 |
© Newswise.
All Rights Reserved.
|
|
 |
 |
| Issue No. 200612
| December 2006
|
|
 Printer-friendly version |
The PIOnet Newsletter is sponsored by Newswise and Dick Jones Communications
Feature Editor: Dick Jones Editor/Publisher: Roger Johnson
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
PIOnet Newsletter is produced monthly to support media relations' vital role in integrated marketing for your institution. This role is not always adequately recognized, understood, or acknowledged. Our goal is to give you data, arguments, evidence, and ideas to enhance the understanding of and appreciation for media relations at your institution.
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
 | | |
| |
 |
| |
View full list of jobs in higher education.
| |  |
|
|
Protect Your Journalist Contacts
by Dick Jones
Dick Jones Communications
Dick Schaap answered his own phone, always by the second ring.
It was startling at first to hear the voice of the sports guru of ABC and ESPN, especially to a PR guy like me, accustomed to breaching layers of human shields before getting to talk to the person at the top.
Dick Schaap and I had a good professional relationship for many years. But don't think this is some name-dropping column about what a good PR guy I am. It's a cautionary tale about your journalist contacts and how important it is to protect them. So listen up.
Dick and I were what I call "professional friends" meaning that we had a good working relationship. He respected my news judgment and we shared similar senses of humor. I could make him laugh and that's never a bad thing. As a result I could usually get his ear for a good story pitch. And over the years he did numerous stories for ABC and ESPN that were of incalculable benefit to my clients.
Yes, we had lunch a couple of times but we were not social friends. I was never invited to his famous Super Bowl parties, for example.
When things go wrong, you can usually point to one of the seven deadly sins. Mine was avarice. One day a request for proposal from a prestigious university arrived on my desk. One of the things they wanted was for me to list as references four national journalists whom they could call about my work. This was a yellow flag to me. I had never seen that request before. But I really wanted to work with that school. So I listed four prominent journalists. One was Dick Schaap.
My relationship with Dick was never the same after that. He wasn't icy but he was definitely cooler. My calls produced more answering machine messages than conversations with him. The witty two-line letters that he would dash off on a manual typewriter a couple times a year and send to me in the mail, stopped coming. And he never again did a story that I proposed. In his mind, I had crossed a line.
I tried to figure how to make things right. Then in 2001 Dick went into Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan for routine hip replacement surgery. Complications ensued and he died.
The other three journalists whom I listed as references? Those relationships, thank God, were unimpaired. But I made a vow right then never again to put a journalist in a position where he or she would have to serve as a reference for me. It's not something they are comfortable with in the best of circumstances.
Not long ago, I got another RFP from another prestigious university asking me to list journalists as references. I gave them everything else that they wanted, but not that. Didn't get the job. And that's okay with me.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Communicating Science: Giving Research a Voice
by Lucas Held
Director of Communications, The Wallace Foundation
Asked what he thought about Western civilization, Mahatma Gandhi was said to have quipped: "I think it would be a good idea!"
Weary public relations professionals asked what they think about integrating communications planning into scientific research efforts might be tempted to lob a similar reply. For them, a new study, Communicating Science: Giving Research a Voice, will offer welcome validation.
This 35-page guide, aimed at researchers, policymakers and decisionmakers, makes several important points.
- Effective communications is key to harnessing the potential value of a study.
- Communications planning should be thought of as an integral part of the research, not an "add-on"; thus, planning should be done at the front end, not at the back.
- Communications messages will vary across the life cycle of a research project.
- Judgments about what results to communicate should be based on both the quality of the findings and their potential interest.
- Scientists should think carefully, in advance of a study's release, about how they want to answer questions about the policy implications of their findings.
A particular contribution Communicating Science makes is to elaborate the notion that communications are different, but equally valuable, at each of three phases in a research project. For example, in its initial phase communications might focus on recruiting participants; in the middle phase on creating forums between researchers and policymakers; and in the later phase, on communicating results based on relevance and merit. Also useful is the guide's note that comparative studies that compare a group of studies, or a population before or after a treatment, are of particular interest to the media. And its general advice that the end-point of gathering and analyzing data is not simply publication but "also informing the public debate and educating the policy process, wherever appropriate" will be welcome.
The guide, however, is marred by several flaws that might have been corrected by tougher editing. There are several typos. Tables describing audiences are occasionally inconsistent with the text; for example, the media is listed in the text as helping researchers learn about research outside their field, but is missing in a key table. Most importantly, although the book's title is Communicating Science, its subject is almost exclusively applied health research--a narrow, and relatively media-friendly segment of scientific research. The advice that the "media is primed to deliver research findings" may raise unrealistic expectations among other scientists in, say, metallurgy, physics, or botany, about the relative ease of winning media coverage. Because coverage of many studies is hard-won, some understanding of barriers would have been helpful.
Amid the useful data about cost, and the impressive media results, is some advice one could quarrel with. The advice to create a separate brand for a research institute ignores the fact that, depending on an institute's resources, a careful, co-branded strategy with a "parent" organization might be far more effective in promoting the institute's work. Requiring a degree in journalism or public relations is not, in my experience, a prerequisite and perhaps not even a "best practice" for hiring a communications staffer. What's more important is the ability to think, write and speak clearly and strategically. And while standard fare for media interviews, the advice to "develop one main message and repeat it" no matter the question may be bad advice for anyone who wants a continuing relationship with a reporter. As Jerry Weissman, the author of In the Line of Fire, counsels, better to be prepared to confidently answer the toughest questions that may come.
And for a book that extols clarity, it is challenging to understand what the relationship is between the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers and the Partners with Tobacco Use Research Centers program from which the guide stems. The cover gives a reader little idea who has sponsored it, a missed opportunity considering the prestige of both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
These flaws should not undercut the contributions made by the guide and its three authors--especially their effort to support the larger goal: helping communications ensure that science informs both public policy and personal decisionmaking. While it may not fully live up to its title, public relations professionals will find the table of communication products and audiences useful, while researchers curious about whether communications can potentially help them will find an affirmative yes.
A pdf file of the study, Communicating Science: Giving Research a Voice, can be downloaded here.
We invite your discussion of this topic on PIOnet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
