I have been following a very heated debate this week on Marketing/Media website Mumbrella, regarding PR and journalist relationships. It all stemmed from a post on the site by Jen Bishop, Editor of Dynamic Business Magazine, titled; ‘Can you trust a PR when they promise an exclusive?’

Shortly and sweetly, the story was that PR company Magnum had promised Dynamic Business Magazine an exclusive piece on their client Max Brenner (the baldy chocolate man who does indeed make the best hot chocolate in the infinite universe). The exclusive was conditional, i.e. the story could be featured in other publications, but not  in business publications. Some how, through some miscommunication, the piece did end up in the business section of the Age. As you can imagine, the people at Dynamic Business weren’t happy, so pulled the story from the cover. Fair enough…it just seemed like an unfortunate mistake. You can read the painful drawn out version here.

I don’t think anyone is to blame in the above…to me, it just looks like there was a bit of a leak somewhere, and no one was trying to play games. Personally, when journalists request exclusives of my clients, I think hard before giving an answer – and always consult with the client about what they want. It’s often a very tough call – exclusives are great, and really do push the quality of a publication up, however can be rather limiting. Plus, there’s always the slim chance that the exclusive falls through…and then what? That said, my job is to get the best media opportunities for my client (measured both in quality and quantity) – so it’s a matter of weighing it all up, and very importantly, not pissing anyone off too much.

The blog then changed into a discussion about PR and journalist relationships; a dynamic which I’ve always found quite intriguing. This week I’ve had some very good interactions with journalists. I’ve rekindled some old journo love - due to some particularly tasty entertainment media releases, and met a couple of new journalists so young that I suddenly remembered that I am actually an adult now. Everyone has been alarmingly nice and receptive, which led me to thinking about the way PRs and journalists generally relate to one another. I feel that PRs and journalists need each other to some degree – or at least it helps to have good relationships. It’s almost a symbiosis of species….much like the clownfish and the sea anemone, or the rhino and the oxpecker (I think we know who’s the oxpecker in this one!). You scratch each others backs. However I don’t believe it’s all about schmoozing and that constant expectation of coverage just because you know people. It’s about creating a real story angle, being creative, and

From a PR perspective, I think good relationships come down to a respect for journalists and their profession. I feel that a good journalist who takes pride in producing high quality, newsworthy editorial is far more valuable to both the media and the PR industry than one who is easily swayed to write whatever a PR/publicist wants, in the long run. As if this was what all journalists did, then their publications would be full of advertorial rubbish, and no one would read them. And then everyone really would be screwed.