Light blogging ahead

Just a quick post to let you know that the light blogging which has struck Hackflack in recent weeks looks like lingering a little longer.

After several months trying, Mrs H and I have sold our house so all my blogging/feedreading time is being spent arranging paperwork and looking for alternative accommodation for ourselves and our two cherubs.

Here's hoping the interlude will be brief.

Let's kill carcasts.

OK, I'm going to stick my neck out here and talk about something which has been bothering me for quite a while.

The problem is carcasts - comments to podcasts which are recorded while driving.

I don't like them.

No, I'll be honest - I really don't like them.

Before I get into an unholy row, let me be clear: I am not questioning the safety of any individual's driving on any occasion in the past. I appreciate there are a dozen reasons why a hands-free recording on your own in the car is not the same as holding a two-way conversation while holding a phone to your ear, and I don't know what steps each commenter has taken to make him or herself safe before sending their comment in.

My concern is simply that when I hear one, I think of adverts like this:

For me, that means I am so distracted - like watching an episode of Casualty waiting for disaster to strike - that I don't listen to a word the 'carcaster' is saying.

Surely, if a comment is worth making, it's worth taking a few moments when you're not at the wheel to record it.

Technorati Tags: Carcast,road safety

Hack to Flack - and back! Chris Holland

When I left journalism back in 2005, I did so with one message ringing loud and clear: "It's a one way street. Get this wrong, and there's no way back."

Such is the relationship between journalism and PR that these were the words of encouragement from my then news editor - and to be honest, I was flattered to be getting anything.

But one person who has proved that the road from journalism to PR is by no means a one way street is Chris Holland , who has not only gone back to being a hack, he's even gone straight back into his last job as a journalist - the one he left 24 years ago.

I caught up with him a matter of weeks into his new (or should that be old) job - as business reporter for the Bradford Telegraph and Argus.

Back then, the title was Industrial Correspondent, and he'd been in that job eight years when he left in 1984. Like most, he had served his time as a general news reporter at the T&A, and four years prior to that training at the Shipley Times and Express.

With 15 years experience of journalism, eight of which were covering business, Chris' first job in PR was, quite naturally, at the CBI.

But it was another 19 years - eight at the CBI followed by 11 in house at Bradford and Bingley, before he took his first agency role at Green Communications.

And it was following two years at Green, followed by a further two years of consultancy work for NFU Mutual and law firm Addleshaw Goddard, that brought him full circle to reporting on business for the T&A.

Phew - that's some CV!

So with all that experience of both sides of the fence, what really surprised Chris about working in PR?

"The main surprise was the amount of briefing that I had to give to senior business people," said Chris. "The level of paranoia about the media was startling.

"The other big difference was how long it could take from starting a project to actually seeing some results. The need to meet tight deadlines became a thing of the past (except for answering press calls)."

Some 25 years on, those I speak to who are just making the move now say exactly the same thing! But they also add that they begin to see journalists differently from this side of the fence. Was that the same for Chris 25 years ago?

"What surprised me most about journalists, in some cases, was how much they rely on PRs to write their stuff for them," he told me.

"In others, particularly personal finance, it surprised me how knowledgeable they were on their subject. Having been a journalist helped enormously in dealing with journalists as they recognised that you understood their needs."

But with understanding their needs comes understanding what drives journalists ... and that can soon have you looking through rose-tinted spectacles.

"I initially missed the immediacy and the objectivity of being a journalist," said Chris. "I suppose I also missed the profile that regular by-lines provides and being at the centre of things. I never missed the poor pay."

Which is why you never returned, until now?

"I suppose not too many PRs go back into regional journalism as the pay remains poor in comparison. But having been on both sides of the fence I see it as an advantage in doing my job.

"I came back because I needed a job and was interested to see if I could still cut the mustard as a journalist. It suited my personal circumstances to move back and so far I’m enjoying it."

Seeing how Chris has managed to shift from one profession to the other, then back, seemingly effortlessly, almost makes a mockery of the way the relationship between journalism and PR becomes so strained at times.

But who better to evaluate why that is than a man with a staggering 40 years working either in or with the news industry.

"I suppose there are still some PRs around who just don't understand the world of newspapers," Chris told me when I asked him why he thought that relationship was often fraught.

