Paisley Beebe, the charming and delightful host of the Second Life program Tonight Live, interviews Yours Truly about the Copper Robot program, the state of journalism (it’s bad — remember you heard it here first) and my future plans after leaving InformationWeek for the wonderful world of self-employment.
I’m the first guest, watch it here:
The entire experience of being on Tonight Live was great. I enjoyed talking with the staff, and participating in the process they have for getting all the Second Life and Skype hookups to work correctly to create a smooth-running show.
However, I had mixed feeling about the interview itself. I had somehow given Paisley the impression that I’m going into PR, which is only partly true. I expect to be consulting in Internet marketing, which is, I suppose, a kind of PR. And I do expect to do some work for PR agencies. But I don’t expect PR to be my primary focus going forward. And I do expect to keep doing tech journalism, for as long as I can keep at it.
I also said something that I don’t expect will win me many friends in the PR community. Earlier in the program, I’d said that journalism is dying as a business. None of this is new or particularly controversial: Newspapers are closing, Web advertising is evaporating, jobs are disappearing rapidly. I added that I don’t know how much of a future PR has, given that PR people don’t have many journalists to talk to.
I know many PR people say that talking to journalists is not the main part of their job. On the other hand, the tone of those discussions, which I’ve only witnessed from the outside, indicates to me that maybe it is the main part of the PR job, but many PR people would like to change that.
And, in defense of my point on PR: Crain’s New York reports that 64% of PR firms surveyed said they lost revenue last year. (Via @wbrucemcconnel). That’s lousy even in a lousy economy.
