Viper Strategic

When is News News?

Author: Neil Wilkins

Neil learnt his marketing with the likes of Orange, NatWest, BP Castrol and Ordnance Survey and now helps individuals and businesses to communicate more effectively. He trains and mentors marketers on professional Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifications through to post-graduate level.

I faced a dilemma earlier today. I found some news that I wanted to post through Twitter.

However, the problem was that it wasn't exactly news because it had been created back in the dim and distant past they called 2008. Now to me because it was the first time I was aware of it then actually and technically it was indeed news. I decided not to post or share it though just in case I turned out to be the only person on the planet who hadn't seen it the first, second or even third time around. How irrelevant, misinformed and out of touch would I look doing that.

So whilst the news was news to me I didn't want to take the chance and share.

This made me think, because sometimes I do take the time to do so, that there can't really be a single definition of what news is. To some it's what they read in the morning newspaper or their favourite specialist weekly publication. To others it's what they hear on the television news broadcasts and occasional 'breaking news' alerts. To others it's trending real-time terms they see through Twitter, likely to be shared infinitely quicker around the world than the traditional news distribution services.

So suddenly I'm thinking I'm glad that I don't live in the world of PR. Admittedly I do cross over that boundary once in a while because marketing and PR are and should be closely aligned (or as I like to argue, PR is a subset of effective strategic marketing - but that's a very different debate that I'd like to have with you sometime). But no, PR can't be a comfortable place in which to live anymore. Long gone are the days when a piece of news was held by the press office until such times as they deemed it worthy to share with the world.

Oh no, right now, and from this point onward, news is what the public are sharing without so much as a nod towards the traditional communications and broadcasting industries. News has become something that isn't under the control of a self-chosen few. News has become something that we can all own, share and distribute, whenever we see fit and however we so wish. It's become mostly self-policing and as we all know, the general public are never wrong.

Well whether they are right or wrong is no longer the point. It's all about the complete shift in power from large corporations to the person on the street. And the mechanism to make this possible? Yes it's the internet. Look at all the platforms for social networking from Twitter to YouTube and everything in between. That's where the news is from here onward.

So if I as a member of the public decide I am going to publish a piece of information created back in 2008 then that's just what I can do... and if someone bothers to listen and perhaps even pass it on, then that is what we now call news. 

- Posted on Tuesday 08 Jun 2010 at 23:42 by Neil Wilkins

Tags: pr (15)