The Smithson Report:
Removing Issues Management From Its Strait-Jacket
by Kate Smithson

The current public relations model uses technology as an electronic filing system, and as an electronic way of distributing its paper documents. We send paper documents to ourselves and to the media using faxes, e-faxes, or email, and we post our paper online. We still work within the 8x11 space, even though we write using word processors.
The new public affairs model would tap further into technology, following some paths already taken, and perhaps forging new paths. A web-driven public affairs model would respond quickly to emerging information campaigns; it would converse with its audiences, create databases based on feedback, evaluate demographics, create content designed for specific audiences, deliver its messages very efficiently, ask for more feedback, and tabulate the results. And that's only for the responsive kind of communications. This new model would also create proactive, web-based information based on its new mandate to engage the world.

From Using Traditional media to becoming our own media

The dominance of traditional media is being eroded by new technology. People are moving to other sources for their information, Web usage is growing, and traditional media is gradually becoming less efficient at reaching target audiences with effective, meaningful information. Audiences are fragmented, and this fragmentation is accelerating. Many special interest groups understand the world of media has changed. Their new credo is "Don't hate the media, become the media!" These groups stopped relying on traditional media as their sole vehicle for communications several years ago. They view traditional media as only one way to get their message across. They might stage an event for the evening news and issue a news release, but they don't stop there. They also have their own videographers, photographers and writers there. They create their own version of events, post it online, produce documentaries, show films to coffee house groups, launch information campaigns, mail e-newsletters, and discuss their views in chat rooms and discussion groups. They no longer rely on 15 or 30 or 60 seconds of exposure once or twice in a news cycle. They see that as a place to start -- and they use it as a springboard to do their real communicating, face-to-face, online, to many different audiences.
A new communications model for public relations would use traditional media as one of many tools; but it would also become its own media, targeting its own audiences, and delivering its own messages.

3. Packaging

Around the world, the existing public relations method of packaging information continues to be text based. It focuses on the news release, and it uses language as a barrier. A new public relations model for packaging information would be multi-media, providing many versions of the message, in many different formats. It would also use simpler, more human language.

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