real lack of good PR blogs in the UK at the moment.”
“Shurely shome mishtake,” I thought, as the UK has a growing crop of decent online journals dedicated to analysing the increasing impact of new communications methods on corporate communications, marketing and media.
I wasn’t alone. Having read the piece, Brighton-based Harvard Public Relations director Anthony Mayfield is drawing up a list of UK PR blogs, which points to blogs by Chartered Institute of Public Relations president Tony Bradley, Niall Cook of the Hill and Knowlton agency, and tech PR boss David Rossiter. Not to mention Neville Hobson. Or last year’s Global PR Blog Week. Or PRblogs.org, the network of free blogs for public relations professionals.
Links to each site uncovers more lists of lists to similar resources. In fact, PR Week seems to have been taking a bit of a hit from in-the-know PR bloggers of late.
Business Blog Consulting, which does exactly as it says on the tin and carries a whole category on this stuff, recently kicked the trade weekly for failing to create waves online by walling stories off to non-subscribers. Ironically, the story that the company’s Tris Hussey picked to call the magazine on was a report of a conference speech by Richard Edelman.
Edelman of course is CEO of the world’s largest independent public relations company and a man credited with “getting it” more than any other in the industry (glance his blog for proof).
Is PR Week behind the times? Or is the magazine taking an unfair amount of stick from bloggerati who would rather remain on the new-new fringe, rather than accepting that the publication not only has a different rhythm but needs to make its own money?