Is media relations a dying art in PR?

How important is media relations to a modern day PR agency? Stupid question? At Little Red Rooster it is fundamental to everything we do but two recent articles have brought the subject into the spotlight and from two very different angles.

The first article on PR Moment, entitled ‘How to build respect with journalists’ highlights the importance of building relationships within the media and how to maintain them. We urge you to read it whether you’re just starting to scale the PR ladder or an experienced agent. The article covers a lot of ground and there are a few points worth repeating especially as these are things we hold important at Little Red Rooster.

First up is persistence. It’s takes time to build a relationship and it requires hard work to maintain it. But it is always important to strike the right balance between being a ‘stalker’ and knowing the right time to get in touch. This is when knowing the journalist’s beat and the rhythms of deadlines is essential. Once you gain a journalist’s trust and they know you don’t waste their time with irrelevant pitches, they will be more receptive to your calls. Journalists get inundated with emails and calls on a daily basis so you want to be the one PR whose call they take and one of the emails they read.

Another interesting point the article makes is how social media has given PRs another means to get in contact with journalists. This can be a dangerous game, so tread carefully. We have found Twitter, for example, a helpful platform for finding out more about a journalist’s ‘likes and dislikes’ and how it can relate to building a relationship. The Twittersphere is also useful for finding out about features and articles the journalist may be working on, but we have always been mindful of contacting journalists directly to pitch an idea. Make an informed judgement if you think the journalist in question would favour such an approach. Some don’t.

Of course we can all hide behind a phone call, email or social media outreach but at the end of the day the best way to truly connect with a journalist, and highlighted in the article, is to meet face-to-face. We can’t emphasise the importance of this approach enough at Little Red Rooster – it is core to our PR philosophy.

The second article, ‘How PR is seizing the advantage in content marketing’, posted on The Drum, focuses, as the title suggests, on how PR is moving towards content marketing and storytelling. This subject deserves a blog on its own but one comment from the article stuck: “the decline of ‘media relations’ – once PR’s core discipline, now facing extinction in the medium-term.” While we agree with the current shift in emphasis in PR to content creation, media relations will always remain central to everything we do and, if anything, has become more important than ever before.

As the media landscapes shifts, the dynamic between PRs and the media continues to evolve. At a time when journalists are working harder than ever and under more pressure, strong media relations and tight journalist relationships have never been so crucial for PRs.