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V I E W P O I N T   The
Smithson Report:Removing Issues Management From Its Strait-Jacket by Kate Smithson cont from page 4 From Text-based to Multi-media In the new model, public relations professionals would work with audio, graphics, video and text to create web pages, video news releases and diagnostic databases. They would be equally comfortable with satellite technology, the use of real-time information, information synthesis, and analysis of information in any form. They can operate digital and video cameras, create multi-media presentations and work with all the associated software applications. They would produce a wider variety of products using this expanded base of raw materials -- the data is no longer text -- it is multi media, and new products are created to reflect this new technology. From News release to Multi formats In the old model, the template for the news release is unchanging, static, sterile. In the new model, new templates are developed for each media, and updated regularly. They include audio, video, text and graphics. From Corporate speak to Human language The old model uses a form of corporate speak that is now obsolete. People have an aversion to the soothing, humourless monotone voice of corporations. Recognizing that technical, scientific and academic language has its place, the new model uses plainer language that is natural, open and direct. In the new model, public relations professionals help their clients to develop a new voice.
A digital divide exists in public relations communications methods. Still stuck in the middle of the 20th Century, the way we communicate now means we are the "have nots" of the digitally communicating world. Most of us don't spend a lot of time researching issues on the internet; we don't know how our issues are being dealt with by alternative media; and we don't converse in anything but text. If the public relations industry were to move in the following directions:
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