Blog

There was a fascinating piece in yesterday's Guardian by the people at Endemol who bring us Big Brother. You need to register to read it, and you can find it here. Essentially Endemol head man Peter Bazalgette is crowing - understandably - about the success of the latest Celebrity captive show. The reality show isn't dead, he says, something profound is happening to TV these days.

Well, yes and no. The show was a collossal hit of course, and it gave us all a powerful insight into (for example) that nice Mr. Galloway. But it's not actually revolutionary or new. Putting people into extreme or odd situations and watching them has been happening since Candid Camera. Big Brother simply exaggerates it and spins it out for longer. The real revelation to media bosses over the last year is what's happened on Saturday evenings. Bruce Forsyth, Doctor Who, some music...these elements revived Saturday evening family viewing and made that time of the week primetime again.

And that tells us something profound. It tells us that contrary to the perception that we're all more sophisticated than previous generations of viewers, we're not. We're roughly the same and respond to the same mix in our entertainments. TV executives had, in short, mis-read their audience almost completely.

Funnily enough you don't see many of them writing articles saying so...

Hi folks -

You'll notice a few changes to the blog today, depending on where you came from. Essentially I've been running a number of blogs on similar themes and it's becoming daft, there are too many. So, as of today, if you've been reading my media issues blog at guyclapperton.co.uk or guyclapperton.com, welcome aboard - they're now forwarding here. The media training blog is now not so much dead as amalgamated into this one - if you've just come from my media trainer site, hi there - your stuff will continue to be covered in here. Over the next few days I'll be putting the contents of that blog (minus the comments which I can't transport, many apologies) plus the old media issues blog in here and you'll continue to see a daily (more or less) entry.

So that's it, a more straightforward approach to blogging. Could I ask anyone who's interested in seeing it continue to click through to a few ads on the site - I get a small payment per click, and if enough people do it it'll free enough time for me to address this blog properly.

Thanks
Guy

Of course nobody should doubt that there is racism in the media. There is racism throughout society and the idea that it stops at the media's doorstep is crazy.

But the Soham murders don't demonstrate it at all, which is the example for which Sir Ian Blair has had to apologise. The reason that case caused such outrage is simple - there were children involved, and we don't like it when people kill our kids. Would there have been any difference if they'd been black? I think not. Stephen Lawrence, Damilola Taylor and the black boy known only as Adam who was found dismembered in the Thames were covered massively.

There are several problems with race in the press. Mostly they stem from underrepresentation in my view; there are no non-white editors of the Nationals and when I go to press conferences I can see that reflected in the people attending. But to link the difficulty with Soham, particularly when you're actually being asked about police investigations and not about media at all, is frankly cheap.

I'm out talking to a group of PRs this afternoon under the auspices of The:101. This is a group of journalists who want to tell people how we really think, rather than how you use your e-mail to talk to people instead of actually making contact.

It's a good idea. My only slight reservation is that journalists are as disparate as any other profession and the idea that we can be categorised and spoken to as a group in a generic way and that this should stay meaningful is something of an illusion.

Of course, that's why PR is a tricky job. I'll give my views and with a bit of luck a fight will break out between me and the other speakers when we disagree about something...

A while ago I was reviewing some laptops. One of them was a Dell. Nice machine, looked good for its time (looks like a brick by now but hey, that's progress) and I was pleased to give it some positive feedback.

The courier arrives to pick it up. "Must be terrible machines, these Dells," he says. "That's the fifth one I've picked up today."

Nonononono, I say, this is review kit, it's supposed to go back.

"Yeah, right," he says, no doubt preparing for an evening of mass anti-Dell propaganda at the hostelry of his choosing later on.

You just can't buy that sort of publicity...

Anyone reading yesterday's piece on George Galloway's mis-firing of his current 'build your profile at the cost of your Parliamentary future' campaign might be interested to note that PR Week has covered the story in some depth. Click here for the link, although you need to be a paid subscriber, the mean sods.

I had another one of those great calls this morning. Hello, they said, this is X from XX PR and we have a client who's right in your area. You're a leading journalist in our market and they're dying to meet you.

OK, I say, and we make an appointment. One more thing, they say. Could you send us some clippings and tell us who you write for so we can brief the client? Thanks, Gary.

So let's set ego to one side for the moment. I get called Gary a lot and I understand it's an easy mistake to make. I get called Chapperton, Clapton and Crapperton with alarming regularity. That's fine, they're understandable slips. And I have no particular right to expect people to be familiar with my work.

Unless, that is, they're a communications professional who's just told me how important it is to them. Then I might expect, say, that they've glanced at my website, done a Google search, whatever - I'm not difficult to find.

Guys, if you want to know something about me and don't know who I write for then you're welcome to ask and as long as I'm not on deadline I'm happy to answer. But all this pretence and bigging up, when it's so transparent and when your speciality is supposed to be in communication - I'm interested: who's supposed to benefit?

If there's been one thing you could always say about Labour MPs then it was that they understood spin and the importance of it. They knew about how to handle the press and their public persona.

Even when they left Labour, you might think, the Spinmeistering would not wear off.

So how anyone can be dim enough to allow pictures like this to appear anywhere other than their worst nightmares is beyond my understanding. I hope everyone who voted for this cat-imitating non-Parliament-attending twit will take note.