"Dry ice and dancing girls type PR was never my thing, but badly written press releases (from which I am now suffering) and nuisance calls about stories of no relevance continue to give PRs a bad name.

"On the other side some journalists can be unnecessarily rude and arrogant and treat PRs like dirt.
"What we shouldn't forget, though, is that these are exceptions to the rule. Most people on both sides of the fence realise that they need each other."

So the relationship isn't all one way - and nor is the career path.

Technorati Tags: Bradford,Chris holland,Hack to Flack,Telegraph & Argus

Should England practise penalties? or 'In favour of Crisis Comms Plans'

Few England footballers are more acutely aware than Stuart Pearce that sooner or later, a penalty shoot out will come up - and how the team deals with it will influence their reputation for years to come.

For years, there has been a debate as to whether or not England should practise taking penalties to help deal with this possibility - especially as England have a knack of losing at shoot-outs.

The argument against is fairly simple - you cannot simulate the pressure, the circumstances, the tiredness of being involved in a winner-takes-all shoot out after 120 minutes of intense, knock-out football. Therefore, there's no point practising.

Stuart Pearce took a different view with, I would argue, a pretty good result.

Bear in mind that this was the same man who, as a player, the nation had admired for stepping up to take a penalty in a shoot out against Spain in 1996, having failed from 12 yards six years earlier.

By 2007, Pearce was the head of England's Under 21s. As the European Championships drew closer, he chose to end a friendly his young players had against Slovakia with a penalty shoot out. The game had already been won (5-0 as it happens). The pressure wasn't there. But the tiredness and the crowd were, and it was as close as the manager could get to making his players experience the real thing.

Weeks later, the team's run in the championship depended on a shoot out at the end of a semi-final against the host country, the Netherlands. Pearce's England lost, but not before they had gone through a virtually unprecedented 16 spot kicks. They had come far closer than many senior England teams had to winning a shoot out.

Did any of the team decide in advance where to put the ball, then stick to it? I dare say they didn't. Ultimately, did it help them win? No. Do either of those things make the exercise a waste of time?

I hear echoes of a lot of these arguments around crisis comms plans. Last week, Sarah Dean Forrester said in an FIR interview that crisis comms plans were a huge waste of time.

I think Sarah knows her stuff. I worked with her from time to time during six years reporting in the North West, while she was head of press office at Greater Manchester Police and I have tremendous respect for the job she did there.

However, I'd take issue with her point about plans.

Of course, a plan which does not fit the culture of the company, department or team it's written for will never work. Whatever efforts can be made to make the plan as close to reality as possible should be.

When the crisis then happens, the crisis team - the penalty takers in the earlier analogy - have then to realise that the circumstances are unique, and may not fit the plan.

After all, crises never pan out as you would expect them to in real life, but is that a reason not to bother, or a reason to pay even more attention to being honest about how the individual team members and the team as a whole would react under pressure when writing and drilling the plans in the first place.

And that is really my main point; that what is written in the plan is not necessarily the most important aspect of the exercise - though I still think a well-written plan can be exceptionally useful. The crucial element which can create the platform for success (or otherwise) is not the plan on the shelf, it's the experience of preparing it.

Pearce's young charges weren't planning where to put their shots for future shoot outs - they were practising, going through a drill.

By simulating a shoot-out situation, they are going through the decision making process that is required, and doing so under pressure. When they do find themselves in a shoot out, thanks to this and other rehearsals, the instinctive decision is the right one.

This is the point of a crisis communications plan - not to dust it off from the shelf where it has stood for months just because you've identified that particularly crisis beginning to unfold. Rather, that the process of preparing it is a form of rehearsal which will enable you to operate by instinct under pressure, and ultimately look back on the situation knowing the decisions you made under pressure were the same as you would have with time and planning.

If part of that is because you had correctly forecast elements of the crisis and were ready for them, or prepared a thorough checklist that you followed, or delivered your messages through pre-identified channels, then all the better.

Does it matter if the rest of the plan didn't apply in that particular real life scenario? Not one bit. Does that make it a waste of time? No again. When it comes to protecting, and if possible enhancing, your reputation in emergency or crisis scenarios, is any advantage you can give yourself worth having? Absolutely.

[Credit: Images of Stuart Pearce from bbc.co.uk]

Technorati Tags: Crisis Communications,Crisis Plans,Penalties,England,Stuart Pearce