Wednesday, August 03, 2005
New Old Story
I've written about this story before but I bring it up again because it is an example of how few changes there are in communications. I was a one-man film reporting band in the 1970s. So were the other eight reporters in the TV station. It was harder then because we shot and edited film, and we carried rigs that weighed close to 40 pounds.
This fellow wants to go back to the future. I agree with him, by the way. You learn more when you have control over your product and a good mentor. I was lucky to have a great mentor. Each day with every story, I knew what went wrong, and what I had to fix the next day. Over a year and a half, I learned to be a TV journalist. I was never as good as my mentor, but he was and is the best in the business.
There is no secret that I believe PR practitioners should be jacks-of-all-trades. We don't know what clients will need to communicate messages effectively, so we should prepare to do any number of things for them.
Communications skills are lifelong learning. There is never a time when one has mastered message or media. I have long been unhappy with resistance to learning among many PR practitioners. They don't want to be bothered with anything outside of what they know. As I have written here too often, I spent years trying to teach practitioners to use technology and new media. I failed. They didn't see any need for it at the time. Today, many have made progress, but they lag. And, they are not disturbed about the fact that they are behind. I don't understand that attitude: I never will.
This fellow wants to go back to the future. I agree with him, by the way. You learn more when you have control over your product and a good mentor. I was lucky to have a great mentor. Each day with every story, I knew what went wrong, and what I had to fix the next day. Over a year and a half, I learned to be a TV journalist. I was never as good as my mentor, but he was and is the best in the business.
There is no secret that I believe PR practitioners should be jacks-of-all-trades. We don't know what clients will need to communicate messages effectively, so we should prepare to do any number of things for them.
Communications skills are lifelong learning. There is never a time when one has mastered message or media. I have long been unhappy with resistance to learning among many PR practitioners. They don't want to be bothered with anything outside of what they know. As I have written here too often, I spent years trying to teach practitioners to use technology and new media. I failed. They didn't see any need for it at the time. Today, many have made progress, but they lag. And, they are not disturbed about the fact that they are behind. I don't understand that attitude: I never will.
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