Building the bridge

For a long time I’ve been contemplating a subject for a blog.  I didn’t want it to be just another new media, PR blog from some guy spouting off on all the latest gadgets and outlets available in the ever-changing world of marketing.

As part of the “older” PR generation (I hate to admit it), I lived through the online avalanche of the late 90’s, when everyone had to have a website.  Then it took them years to figure out what to do with it.  The Dot-com race also was waged between ad agencies and PR firms on which specialty would be able to take advantage of this new tool and actually be able to make money from it.  Sadly to say, in my humble opinion, we on the PR side were left in the dust.

This time around I’m thinking things will be different.  As newspaper shrink and local TV personalities get laid off with as much regularity as late season meltdown by my beloved New York Mets, it is the PR folks who are well positioned to take advantage in this latest online shift.

This blog will chronicle my journey as an “older” media relations and PR pro who realizes that while newspapers, TV newsrooms and magazines are shrinking, the same tools that made me and the folks who work with me successful can be used in this brave new world of social marketing.  We have the tools that our ad brothers and sisters may not.  We have the content and we have the experience of convincing this new generation of reporters that what we have to say is newsworthy. 

There are some new rules to the game that we have to learn.  Quite frankly the new social media should take a few pointers from the older generation of journalists but that’s for another day.

In the next few years we will continue to see this migration from old to new.  For now we all have one foot on either side of the cliff.  It’s time for us to build the bridge.

Jon Newman

In 2002 Jon cofounded The Hodges Partnership and has helped to grow it into one of the country’s largest public relations firms (based on O’Dwyer’s annual rankings). Jon has taught communications as an adjunct professor at VCU, speaks regularly at conferences and meetings and blogs and tweets about public relations and marketing issues.

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