One of the most valuable resources at an event like the recent Media Relations Summit conference in San Francisco is the opportunity to listen to what journalists themselves have to say about how they interact with PR people. I attended several panels with reporters from publications ranging from the New York Times to CNET. The reporters were fairly candid about works and what does not. Here are some key tips I gleaned from the summit reporter sessions.

• Reporters STILL hate PR spam and irrelevant pitches. Such tactics are unlikely to generate coverage, it turns out. Shocking, I know.

• The press release is still important. With all the talk about new media, I was surprised to hear virtually every reporter sing the praises of the good old fashioned press release, which they use to ensure accuracy and to organize information.

• Print journalists are no longer breaking news. This is a major change that has happened over the last several years. Now, more than ever, journalists are looking for stories that analyze recent news trends. Online media, on the other hand, can be fiercely competitive for breaking stories.

“Do it Wrong Quickly: What Corporations Need from PR in Today’s Transforming Marketplace”Mike Moran begins the afternoon keynote with what is perhaps the most salient point of the whole conference. We don’t need to be the expert in new media or blogs. We need to be the expert in how to solve our client’s problems. Otherwise, we might as well give up. We’ll never be the blog expert because the blog experts exist, and they’re not getting any dumber.

Moran’s tone is optimistic, and not at all condescending, which is a refreshing change from many speakers on this topic, who seem to want to tsk-tsk us for not having discovered social networking years ago. Oh, and they are eager to inform you that whichever social media platform you have succeeded in engaging was obsolete in 1999. Moran eschews alarmism to good effect.

PR types tend to view new media as a sort of death knell for Public Relations. Moran sees them as an opportunity. The new model allows Public Relations to deliver hard results where we know we are making an impact on behalf of our clients. We can target more closely, measure results more accurately, and respond more quickly to customer feedback.

So, between Lee Odden losing his camera in the bay, and my failure to bring a charger to town, this will be less-than-visual post. Feel free to Google for a stock photo image of Robert Scoble, if you want the full effect.Scoble begins by informing us that he doesn’t have slides, but rather wants to give us a glimpse into his life. This sets the tone for a very informal presentation that introduces a variety of new social media platforms (even I wasn’t familiar with FriendFeed, but then, I’m something of a dinosaur). As such, I’ll give you all a very informal blog post.

Among his Twitter friends are none other than Barack Obama, yet more proof that his campaign is making an earnest effort to engage new media. I suppose all the campaigns have some social media presence, but Obama seems to be the only one effectively using it. A blog is just a blog until someone reads it. Then it becomes a tactic.

I am familiar with sliderocket, but Scoble illuminates perhaps its most valuable feature, which is version control. Presentations tend to be collaborative efforts, and revamping existing presentations to accommodate edits can be a chore. PowerPoint in real-time is a powerful idea, I think.

“Evergreen Magic: How To Make News When There’s No News”

This session is being introduced as PR for the “little guy”. That’s apropos. After a series of case studies highlighting all the great work Disney was able to do great things (on a shoestring budget, or so we were told), it’s hard not to wonder what a company with lesser brand awareness can do to create ripples.

Sandra Fathi begins by citing a familiar dilemma. Company a buys company b and launches product x gives reporter z’s, unless your company happens to be Microsoft (or, say, Disney). Her advice is to marry the message to the reporters needs. This should seem obvious, but it is vitally important to sell the importance of this to the client.

To the specific advice, Sandra proposes that smaller companies “ride the wave of trends”. Well, yeah. Isn’t that what public relations people do? Easier said than done, though, eh? Sorry, I’ll keep the cynicism in check. So what does she propose?

“The Future of PR: How New Technologies Will Transform the Way We Communicate

Duncan Wardle, VP of Global Pr for Disney Parks begins with a classic “Googlezon” 7 minute video (EPIC 2014) laying the groundwork for the death of “the fourth estate”. In the news (Google-run) future, media has ceased to be about reporting or news, and has become simply a collection of information. It’s an interesting (albeit histrionic) warning, and one that is all the more relevant in light of Charlie Rose’s admonition about ethics and authenticity. The video concludes with a world in which all news has been reduced to mere trivia.

As we engage social media, media relations folks are taking a larger role in crafting the message. The very credibility that makes earned media so valuable is potentially, as Ms. Shapiro would say, “up for grabs”. At a meetup of social media experts last night, one noted the trend of companies outsourcing social media efforts to India. Talk about defeating the purpose.

Todd Grossman – VP Sales, MultiVu
Todd begins by Introducing to YouTube, and online video media. The VNR is dead, he declares. He’s right, of course (VNRs as a tactic had been on life support anyway), but where’s the news here? New media are certainly exciting, but I think we need to transcend this “aw shucks” paradigm when it comes to new technology. It exists. It’s awesome. But our industry doesn’t have time to gawk at the spectacle.

That’s not a knock on Todd, who does a good job keeping us up to date, but a general industry observation.

Faye Shapiro – “Why PR Needs a New Narrative”
Stepping in for Jim Sinkinson, Ms. Shapiro declared earned, unpaid media to be up for grabs. Public Relations managers are being retitled Chief Conversation Officers, she informs us. That is just the sort of thing that social networkers love to make fun of. She declares that this is a brand new direction for PR. Is this true? Does a change of tactics (wholesale thought they may be) constitute a new direction? Are the fundamentals changing? I’m not sure that’s a settled question.

“The Art of the Story: Finding the Heart of Drama”

With the Media Relations Summit 2008 beginning in earnest tomorrow, I’m like a kid in a candy store. A very adult candy store, mind you, though there is candy available for an astronomical fee in the hotel wet bar. But for someone who digs this stuff (and I dig this stuff), the opportunity to pick and choose amongst a smorgasbord of interesting and important topics in the PR industry is like, well, see above.

That the Summit is held in San Francisco doesn’t hurt either.

The summit kicks off with one wail of a bag of chocolates, a keynote address by Charlie Rose entitled “The Art of the Story: Finding the Heart of Drama”. In an industry that often forgets what it is supposed to be offering (to clients and journalists alike), what better way to begin than by reminding us. We can talk about the latest tactics and the new media we can’t ignore, but it’s useless without the basics. Oh, and I happen to be a fan.