If newspapers are dying, what about PR?

The time has come not to try and save newspapers but to mourn their demise and experiment with what might replace them. That is the stark, but irresistible, message of internet philosopher Clay Shirky, whose magnificent post on the death of newspapers should be read by everyone with an interest not merely in publishing and journalism but in society, per se. But there is more to Shirky’s post than doom-mongering. Much, much more – not least for everyone working in PR.

First, though, a recap of Shirky’s superb post. Shirky argues that we are living in the midst of a revolution – one caused by the internet – in which the key question is not ‘How do we save newspapers?’ but ‘What will come in their place – and what will journalism look like when the old world has gone?’ Dan Kennedy picked up on this in yesterday’s Guardian, confessing to more than a mild sense of disquiet as he looked into the crystal ball so brilliantly illumined by Shirky and realised that nothing will save newspapers, least of all charging for online content, as appears to be the au courant thinking among those who believe, like Canute, that they can resist the implacable forces of change.

Shirky’s analysis is cast-iron. Take this paragraph, for example:

When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.

It is honest, too. Shirky knows that the economics of traditional newspaper publishing make it doomed, but admits that he doesn’t know what will replace newspapers. The point, though, is that no one does. All publishers can do is experiment, and see what sticks. The process will take decades, but that it is underway cannot be doubted.

But if newspapers are on the deathbed, what of PR? The art of spin is hardly a modern invention, but its primary source of expression, in recent years, has been the newspaper. It may seem inconceivable today, but there will come a time when the Sunday supplements do not entail the felling of a small forest, when news – and features, and obituaries, and law reports, and property stories, and all the rest of it – will not be digested via the black ink of a printing press and its stamp on paper. We’ll pick up all this, and more, in digital form. What, then, of the press officer, when the press doesn’t exist?

Just as journalism is undergoing a huge and remarkable transformation, so too is PR. The astute PRs, whether in legal services, property, finance or media, should also be reading Shirky – and asking themsleves what they’ll be doing when the known world is no more.

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