Sometimes journalists wonder why PRs are so closed and protective of their client.  Why PRs are private and controlling of every word that comes out from a company, organisation, public body or celebrity.  PRs are on occasions not seen in good light, often a hindrance to a journalists job of getting news.  Journalists complain that we spin, counter-spin, deceive them, etc, etc, etc.  And on many occasions their complains often ring true, because above all the job of a PR is to promote and protect.  Sounds simple, but it sure isn’t. 

Years back we were told that it was the people that were in the address book of a PR that made a PR great, rather that the brain that ‘lied’ on their shoulders.  Effective communication is an art.  Only today Max Clifford was quoted in The Times in a feature about Tom Cruise about how Cruise’s biggest mistake was sacking his publicist, the respected [Pat] Kingsley.  Clifford is quoted as saying: “Protection is the most important thing in PR.  He’s been too public about Scientology.  He can turn things around because he’s still popular.  It’s when you start to disappear from the centre stage that it gets difficult.” 

And with regards to who you know it is the people you know as a PR that help.  Very much like the people you know if you are a journalist and you want a story, it is the who you know and what you can do for them.  And sometimes it’s the who you know and what you can do for PRs that set up opportunities for the future.  But sadly, it is opportunities for the future that sometimes get missed by journalists.  Let me share with you an anonymous experience. 

A client asks to contact a number of people and carry out some research to find out what these targeted people think of them.  A very worthwhile and proactive job for any company or individual.  The project is very much a case of finding information out and then feeding it back to the client, warts an all. 

So we get a list of names and start trying to set up meetings to carry out the survey, making sure that these take place at their convenience.  On the list though there is a journalists from a top-tier title.  Knowing how they work and the fact that they have daily deadlines to meet you plan your approach, or pitch, carefully, ensuring that we offer them the opportunity to take part at their convenience.  Now, like with anybody we approach, pitching any story we PRs know that said journalist can always say no.  They can tell tell you that they are not interested.  In fact, we generally know that if we don’t know them or never given them anything then we have to know when to call them and that we have 60 seconds to pitch them a story, giving them enough time to consider if their News Editor would be interested.  On this project though, there might be news or there might not be. 

Anyhow, we approach journalist ‘A’, leave a message and send an email.  No response.  So we follow up on the phone, go through the routine, always being courteous, and flexible. Journalist ‘A’ tells us quite abruptly to send them an email, which is fair enough.  So we do just that. 

Now in most cases, if a journalist is not interested then they do one of two things, ignore you or reply and say, “thanks, but I don’t have the time.”  Both of which is fair enough.  They might come back and say, “Hmmm, if I take part, can I have a copy of the report?  Will it be available to the public?  There might be a story here, would you pass this on to me?”  In effect, you look for opportunities to develop working relationships, all of which taking 5 minutes. 

Having said the obvious, on other occasions PRs receive a reply, which on one specific occasion read like this:

“Are you serious? This is research that will be of absolutely no benefit to me, so you’re asking me to do this purely as a favour, and you’re proposing to take up 45 minutes of my time. Do you have any conception of how busy I am? I will give you 5 to 10 mins on the phone at the absolute outside but you must be absolutely mad if you think I’d agree to any more than that.”

So, there are ways of saying no and there is the above.  If journalists wonder why PRs treat journalists with disdain an caution, then know you know.  It really is a case that while certain doors open, PRs also have the ability to keep certain doors closed, knowing full well that journalists ‘A’ would try to circumvent PRs to get stories, quotes, etc, etc, etc. 

And if you want to say thing with ease, then remember Nancy Regan phrase and “just say no!”

Another week passes in England’s infamous silly-season.  While there is no football taking place, the pencils of Fleet Street’s footie scribes are as sharp as ever with stories of treachery and deceit.  Yes, football’s finest want out, a trip elsewhere, often abroad and often undermining the Premier League’s claim of being the best League in the world. 

