Head to Head: Are there now too many PRs compared to journalists?
In this series, Mumbrella invites senior PR professionals to share their opposing views on the industry’s biggest issues. This week, Toby Hemming, founder and MD of Bold Media, goes head to head with Group M’s Rosie Baker on whether there are now too many public relations professionals.
The number of journalism jobs in Australia is continuing to shrink. It can feel like every day there are fewer job prospects for professional journalists, and many of them end up trying their hand at public relations instead.
So, have we reached ‘peak PR’? Are there too many people on one side of the fence?
Founder and managing director of Bold Media, Toby Hemming, says the changing roles of journalists and PRs, thanks to social media and influencers, has thrown off the ‘symbiotic’ relationship between the two sides of the industry.
Meanwhile, Group M group communications director, Rosie Baker, says that the issue is not that there are too many PRs, but there are not enough journalists.
The problem here is an apparent assumption that pr is mainly about media. Many pr people seldom if ever deal with the media so the four to one figure quoted is rather misleading. My guess is that the number of pr people regularly dealing directly with journos may be quite different
Rosie says “At the heart of journalism is crafting stories that help audiences understand complex information” and here’s me thinking that the “heart of journalism” was “reporting facts” … I don’t need some wet-behind-the-ears journalism graduate with no experience in the real world to help me “understand complex information”, I can do that all by myself thanks …