Today’s guest post is authored by Katrina Dene, the Bateman Group’s summer intern and a third-year journalism student at the University of Oregon. Katrina looks at how the use of technology and recent emergence of social media have impacted both the practice and study of PR in equally significant ways.

As I enter my third year of college and take my first steps toward a career in public relations, one thing became abundantly clear to me during my summer internship at the Bateman Group — technology has had equally a profound impact on the study of PR as it has on the practice of PR. The senior PR practitioners at the Bateman Group were quick to point out when they were in college; the majority of academic programs geared towards the study of PR were woefully out of touch with what was being practiced in the field. They were genuinely surprised when I informed them that the classroom experience has evolved dramatically in 20 years. To say it’s taken a quantum leap since the members of Generation X were college students would be a huge understatement. Gone are the days when students showed up to class with just a pen and a notebook, furiously taking hand-written notes as the professor lectured or worked the chalkboard. Today, I still show up to a lecture with my pen and notebook, but also with my laptop, BlackBerry and, of course, my i>Clicker.

i>Clicker Remote

The University of Oregon, along with many other schools, has implemented the i>Clicker system in quite a few of its lectures. For those unfamiliar, an i>Clicker is a remote control-driven auto responder device that allows professors to ask multiple choice questions and instantly present a graph of the results. Amazing what technology can do, right? It’s an instant progress report for the teacher to determine if they’re getting their message across by quizzing the students in real time.

As far as student/teacher relations go; however, this is actually a little troublesome. I am no longer Katrina Dene, third-year student. I am now a serial number with 89% accuracy for in-class pop quizzes. I become an arbitrary number on an arbitrary scale. While this new use of technology has its advantages, particularly within large classes of 100+ students, professors should not lose site of the importance of building true relationships with their student and finding new ways to engage them both on- and off-line. Interestingly, the emergence of social media has helped.

In another one of my classes, the structure of our lectures was impacted directly by social media, perhaps to an extreme. Instead of the traditional lecture, questions and response format, our class added video chat and instant message via Skype along with Twitter micro-blogging to the mix. As an alternative to listening to lectures on the PR trade, we “Skyped” with real-world professionals, other professors, graduate students and government officials who relayed their personal experiences for us to learn by example. Furthermore, students were not only encouraged to raise their hands to ask questions, but also Tweet the inquires to our class hash tag on Twitter. In turn, our graduate teaching fellows were hard at work monitoring the hash tag activity and answering questions for the 160-person class.

So what does this say about the future of communications in the teaching of communications? Well, social media has allowed us to build and maintain a network of relationships both inside and outside of the university like never before possible. Using video chat enabled us to learn from industry experts and working professionals from all over the world. But has this shift damaged the treasured teacher/student relationship? I ponder this while remembering one basic principal: One strong relationship is more powerful than ten weak ones. More traditionally: Quantity does not necessarily ensure quality.

Yes, the integration of technology with the college classroom has made the experience much more automated and a bit less personal.  On the flip side, social media has made the opportunity to take a more active role in one’s own education easier than ever before.  The members of Generation Y have grown to accept two-way communication between student and teacher to be the norm. The classroom has evolved from a place of simply consuming information and reciting it back to one where students have become active participants in the creation of content and the learning experience itself. What better way to prepare us for an economy where successful entry requires you to do much more than just intern. You must also cultivate a personal network of influencers, seek out mentors, take time to volunteer, keep up on current events, follow the stock market, maintain a personal blog and basically do whatever it takes to stick out in today’s uber-competitive job market. Learning today is much different than learning yesterday, the key is to adapt and apply each change in a way that allows you to be better equipped for tomorrow.

Much to the glee of journalists and the chagrin of PR practitioners, another “PR blunder” has hit the airwaves, this time under the pen of the folks at TechCrunch. Although I am always shocked by the carelessness exhibited by people pitching journalists when they KNOW if they make a mistake, there is a good chance they will be publicly chastised and humiliated by the recipient (enter in waves of awkwardness as you think of 80s high school movies…or your own high school movie), I am even more stunned by the passionate anger expressed in some of the comments people make about these honest mistakes. Take this one, for example:

i think future posts should embarass (sic) the hell out of PR Flacks and not omit their names or companies.
that is the only way they will learn.
by disguising their identity, you still save them face to screw up again.

Spelling error aside, taken out of context this could be in reference to fur-wearing celebutants or people that don’t clean up their dog poop forcing you to be ostracized in your office when you step in it rather than someone that was a bit careless and hasty to hit the send button while doing their job. I am not saying that this isn’t “embarassing” – it pains me just as much to read these terrible pitch letters as it does to watch the aftermath of “PR is the bane of the my existence” posts – but I am often floored by the anger directed towards the PR industry. I don’t want to get into a huge discussion about why this is, or a debate about the validity and need for public relations–if you are reading this blog, you probably understand the value that we bring to our clients–but I do want to suggest two things.

One: If you work in PR, pull yourself together. These slipups happen, but our industry is under constant scrutiny and there are journalists out there just WAITING for an opportunity to pounce on you. Social media means they can do so immediately, with no cooling off period. Take your time in doing your research and writing your emails so you aren’t pitching an infrastructure software product upgrade to Wired magazine or Oprah, or addressing a journalist as “insert name here.”  It is that simple.

Two: this goes out to those that take sadistic pleasure in these types of mistakes. To you, I also say pull yourself together. The anger is bizarre and actually scary in the “I will hunt you down” sense. Seriously. I’ve been doing this a long time and I have seen my fair share of journalist errors, including those that have sent my client into a furious frenzy or a legal scramble. I can also bet that the crazies ardently posting response after response to every entry from Michael Arrington shouldn’t be throwing stones in a glass house either.  Every well-known brand I can think of would be nowhere today without a solid communications strategy. To compete in this crowded marketplace, companies big and small must be able to communicate their value proposition and differentiators. (So I lied; I dabbled into the value of PR just a bit. I couldn’t help myself. ) So to the crazies: PR is not going away. For the health and safety of others, please redirect your energy into something more productive, like your own business, or learning to be more accepting of people less perfect than yourself.

