A recent poll of corporate communicators conducted by Ragan Communications and PollStream shows up this week, saying that “only 49% of today’s professional communicators say they think press releases are ‘as useful as ever.’ ” About a third say that the news release is holding on largely due to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s old school disclosure rules for public companies.

“Press” releases have been declared dead on other occasions. Mary Schmidt did so in September in Lipsticking. Shel Holtz weighed in 3+ years ago with a reasonable call for evolution (…is Dead. Long Live the …). “Press releases generally don’t create either relevance or trust. In the Darwinism of this crowded new media environment, they don’t survive,” declared Josh in Span Society during the post-election crisis in Iran.  Mark Naples of iMedia Connection posted recently on “6 Facts Every Marketer Must Know,” in which he heaps another shovel of dirt on the release based on polls of people who cover marketing for large media outlets. 

For a guy who started out his PR career trying to convince clients that an objective of “getting out 100 press releases this year” wasn’t a good objective, I should be heartened. But I’m not. I am hopeful that while the form has used up most of its nine lives, there are many more miles in this cat. And, I am challenged because of what all this talk about the news release says about our culture.

There are three reasons for my faith that the news release has a few more lives.

First, our writing for the ear and for the eye has been expanded in unprecedented ways in recent years with the advent of text messaging, mini-blogs, online video and the like. But, we haven’t given up on the written word. The value of a news release may come in the complete telling of the story from the client’s perspective all in one place. The fact that it has evolved from being written purely for the eye and now includes video or audio that covers other senses is allowing readers/viewers to experience the subject more fully. The better targeted the communication, the more likely it is to be a part of a story, column, post or on-air piece, for sure, but well-timed and well-executed releases still have value.

Gladwell (Social Media: not changing world)

That said, there is a tipping point coming, even if, as reported by rocker/chairman  Khan Manka, Jr. ,  “Malcolm Gladwell (The New Yorker) basically (has said we are) all full of ourselves if we think for one minute that we’re changing the world in any way.” (Khan wrote of the Strauss Zelnick’s Rooftop Salon recently).

Third, the “market” for these communiques is separating the good from the bad. There are literally hundreds of bloggers and journalists who are now able to push a button and purge all messages from a lousy PR person. There are whole blogs and columns written about what not to do. Beth Kanter delivered a great one recently that contained an admonition agaist “cravat” pitches (her husband’s neckwear at their wedding was described in Esquire – with elegant language – as “last seen around the neck of the Undertaker before his match at Wrestlemania XXV. Unless you can deliver tombstone piledrivers to anyone who scoffs at you, opt for a bow tie.”).  She also noted,  ”My husband didn’t ask me to marry him on our first date.”

And what does all of this say about our culture?

1. We are “uprofessionalizing” news at a rate that amazes me. Whole media outlets are falling by the wayside. Whole TV shows are now being done in Tweet form (TMZ). Journalism is trending toward Drudge’s world view in a Liberty Roundtable quote from 1998  – a nation of 300 million reporters.
2. Rumor, gossip or opinion is taking on the same relevance as news. But, in this stream, journalists from traditional media are finding some good-sized fish, too.
3. Bloggers, for the most part, aren’t coming up with a sustainable business model, so when the economy improves how many of us will find other jobs? In the meantime, traditional media are handing over the keys to covering the news.
4. Developing a new relationship between public relations professionals and new media is presenting a tough value proposition. Some want the relationship building to move beyond appropriate first date behavior quickly so we can get to the good stuff. Fortunately, most humans aren’t that easy. Building relationships takes time and resources well beyond what was required in the old press release culture, and many still remember that old culture too fondly. (How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to actually change the bulb while the other two talk about how great the old bulb was.)
5. Engagement is difficult in the form of comments, tweets and limited face-to-face. The old model of engagement was a cab ride uptown to do a personal deskside briefing. Technology has brought us closer in many ways, but it’s more ambient closeness and quasi-relationship in some ways. I’m encouraged by how there are places to meet up, but they also are proliferating and straining the resources traditionally dedicated to communications activities in the old one-big-trade-show; four-big-magazines era.

Many of us continue to move at light speed in sorting this out, and the tilting against traditional windmills work is exhausting. So, I still cling just a little to the evolved news release while doing all these other things. Does that make me a bad person?