The Promise of "Citizen Journalism"

The New York Times ran a story over the weekend that looked at the rise in importance that tech-oriented social media sites were having on the industry and on the impact that rise was having on the way Silicon Valley companies now looked at marketing for their products. However, as is the case with many stories about social media, there was some big gaps in coverage that should be part of any social-media discussion.

The story profiled Brooke Hammerling and her involvement with Silicon Valley and the area's social-media scene. The story goes on to say that tech companies now have to consider influential bloggers such as Om Malik and sites like Tech Crunch and All Things Digital. The story goes on to say that conventional media are circumvented through the ability of "new media publicists" to whisper in the ear of influential CEOs and pundits, which it claimed would in effect have the conventional media outlets seeking out the principals of the story, rather than the other way around.

Hammerling's thesis is that, at its core, PR is all about relationships and that the PR firm or practitioner who has the most solid relationships will be the most successful. While that sounds great in theory, I really question whether there's substantial truth behind the notion.

For starters, many of the influential business leaders cited in the story are influential today because they have a hot-startup; forget for the moment that many of those start-ups don't have a viable business model and wouldn't be surviving right now were it not for venture capital. This is in a business context pretty much the same as a consumer living off a continual stream of income from home-equity loans; it's great as long as there's something to backup the value of the money coming in, but when that's not there, the ships starts to sink.

Social media and citizen journalism are both concepts that show a lot of promise, but let us not forget that the only form of journalism right now that has a business model that's ever shown to be a success is traditional print and broadcast. Yes, their business models are under attack like never before, but at least they've shown they have a viable business model that works. No one's really figured out how to get anyone to pay for original content on the Web, which is the one dirty secret of citizen journalism that no one mentions.

The story also revives the notion that buzz equals long-term benefits. Yet over and over, we've seen a host of companies that generated a ton of buzz -- some of which were mentioned in the article -- that mostly never made it out of the startup phase.

A successful public relations strategy is one that doesn't involve broad generalizations and instead relies on a customized approach for an individual company. We seem to often forget that most of the products and services that are the most profitable offerings for companies aren't often that exciting. Generally, I prefer "benefits" over "buzz" because buzz will eventually die, whereas a company that brings the most benefits to the table for their current and prospective clients or customers will go on to be household names.

While buzz isn't always bad, in many cases, it's better to leave the buzzing to bees.