With plenty of cash in the bank, English clubs should be safe from the predatory Presidente’s of this World.  But no, Real Madrid’s wish to take the Portu-geezer-in-chief Cristiano Ronaldo to Spain is promoted in their constant denials through media outlets such as Spain’s sport’s dailies Marca and As, while at Adebayor confuses even himself with his “I am staying at Arsenal, but watch this space” type comments. 

So, given that England hosts the world’s richest league, why is it that every summer clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal and others are subjected to negative headlines involving overseas clubs?  Why is it that Fleet Street’s titles, who hype up our League and its headline-givers during the season, turn every summer into a season for despair for supporters of the League’s top-tier clubs? 

Well, the reason is that the reporting of sports news, especially football, in England is quite different to how it’s reported in the rest of Europe, especially Spain. 

While in England and the rest of Britain sports news is part of each newspaper, filling numerous back pages, Spain, Italy and France have dedicated daily sports titles – from Marca and As in Spain to La Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy and L’Equipe in France. 

Having dedicated sports titles forces many of these media outlets to run more gossip and innuendo that wouldn’t be used as filler in the Britain.  At the same time, the relationship between titles such as Marca and As and top-tier clubs in Spain like Real Madrid and Barcelona are very close.  Some claim to be too close for comfort and for journalistic integrity.  It is a relationship of convenience, the titles needs stories – as trivial as they might be, to ensure that advertisers and the paying-public are happy.  This relationship often works in such a away that the clubs can get away with using these titles for propaganda, to boost the egos of the players that they wish to sign.  It works very well for the club, the players and their agents.  But, it often doesn’t work for English clubs. 

But I hear you ask, what about all the nonsense that is printed in the back pages of The Sun, The Mirror et al every day?  Simple really, The Sun might have six to ten dedicated pages to sport.  Marca meanwhile has that focusing on a specific club in La Liga, often Real Madrid.  Sports dailies in the rest of Europe have pages and pages more space to fill, which often leads to much more nonsense and spin, comment and innuendo, misinterpretation, which is often benefits clubs in the papers host country.  And it is these stories that then get picked up over in England and run as ‘real’ news.  And of course agents know all this works, just call one of these papers, say that you represent ‘Player A’ and say, as a source, that it would be a dream for them to move to Madrid, Milan or whoever.  You can bet your last Euro that a title like the above would run this as a story. 

Media in the Britain pride themselves of having integrity, with the majority of hacks keeping their club allegiances of their by-lined page.  This is true for some, but not for many.  Axes to grind can be very visible, with numerous people knowing journalists that are supporters of West Ham, Manchester United or Arsenal.  But, for a League to be seen as the leading the world it needs the support of the media in the close season, and a PR strategy from clubs that make up the Premier League that challenges La Liga and Serie A at their own game.  Somehow though I can’t see press offices of English clubs planting stories in foreign titles.  To do that would mean increasing and improving the relationship with predatory tiles and for many clubs this would just not be a priority, even though it would make business sense.  Funny how we over here in England see Real Madrid and Barca are sexy foreign clubs, while the same wouldn’t be thought in Spain of English clubs?

It really does show that when it comes to hype in PR, English clubs are just not that sharp.  Possibly because we just don’t have the papers to fill.  Maybe, just maybe, it is our media that is holding us from further promoting ourselves. 

In the meantime though, it will be Spanish and Italian clubs, together with registered and unregistered agents that will keep their focus on taking the Premier League’s gold back to mainland Europe.  And really, we only ourselves and our media to blame.

Yes, Coleen McLoughlin, the self-style queen of the wag pack has publicly declared her occupation as being that of a “journalist.”  Or at least that what she’s stated in her wedding banns at Crewe registry office.  Maybe she thinks this as being her job because she picks up a ‘meagre’ £10,000 for her weekly column for Closer.

The truth of the matter is that with this as a salary she is half way to what aspiring journos staffing newsdesks on local, regional and even national papers take home.  I do wonder what the NUJ make of her declaration that she’s a hack?

In today’s Guardian, Roy Greenslade hits the celebrity nail on the head by asking how many doorsteps she’s been on.  I myself would like to find out what she was wearing when she was doorsteping a target.  Was it some Prada kitten heels with a matching Dior dress?  Or was it perhaps an a-line couture outfit especially hand made for the occasion.

