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Client Tools - News Articles The Globe and Mail
On-line era leaves media out of loop: PR expert Blogs, Internet chat rooms let companies speak directly to consumers, Edelman says By KEITH MCARTHUR MARKETING REPORTER Monday, March 21, 2005 Page B5 TORONTO -- Blogs and other on-line tools that enable companies to speak directly to consumers are pushing the news media out of their central role in public relations, says the head of the world's largest independent PR firm. Richard Edelman, president and chief executive officer of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, said that as PR practitioners rely less on the media to get messages out, they need to act more like journalists. "The responsibility of PR people today has grown because we're not necessarily going through the media as a screen," said Mr. Edelman, who was in Toronto recently to discuss the company's survey on corporate trust. "If we're just putting stuff up [on the Internet] and people are reading it and accepting it as truth, then we should have a journalist-level quality as our objective instead of a promoter objective." Traditionally, PR practitioners focused on persuading the media to tell their stories. Now they're spending more time speaking directly to the public -- or trying to influence people who keep on-line journals, known as weblogs or blogs, and post messages in Internet chat rooms, Mr. Edelman said. |
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