There’s always been a steady stream of media types transitioning into PR, but these days, it seems like a flood. Yet despite the fact that journalists and PR people have close professional links, that doesn’t mean it’s easy for journalists to make the switch to the other side. It’s like a long-time district attorney suddenly making the switch from prosecutor to defense attorney. Yes, they might know the law, but do they know how to represent defendants after a career prosecuting them?
For ex-journalists who become PR people (and I am one of them), there are a lot of new skills to learn. If you’re an ex-journalist-turned-PR person, or an executive who hired one, here’s a cheat sheet of ways to make the transition:
- A new point of view: Let’s start with the most fundamental element — who you are working for. In their old job, journalists were working for editors and their audience. In PR, you’re working for your direct client, as well as that person’s boss and other powerful executives, and your audiences may be as diverse as customers, shareholders, employees, competitors, regulators and the media. And unlike in the media, the peculiarities of each of these audiences has to be factored into your strategies and materials — which is why so much PR information comes out like it was written by a committee.
- Sensitivities: Journalists are used to being brusque. They’ve got deadlines, they’ve got an audience, and they don’t have time for niceties. That won’t fly in PR. Most people expect PR people to nice, even obsequious to a fault. You’re no longer a crusading journalist, you’re a service provider, and you will be expected to do things with a smile that in your old job, you might have refused to do. In PR, everyone’s feathers need to be smoothed, and it’s usually your job to do it.
- You’re in business now: many journalists have lived a sheltered existence, with careful separations maintained between editorial and advertising, insulating them from the realities of profit and loss. I know that the current difficulties in the media has been a wake-up call, but once you come over to PR, you’ll be fully immersed in the world of budgets, profits and competitors.
- The buck stops with you: I was stunned when I got into PR to realize how carefully clients followed what was said about them in the media and how quickly they jumped to conclusions about the motivation of the media when something was said that they didn’t like, or when they were left out of stories. As the PR person, you will find that when this happens — when the media says something your client doesn’t like, or doesn’t cover you when you think you should have been covered — it’s your fault. You’re the bottom of the food chain, you’re the one touting your media relations skills and experience, YOU should have made sure this didn’t happen. Even if there was nothing you could have done.
- Your friends in the media: your media experience means a lot to your new clients. But your new clients don’t mean as much to your friends in the media. You’ll probably be able to leverage your connections for some stories but I wouldn’t count on making your living asking your friends to do stories. Which brings us to:
- Pitching: In all likelihood, you will find yourself emailing or calling journalists you don’t know asking them to do stories on your clients. I don’t mean to be too much of a downer, but let me say that this will be an eye-opening experience. You will now understand what it feels like to be on the other end of the line pitching what you think is a decent story, only to be ignored, hung-up-on, berated or belittled. And that’s if you can even get a response from the journalist you’re pitching, which often times, you won’t. I’ve been on both sides of these calls and I fully understand the frustration of the media getting pitched non-stories by people who have no clue who they are pitching, but this has created an environment in which many journalists view all PR pitches with suspicion bordering on disgust.
There’s one more big caveat for ex-journalists and the people who hire them: the need for marketing expertise. PR and media relations are subsets of the larger marketing function, and all PR activities are designed to support marketing and ultimately sales. Journalists whose training took place in journalism school and who experience is solely in the media have a great deal to learn about the discipline of marketing.
Just as I advise would-be media relations experts in the PR field to read journalism books, take journalism courses and immerse themselves in the craft of journalism, so I would advise career-switching journalists making the effort to learn about the intricacies of marketing.