The only thing I can add is that if she wrote into the wedding banns Wayne Rooney’s job as being a ‘proffesional’ footballer.  We wonder, did she get her GCSE English.  Oh, never mind.

In an interview in yesterday’s Media Guardian, new BBC Five Live controller Adrian Van Klaveren confirmed that all of the stations daytime shows will by 2011 be broadcast from it’s new base in Salford, Manchester.  Surprising this is not.  Unwelcome it most certainly is.

The move to Manchester’s purpose-built Media City has been in the air since the renewal of the BBC’s Charter way back when.

At the time the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) believed that the BBC had to part of the community, it had to be spread and shared with the nation.  Or at least, thats what it sounded like.  Needless to say that when it came to renegotiate the renewal of its Charter the BBC found themselves in quicksand.  Incumbent Director General Mark Thompson, while at Channel 4, stated that Auntie had a “jacuzzi of cash”, something that came back to haunt him when he was in negotiations with the DCMS.

The BBC was going to move and there was nothing that could be done about it.  Really, it was a case of Deal or no Deal.  Who knows where the idea came from, but, like it or not the BBC was going to lift up some of its interests and move them to Manchester, and as we have discovered Five Lived is one such station.  The question is how much has this been thought out?

Would the presenters move?  The producers?  The staff?  If they were to, and here’s the crunch, for a station that prides itself in, not just news, but debate and talk shows, how would it go about securing speakers and spokespeople for it’s shows?  After all, government departments are based in London, head-quarters for unions, companies, financial institutions are based in, wait for it, London.

So, remembering this, does the move to Manchester signal the end of face-to-face studio debate?  Van Klaveren has already signaled his dislike for Paxman-esque style interviews.  So maybe, just maybe, the Five Live news that debates, analyses and dissects news will be dead sometime soon.

Good talk radio requires people.  But the move to Manchester leaves the spokespeople behind.  And as common as down-the-line interviews might be in PR, interviews with people in the studio are still needed.  Moving away from the centre of business, government is not right.

But, the decision has been made and it looks like these ISDN are not just here to stay, but are set to increase, making debate that much more impersonal, which is what the BBC is becoming, impersonal and distant.

Here I was at a client today (I’m not Dylan Jones by the way), typing up a document when I was asked where I get my clothes from.  Raising an eyebrow to the individual and casting a glance away from my keyboard, expecting a cheeky or dodgy remark, I asked, “why?”  See, the reason for this is that I am currently within a great corporate team where suits are the uniform of choice.  After all, these are corporate issues, so we must all dress up in shirts, suits and tie.  Well, all except me and a few others.  You see, as much as I enjoy wearing a suit, I believe that there is a time and a place for one.

Anyway, the individual mentioned that he and a few others were heading over to a client, or potential client, for a meeting or pitch and that word had reached them that suits were a ‘no, no.’  Panic descended amongst him and a few others.  The mere thought of going suit-less, well it was just difficult, confusing.  Another hurdle to overcome to get the client or potential on their side.

Comments such as, “don’t they know we do corporate?” and , “I just don’t know how we should look!” came forth.  I suggested dressing down, which really felt like asking Tom Ford to skip into the pub-shoe of choice, the Reebook classic.  You know what I mean.  Anyhow, they knew that it had to be done.  I asked who the client was and on hearing this gave them my advice.  To much laughter I added that maybe Gok Wan should come in to give them a style make over.  No idea how that went down.

Anyhow, it really did make me think about how PRs dress and how we should dress?  And if there are no-no’s in how we should present ourselves.  After all, a suit can look the part and inspire confidence within a certain group of people, while others, as sharp as you might look, will think of you as stuffy, not flexible, not creative.  Dressing for pitches or meetings is a minefield, which is best walked through with confidence.

While it would be ok to go with the newest jeans from Japan to a client, other creatives might see this as just opulence, where style might be more important to you than substance.  Pre judging is comment place in our job, in our industry.  As PRs we always want to make a good impression, even if we have to compromise our values, which is not right.

