It started at the beginning of the year, or at least at that point it was noticeable. It got worse in summer and it continues ... the crisis has strong effects on mass media. After publications started to reduce the editorial staff, cut down salaries and any other bonuses, reduced the number of pages and focused more on online...now, mass media owners are using a management buyout solution in order for publications to survive. The discussion is more like “dear editor in chief, if you don’t buy this publication I will close it”...interesting approach, at least this is what happens now with all lifestyle publications of Realitatea Catavencu. It seems that Tabu would be difficult to save...Anyway, crisis strikes again!
The effect of the crisis on media is intensively felt by PR people as well. Now we have fewer publications to pitch our stories to, and in addition, journalists are more focused on advertising than on finding the story. It is said that 20% of journalists today are involved in signing advertising contracts. This is depressing! We see it every day, it is harder to put our story into the media, but as I told one of my colleagues yesterday: we are the lucky ones, we witness first hand these changes, we face them, and we get ahead of them.
PR in Romania is now maturing, PR people learn to be more in touch with journalists needs (or at least they should), they become more creative (because the first hand story is no longer of interest for media) and they need to find alternatives to print media, if they want coverage. Interesting times we are facing! :)
I’ve Moved — Here is the new address
Acum 4 ani
