By Alice Marshall, Founder, Presto Vivace, Inc. Very few gold prospectors made money in the gold rush of 1849; the people who got rich were those who sold Levi's, buckets, shovels and related equipment. During the dot-com boom, we repeatedly heard the call, "content is king." It was said that those who created compelling content would be the winners in the Internet economy, even while online publications were bleeding money. Even as news organizations were laying off reporters and offering others buy-outs, we were told that content was king. Yet the people who made money from the dot-com boom were the manufacturers of router and network equipment, web servers and infrastructure related products and services. Those who built the Internet itself did well. The content creators took a bath. When the crash came, entire publications folded … not one or two, but hundreds. Entire publishing houses were swallowed up by larger firms, their properties consolidated. Public relations dwindled in direct proportion to the reduced opportunities to place stories, to say nothing of the dwindling supply of prospective clients. Web 2.0 has gone a long way to revitalizing the tech economy. Once more, there are clients with stories to tell. But the publications have not come back. Those who survived the crash are doing better, but we are still seeing news organizations cutting back on staff. The bottom line: Content creators are still hurting. Very few bloggers are making money from blogging; usually it is a labor of love or an adjunct of their marketing efforts. The people making money off of blogging are the companies that make social software and the products and services that measure and monitor it. The biggest, baddest, company of all is Google, which owns Blogger and YouTube, which are entirely dependent upon users to generate content, or at least select and upload it. The money is in the structure—the content is all given in exchange for publicity. Theoretically, bloggers can make money with Google Adsense. But you have to have a very high-traffic blog to earn anything more than pocket change. Google determines the price of the ad. Advertisers pay more and content providers receive less, and Google is sitting pretty. At least Blogads offers content providers some choice in advertising networks. What does all this mean to you—the hard working PR practitioner? This: The whole rationale for media relations is independent validation of our clients' stories; otherwise there would be nothing but advertising. Our whole industry is dependent upon a robust and independent news media. But there is something more important at stake than our ability to generate publicity for clients. It is our future as a democratic society. News costs money. Good reporters require salaries and benefits. Blogs don't produce that. We need a business model that would truly make content king—lest all of us become serfs. Alice Marshall is founder and owner of Presto Vivace, Inc., a PR firm specializing in technology companies and government contractors. She blogs here. Reader response: I am a former reporter who has bridged to editing an online publication, after a side trip into media relations. Your article is spot-on, and I'm sending it to my friends who continue to (struggle to) work on newspapers. On my site, content IS king—it's the reason we exist. We need to cover our expenses, but profit is less important. You are right that the commercial media need to find that new business model—I don't know what that will be—so that there will be someplace to go to find the information we need to make the tough decisions about our communities and our nation.—lizinaz There is a real workable business model for the new media, and that is exactly what most practitioners have consistently tried to do: helping clients create professional content that portrays their activities in a factual, positive way. Regardless of what the so-called "gurus" of social media suggest, business people really don't want to read profanity-laced blogs with bad grammar and misspellings. They don't want to listen to amateur podcasts where the hosts curse and giggle over technical glitches that never should have made it past the post-production process. Look at the top 100 podcasts being downloaded from iTunes and you'll see the vast majority are podcasts containing professionally produced content from major media companies that know how to package multimedia content. It's just a new channel that lowers the barriers to entry. It's not a panacea for clients that have "issues." But it is a way to reach people efficiently and cost-effectively, if professionals are used to help shape the program package.—steve lizinaz - Thank you for your kind words. I will be very interested to hear what your colleagues think of my article.
Steve - All good publicity is good publicity. Clients are not ready to pay for blog placements; but that will happen and it should happen. Citizen-generated content plays an increasingly important role in our public discourse. However, it cannot replace quality reporting.—Alice Marshall I too am dismayed by the shrinking role (and greatly reduced employment prospects) of professional journalists. The fourth estate plays a valuable role in public discourse, and the emergence of user generated content does not seem to offer a viable substitute.
However, the contention that the role of PR is reduced as we lose media outlets is inaccurate. More than ever, organizations that have a story to tell need the skills that PR people can offer. Clear thinking and even clearer writing are absolute priorities. Where our skills once were focused on how the professional media worked, today we need to be able to interact with the much more diverse universe represented by "citizen media." This is an opportunity for PR to increase its role in leading clients of any type to speak honestly and effectively to the audiences they need to reach, through all types of communications vehicles.—matt I go along with your thesis part of the way. I agree that content is not the king it may once have been. I disagree with all the rest. Press Agentry is not public relations. The value of PR is not derived from content or from relationships derived through third parties (journalists, blogger.com or even Twitter). The real value of PR is in the ability to understand the nature and value of relationships (or all kinds) to and within an organization and the ability to plan, manage and optimise the organization's ability to benefit from relationships.
Creating and selling in content (panning for gold) has its excitements but public relations, the planned management of organizational relationship optimisation, is a service upon which all organizations depend for survival. No relationship—no organization. Public relations provides the service that, among other things, offers a living to content creators.
The role of risk, opportunity and uncertainty management in relationship development has to be a highly developed management science. Journalism and blogging, even communications, are not Public Relations they are just tools to be deployed.—david I have to respectfully disagree with some of your conclusions, Alice.
First, as to content: content, as opposed to "technology," remains king. Very few people visit information websites solely because they have the latest technology. They visit the site because it used technology to present...drum roll, please...content.
More than a decade ago, when my boss was convincing a major TV network to get active on the Internet, they asked her for a 10-year business plan. She replied, quite sensibly, "Look. I have no idea what kind of technology will be around ten years from now. What I do know is, whatever the technology may be, there is a need for content to be distributed by that technology - and we're in the content business."
I think the content companies which have survived and will survive are those which are able to take the new technologies, whether "web 2.0," mobile, or whatever may come down the pike tomorrow, and use them intelligently and creatively to push their content out.—Les Blatt | 