The next day, the group headed over, had the meeting and came back, with the job in the bag.  And how did they look?  Well, who cares.  Job done!

As for me?  Well the day before was some Paul and Joe items, 7 jeans and Paul Smith brogues, if you care.

Terminal 5 respects no-one as Kate Moss and la Campell experience the hell of Heathrow. 

Yet while Naomi managed to get herself arrested, again - it’s amazing how T5 can set you off, Kate Moss and stylist James Brown took the 2-hour delay in their stride and relaxed before jetting off to Los Angeles.  Great crisis consumer PR for the Heathrow team, when they thought they had it all covered.  Whatever next?!

In the meantime BA and BAA are continuing to waste more time in pointing the finger at each other, with nobody backing down in their battle of wills as to who is ultimately responsible for the shambles of this new hyper-inflated-of a mess terminal.  Making London and the so-called world’s favourite airline a joke.

The sooner they learn than when you have a problem you fix it before pointing the finger, the faster we’ll all feel like Very Important Passengers.

You really couldn’t make it up, Sarkozy and Bruni’s final day in London get’stopped in the news by the, er, shambolic opening of BAA’s pride and joy, the 20 years plus in the making, Terminal 5.

The PR in the lead-up to the opening had been fantastic.  Plenty of information of on how ethical it was, how much space was available, how easy it was to access, the benefits to London, the this, the that, the everything.  It was good.

But then, suddenly when it came to opening the terminal to the traveling public the wheels came off, using a softer analogy.  Such a disaster it was that national UK broadcast media led on the story last night.  And today, the nationals did the same.  Really a deserved case of kicking somebody when they are down.

To be fair, you just can’t control such problems as the baggage handling system breaking down, staff not knowing what to do and being confused, aircraft taxing to the wrong gate.  Oh, wait, you can.  Because you just don’t open a terminal until everybody and everything has been tested.  So for BAA to say that the fiasco was down to the technology and the workers, well, it’s just incompetent. 

The communications team did what anybody would do in the lead up to such an event.  They warned passengers that there might be “teething problem.” 

But what happened on the opening day of Heathrow Terminal 5 was anything but.  And to compound the disaster, rather than being customer friendly, BAA showed passengers how they have a total disregard for them.  They should have taken the hit and paid for alternative transport, accommodation, etc. 

You might plan for this, but, in this case the worst-case scenario is just a nightmare, and one that we can read about in The Times and elsewhere. 

BAA have severally embarrassed London.  Do we think that they’ll sort the problems that they’ve created before the 2012 Olympics?  With BAA, you just don’t know.

We had another great CIPR Greater London Group event last night with BBC Head of Online Journalism Pete Clifton, Telegraph.co.uk Shane Richmond and PR Blogger Stephen Davis discussing the impact of social media on journalism and PR.

Facebook group members sent questions that were posed to the panel.

We had a very good debate and a lot of counter points from both sides of the fence.

The first question picked up on a leaked story that appeared in Press Gazette that said that The Guardian, of all places, was going to cut back its numbers of traditional reporters in order to focus more on new media.

The view was that The Guardian was doing what The Daily Telegraph had done in preparation of its move to Victoria a few years back.  Both Pete and Shane stated that integrated newsrooms are the way forward and that the days of the traditional journalism were ending.

Stephen made a great point that PRs are just, well, lagging behind stubborn old hacks in adopting new media and social networking.  Pete did share with us his experience in getting the BBC to change the way that it’s newsroom works.  Really, as I understood it, a case of dragging a child kicking and screaming forward.

We then went on to discuss if social media has the potential to restore trust in the media?

Social media was very much running a tightrope, between gossip that media can’t run because of the lawyers.  Having said this media organisations now find themselves with a tool that can tell it readers and viewers why they have decided to make such an editorial decision.  High profile journalists like Robert Peston and Nick Robinson can go into detail on a story that they are running.  Pete Clifton gave the prime example of how the BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson ran a story from the White House on his blog from his blackberry.  A case of where social media gave him the opportunity of reporting a gaff by President Bush as it happened.  The result of which led the White House Press Office from effectively banning him.