Today’s post is the first in a new series debuting on Bateman Banter we’re calling: “The New J-School”, a semi-regular examination of the evolving nature of journalism in today’s digital age. The month of January brought to light some interesting developments we feel signal the start of a much larger trend — one that could swallow the conventional ad-supported media whole — the rise of corporate-sponsored journalism.

In the last week, two former BusinessWeek editors disclosed new deals to write for the corporate blogs of companies they used to cover. Steve Wildstrom, until recently the Personal Technology editor for BusinessWeek, forged a relationship with graphics chip giant NVIDIA to write for the company’s popular nTersect blog. This kicked off with a well-publicized trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where Steve reported live from the show floor. Wildstrom’s former BusinessWeek colleague Steven Baker also announced ongoing deal to write for SmartData Collective, a community of blogs sponsored by data warehousing leader Teradata.

Either by choice or necessity, more and more journalists are becoming independent agents forced to fend for themselves in the open market. Wildstrom and Baker are at the forefront of this new breed of journalist cutting their own deals, and, in the process, figuring out how to do the reporting, get paid and deal responsibly with ethical issues. As these free agents seek out new opportunities to make money, they’re finding very little coming from traditional advertising-based media outlets. There are, however, an increasing number of corporations producing their own content and becoming media companies in their own right, and many of them need help.

For even the largest companies, maintaining a corporate blog with the kind of content needed to become the “must-read” site in a given sector is an uphill battle. At best, there may be 2-3 budding thought leaders in every organization, but the responsibility of writing thought-provoking, compelling content week in and week out is burdensome when it’s an adjunct to a full-time job. The burden is then passed onto the PR team to clean up poorly written or conceived copy until it’s suitable for publishing; nudge others to complete their drafts; and source more and more “content creators” within the company to share the burden.

Cutting deals with former journalists brings a new level of professionalism, respect and credibility to a corporate blog while alleviating the burden that has fallen on the marketing and PR professionals who produce it. Moreover, these deals allow the newly freelance journalists to remain a part of technology sectors they’ve followed for years. Without a masthead to call home, fewer PR people are calling them with breaking news or to broker meetings with their CEOs. These journalists are worried, and rightfully so, that their value in the marketplace will diminish as their relationships with story sources and C-level executives erode over time.

If approached the right way, the rise of corporate-sponsored journalism sounds like a win/win for the reporters and corporations, but it also raises several questions. How will this impact the quality of the reporting long term? How will this benefit readers, if at all? In the tech sector, the number of journalists considered truly credible is quite small. With the publishing industry imploding, who’s grooming the market influencers of tomorrow?  How long before demand soon outstrips the supply? Could companies that fail to broker deals with newly independent journalists ahead of their competitors soon discover there aren’t any good ones left? Worse still, could a Cisco or Oracle or EMC swoop in and buy all the quality ones up?

Next time on “The New J-School”, we’ll attempt to address these “what if” scenarios and share our thoughts on effective ways to integrate corporate-sponsored journalism into a marketing strategy.

For many years, we debated and then delayed starting an agency blog. There was the significant time commitment issue, of course. In addition, managing the agency’s growth during our formative years required 100 percent of senior management’s attention. A bigger concern; however, was the abundance of exceptional agency blogs already out there focused on technology PR— from FutureWorks’ PR 2.0 to SHIFT’s PR Squared to BiteMarks and Voce Nation. To be heard and stand out in this respected crowd would require a perspective both distinctive and compelling.

In April, we celebrated the Bateman Group’s Fifth Anniversary — a significant milestone for any small business. Looking back, I realized our first five years were spent quietly forming and refining our point of view on the industry. We’re starting a blog now because the time has come for us to actually share our views with the world.

And what a time we picked to enter the industry conversation. The new “business normal” spawned by the Web contains both promise and pain, continuous change, and a significant opportunity for “best of breed” PR firms that understand this new landscape. With blogs becoming more like mainstream media and a large percentage of “traditional” publications either going online or out of business entirely, there is little doubt our role as strategic advisors to our clients is evolving rapidly. The current market environment rewards dialogue and conversation. As a result, we’ve found our blend of genuine content expertise and a senior-level staffing model makes us uniquely qualified to bring together all of the forces in play to our clients’ advantage.

PR’s role in the world of mass and micro communications has grown more urgent, and the opportunity has never been better to lead the charge. In response, many agencies rushed to establish social media or digital communications groups as a separate practice areas within their firms. We decided early on that social media marketing is not an “add-on” set of services. Our objective is to tightly integrate all new channels of communication into every single service offering, then customize a solution that addresses each client’s unique business challenges.

More and more, we’re being asked to deliver truly integrated marketing solutions for our clients. These companies are coming to us not only for solutions to improve customer connectivity, corporate reputation, and sales lead generation, but also for the nurturing of individual opinions and attitudes. These newer elements can lead to the success or failure of an enterprise, new product or service. Never before have the stakes of our profession been higher or the rewards greater.

We chose the call our blog “Bateman Banter” for more than just the pleasant sounding alliteration. Webster’s defines banter to mean “to speak or address playfully or wittily” and or “good-natured and usually witty and animated joking”. You’ll discover one of the most distinctive characteristics of the agency is an inability to take ourselves too seriously. Having a sense of humor is considered a company core value and the ability to laugh at oneself a pre-requisite for employment. We encourage you to join the conversation by sharing your thoughts and perspectives with us.