High Road Communications

“A PR practitioner should always think like a journalist.”

Unless you’ve been a journalist, it can be hard to think like one. It involves rewiring a mindset steeped in PR principles and constantly asking “who cares?” and “so what?”

It’s a concept that all successful PR agencies and professionals know and follow, but it’s an abstraction that can be difficult for less experienced consultants to wrap their heads around.

Looking at this recent “Journalism vs PR” debate organized by the Media Standards Trust and the University of Westminster definitely posed some interesting questions, but more importantly hammered home the point that the traditional media landscape is changing. The successful PR pros will be the ones the best at injecting client messages within this brave new media world. At the end of the day, PR is platform-neutral and seamlessly shifting to collaborating with whoever the key influencers are is the ultimate goal.

And if PR is the process of influencing attitudes and behaviour, adopting a journalistic outlook takes it a step further – developing media materials that focus on telling a valuable and “headline-worthy” story first and foremost.