But what about non-aligned bloggers that are not members of the media pool?  Well, as was said, they have a duty of been as careful about their stories as trained journalists, especially those that have good authority ratings.  Getting stories right is a must for everybody.

Interestingly enough though when Stephen Davis was asked who would he give a story to, a journalist or a blogger with a high-authority rating – only choosing one of the two, Stephen said a journalist (he wanted to issue a story to both).  Shane came in and asked why not a blogger first given that they are, to all intense and purposes, a journalist.

Finally that tool of our trade came in for debate, the press release, or as it often is, the pr release, given that they are often written in dour language.  The question was, is it dead?

The answer, well, as you’d expect was a no.  Not yet.  Sending cold press releases to journalists is a no, yet the same thing is done to bloggers.  And the results aren’t just bad for relations, they can be damaging.  The rule of thumb is, develop a relationship with them, ask them if they want to receive press releases, treat them as individuals.  Email them as people.  Bloggers are influential, like leading columnists.  So treat them with respect.

So a lot of debate, a lot of dicussion, some controversy and an equal amount of profanity.  All in all, another great night, so if you missed it and want to come to the next event then join the Facebook group, and we’ll see you soon.

Let’s be honest, people are getting wise to the workings of the media.  They know that each outlet has an angle on a story, which is why the views of bloggers has become so important to companies, brands and celebrities.

People subscribe to blogs, they read the latest posts and comment on them.  Bloggers are people – not journalists, which is why PRs are often being asked to promote new products, new stories, angles of stories to bloggers that have real influence.

This, with the rise of citizen-journalism, is forcing companies and agencies to revaluate how they communicate with the public.

To discuss this the CIPR Greater London Group have brought together the BBC’s Head of Online Journalism Pete Clifton, Telegraph.co.uk’s Communities Editor Shane Richmond and PR Blogger Stephen Davies.

The event sold-out in record time, suggesting it is an important issue for PRs in London.

I’ll be brining you the latest comment and views raised on this.

The irony couldn’t have been greater.  Out came Heather Mills, dressed like a court jester, from the same High Court that was presiding over the inquest into the death of Diana, the Princess of Wales, the Queen of the Nations Hearts.  A Diana who often complained before her death about media intrusion, yet, at the same time was skilful operator of its dark arts.

Heather, purposefully marched towards the throng of notebooks, lenses and video cameras on Fleet Street.  Journalists and photographers awaiting yet another episode from the ‘Poor Me’ Heather World show.

This was a heather that was built up by the media, a media that did its utmost to separate her from real-life.  And this was her undoing.  Like Alice through the looking glass, she really did believe what the media told her, which is why, one assumes that she demanded so much for security and accessories to her lifestyle.  After all, Judge Bennett let it be know that she was demanding £125 million from Sir Paul.  And, after all, if her claims that he was worth double the nearly £400 million that the judge claimed he was worth then why did she want this figure rather than, say, £50 million.

It really is a case, of if you don’t ask you just don’t get.  But our Heather believes that she is worth that.  The media gossip pages, the celebrity bibles have told her this every week, so, it must be the case.

Judge Bennett ruled that Heather Mills was “indulged in make-believe”, “was less than candid”, “had a warped perception” and was “devoid of reality.”  But was this also a damming indictment of the celebrity show-biz world?  After all, Heather was built up by the celebrity journos who pulled her strings and pampered her egos.  In fact to such an extent that she believes her own importance and hype, like many of the celebrities that fill our daily and weekly pages.  Yet what differentiates the good from the great celebs is that the greats, know their true worth and are able to keep one foot firmly on the ground.  The great celebrities know how to pander to those who promote them and help them make them money.

Heather, it must be said, forgot that basic rule.  And she paid for it.  And while a comeback can be rewarding, she’ll be carrying the anger of the nation on he shoulders, an albatross that will hover over her and remind her audience of her past.

Celebrity is a fickle beast and this week Judge Bennett said what we all suspected.  Yet, as he is not a regular in the celebrity circuit, his judgement on the celebrity world will sink without a trace.