Media relations

25 February Forum 6A Three of the things that surprised me were the comment that the internet makes it hard forpeople to find information, the idea that print is not dead, and the idea that it is important to disseminate friendly evidence, regardless of whether or not the issue is real in a media crisis.
In On Deadline: Managing Media Relations, it was stated that the issue with the internet “ isn’t so much the ability to communicate…it’s the ability to find the one piece of information you need amid all the clutter. I don’t think that there’s a lack of information out there. Quite the contrary: There’s so much information nobody can find anything” (Howard & Mathews, p. 3). Personally, I find it easy to be able to perform a quick Google search to be able to locate the information I need, whether it is a quote from a book, an excerpt from a script, or even a search in EBSCO to obtain necessary sources. I would like to look further into where they obtained this information; is it simply because it is someone of an older generation who is saying this, someone who hasn’t grown up with the internet, and as such, does not have the necessary skills to be able to narrow down their keywords for their search, or is it something more?
In On Deadline: Managing Media Relations, the next thing to surprise me was the comment that “ print is not dead” (Howard & Mathews, p. 4), where they go on to state that “ the print media are still competitive and willing to take steps to adapt to todays’ readers” (Howard & Mathews, p. 4), while it makes sense that electronic print media is on the rise, and though the idea of magazines still being published in print form makes sense, it seems that print newspapers would start to die out, as readership grows online. I would like to learn what the true statistics are for this, and if it is really actually still feasible from an economic standpoint that they continue to make actual print newspapers for much longer.
Finally, the third thing that surprised me was the idea presented in “ Handling the Difficult Interview” that if there is a media crisis, that it is in the company’s best interests to “ disseminate friendly evidence” (Krattenmaker, p. 4), even if the scandal is false. It would seem to me that simply a denial of the issue would suffice, but instead it is suggested that friendly evidence also be provided as well; while this may be worthwhile from a public relations standpoint, in some cases, it does not seem like it would be a benefit overall, and in fact would serve to try to make it look like the issue at hand was being hidden – the equivalent of going “ Look at that squirrel over there!” and pointing madly. I would be interested in seeing examples of this other than just the one provided in the brief reading.
Works Cited
Howard, Carole, and Mathews, Wilma. On Deadline: Managing Media Relations. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2006. Print.
Krattenmaker, Tom. ” Handling the Difficult Interview.” Harvard Management Communication Letter (24 Jan. 2013): 3-5. Print.