Kirk LaPointe at Kwantlen Polytechnic University

I attended a talk given by The Vancouver Sun’s managing editor, Kirk Lapointe at school the other day. He spoke about the future of journalism and public relations. One of the most compelling things he said that stayed with me was that the era of making a career out of journalism for 30, 40 years were pretty much gone.

He conceded that journalism and PR were more or less a “young person’s game”, but that the game was changing so rapidly that people are burning out faster than before. In this day and age of electronic communications, it’s pretty easy to imagine a twenty something year old working well over 12 hours a day in their first, or second year in a communications position.

Throughout Kirk’s presentation, he emphasized that writing was the best skill to hone, the best skill to have, and the only skill that sets the good communicators apart. If you cannot write well, you cannot communicate well. He also mentioned that if you were a good writer, you had the potential to be a good editor.

He gave us PR students a few great tips on the future of Public Relations:

1. The Press Release is Dead
   Now, this isn’t to say that the press release is dead and done, but Kirk pointed out that the time spent on writing press releases could be better spent talking to your target audience instead of an audience of journalists. Not that journalists aren’t important… but
2. The Press is no longer the only gatekeeper
   This is very true. Anyone can pick up your product or service and write a blog post about it, make a youtube video about it, or tweet about it. Journalists don’t have to pick up your story and publish them – you can do that yourself.
3. You’re ALWAYS on
   Let’s face it. This profession isn’t a 9 to 5 job. We’ll always have the next deadline (oh it was yesterday?), the next newsletter, the next article, the next bio, the next story we have to write, the next story we have to chase, or the next meeting we have to go to. And in this day and age, it’s nearly impossible to not be somehow connected to the internet at all times. It’s because of this connectivity that allows us to be as good as we can be, and it also has the potential to run us into the ground.
4. Trust
   This goes hand in hand with the first point. The press release is dead, but journalism isn’t. A good relationship with a journalist will help ensure that your story gets if not published, then at least heard.
   Trust doesn’t just pertain to journalists. It also extends to your audience as well. Kirk was quick to point out that you’ll always have someone in your audience ready than ever to call bullshit, and that they have a wide platform to do it on: the internet. If your product/message/service/corporation/etc isn’t trustworthy, or credible, then someone will call bs on it.
5. Clarity and access matters
   This goes back to points two and four. It’s pretty amazing what the internet’s done. It has given them a voice – a strong one at that. It’s empowered them to make decisions for themselves. It’s given them power to attack corporations for their misconduct. It’s allowed them to call BS on others. It’s also allowing the conversation to go both ways. It’s also changing the way people communicate.
   Kirk’s point here was that corporations need to become more transparent. Create clarity where there wasn’t any. Allow people to say what they want and actually listen to them. Make the dialogue a two way street and turn it into a conversation.

Special thanks to Ashley Letts, a second year PR student at Kwantlen for taking notes during Kirk’s talk!

Kirk’s talk was extremely invigorating and gave me hope that there would be a place for us first and second year students when we graduated. Social media has certainly come a long way in the last year, but nothing beats listening to the pros talk about it.