I had a great experience media training recently. The client was very receptive, and so was their external PR - the session was stimulating for both sides (hint: I love it when this happens).

Then the internal PR walks in.

So we do a practice interview, the client and I. "Not bad," says the internal PR. "But I'd like to hear more of the company name."

I can see why, I say, but someone dropping loads of company mentions in for the sake of it is going to find their quotes on the proverbial cutting room floor. Answering the question, as the client had done, was the better way to get into print. "No, I'd still prefer it with more company mentions. It'll get in."

Hang on. I've been a journalist since 1988. It doesn't make me the world's great expert, but it gives me an idea of what's certain to be dropped or written off as company puff before a piece is collated and written. "Well, we can agree to disagree..."

Anyone else wanting to hire me just so they can sit there and argue, please note the day rate remains the same.

I think my favourite PR strategy of all time was something I came across in my first - and only - full-time editorial job. The editor, a nice guy and good at what he did, was on the scatty side.

So he'd get this call. "Hello, we wanted to check you were still up for meeting our client next Tuesday." Oh, er, of course, he said, and he turned up. This happened about three times and eventually he twigged. Did I, he asked, actually make this appointment? "Er, no," the PR replied. "But we realised you were a bit vague and would probably meet our client if we sounded positive enough."

He went to the meeting because he liked the cheek. Inspired!

So I'm, writing a story for a national paper on cash flow and how it can be seriously nadgered, really easily. And I get let down by a couple of people who were going to call me - it's no big deal, it happens. I go to the Response Source website and ask for help. I tick the box saying yes, I'm interested in personal case studies.

And I get a mail from someone with one of those godawful bland case studies - a computer company has sold a computer or something. I try to help. I mail back and ask, how does this relate to cash flow? It doesn't, says the respondent. But you asked for case studies, so I sent one.

This isn't as bad as the thing that happened a couple of years ago when I was on deadline. A PR had offered me an excellent case study - relevant, germane, it was good. I had a couple of other possibilities so I dropped her a quick note. Can I have an interview, I e-mailed, quickly. Silence. Can I please have an interview, I e-mailed a couple of hours later. Meanwhile other stuff was happening so I lost sight of that one and completed the piece without it. The next day she mails back. Look, she says, quite huffy, we haven't got any interviews, just case studies. I explain, calmly, that when I ask for an interview I actually mean setting up a time when I can interview someone and get my own quotes. She honestly, honestly didn't understand why I'd want to.

Occasionally you find an example of how not to do something that's so good, you have to share it with absolutely everybody. I've just got off the phone to a PR of a major retail chain and had to share this.

I can't name the chain as the story is as yet unpublished and therefore under wraps. However, they were accused of doing something vaguely newsworthy a short while ago, and it's strong enough to use as a hook for a feature. Naturally I wanted to get their input, if only to close the specific issue down in the intro so I could talk more generally in the body of the piece.

So I put the call in. And the PR from hell calls. Sniffy Attitudes R Us, we could call him, or Sniffy for short. What's all this about this old story, he says. I don't think it's that old, I say, well, it is by my standards, he says.

Mistake. Never put a journalist's back up. You can never, ever, win. It's not a bad rule for most business transactions actually.

OK, he says, what do you want to know. Given that I'd already sent a detailed e-mail so he could prepare, that was an odd one. But I ploughed through the e-mail nonetheless. Oh, says Sniffy, we wouldn't comment on that in the press. (As a side note, the client themselves gave me Sniffy's e-mail address but had trouble finding it because they're only using him for the one issue. Which he says they don't talk about to the press.) No comment at all. But I would say we employ thousands of people.

Hang on, I say, that's not strictly relevant.

Yes it is, he says, oh hang on...he goes silent. Anyway, we don't comment to the press. And the other organisation in question is saying ridiculous and untrue things, like [he specifies an allegation that will be in the story]. They're after publicity.

That's a hell of a lot of no-comments. It's made me much more interested in the client and more than ever convinced that I'm onto a good story about them. They'll probably feature more prominently in the published piece now than they would before - if, say, he'd been at least polite and not hinted that I didn't know my job.

Keep it up, Sniffy...

I had an odd experience the other day. I was interviewing some small businesspeople I'd found on a newsgroup - I always like to find my own sources on a story. So they're very friendly, I'm writing the story up and I put the follow-up e-mail in and ask for a picture.

And the mood changes. The response is: "Really, Guy. No."

I'm not sure whether it's just me who thinks that newspapers and magazines are visual media and as such the 'pictures' question is all but bound to come up. I hope it's not just me, or whole chapters of my book are just wrong.

It seemed an extraordinary response.

An interesting point came up at a briefing I held last week. The client had been effectively villified in the letters pages of a well-known newspaper by a customer. The customer, a known letter-writer, had been with the client for many years but had decided to have a go in the press. What, they wanted to know, should they do?

It was a good question and I freely admit, not one I'd come across before. My main experience has been in training people to deal with journalists, not engage in mortal combat across the letters pages of the Nationals. My suggestion was to talk to the customer and assume the old adage about something being last week's news and therefore this week's chip wrappings would hold good. The alternative is to conduct your private business in public.

It was one of those sessions, though, that I really enjoyed because it made me think beyond my usual role as well as making my client do the same. I hope there'll be many more of those...