Friday, June 27, 2008

PR Weeks PR Published In PG



Press Gazette reports that PR Week has had a redesign. The mag has introduced a blue tag to show that a story can be followed up online and claims to have changed the print editorial to make it a " a round-up of the week’s stories and follow up key stories, providing more detail and analysis."


I agree that magazines need to change if they are to be relevant to an online world and I should therefore welcome this news, but:


A weekly news paper was always a round up of the weeks stories with some detail and analysis. Is this PR Week rethink a step far enough? Why not produce the equivalent of "The Week" for readers, with summaries of stories from all media in one place. Then add detailed analysis, comment etc.


Readers of magazines notice very little unless the change is dramatic. If you want to signal that you are really different, change everything, format, paper, style, sequencing of sections, the Editor, the strapline, the cover page - everything. Then the reader will notice.


The facsimile of the new PR Week and the old is shown at the top. Which one is the new one? They both look like traditional b2b news weeklies to me.


Still PG, of which I am very fond, has given up on asking questions it seems, and has just burped the content of the press release. I thought journalism was about taking what someone says and then testing its voracity with an alternate or challenging view. Apparently not. Silly old me.

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