Up to speed in the digital age

Catching up on some blog reading after NewsGator let me down for several days, I run across a fascinating post from Doug Fisher.

Emedded in the post is one key comment: "I’ve heard from more than one fellow executive the tale of promising young reporters taking jobs in PR because that somehow seemed more palatable doing this online stuff."

The attitude seems silly and self-defeating, especially considering the latest news on newspaper circulation.

But as for public relations and journalism, "this online stuff" is important in both. Doug's students will fare better in either world, because they are learning how to communicate with an audience in ways that audience wants to receive information. Being a reporter is difficult enough as it is, so it's hard to understand why a young person would want to tie his or her hands down because they had some romantic view of "The Front Page" days.

For those who end up going into PR, or migrating there as I did, good public relations today also requires a knowledge of how people receive information, and where they get it, and how to effectively use the online world to communicate with them.

I will add that I think it's not surprising to run across intransigence among some young people. I was much more sure of what I knew then than what I know now. And I think that's a country song title, somewhere.