on communication

In the process of trying to adjust and learn as much as I can about my new workplace, I have been reading as many articles about communication as I can get my hands on. Communication—which I define, basically, as PR and marketing, whether inside a company or coming out of the company—is a field that I’ve always observed and been vaguely interested in due to its similarities to its sometime friend and perhaps moreoften enemy, the media. (I have written about the media before)

Our position in either field is rather indeterminate. For the most part, my colleagues, like me, are journalists and have never been a part of the industry we are writing for. We are, as the media always ideally is, outsiders looking in. And even though we’re outsiders, journalists are usually good at getting inside whatever they’re writing about. Though good journalists by training, we, as opposed to most of our media counterparts, are usually a friend to our readers, the communicators, so we can’t very well get lumped in with the rest of the media. I have gotten way off topic here, but I might as well explain the apparent antipathy that I have illustrated that the media feel toward the communicators. Perhaps it’s not antipathy so much as wariness—the media (again, ideally) seeks to tell the truth about what they see whereas the communicators seek to spin what they see in favor of their organizations. So, as you see, the two usually don’t have the same goals.

So, because I come from a media background and am not used to being friends with the communicators nor really trying to understand how they think, I am now doing my research. My research takes me to a lot of different websites that I frequent, or wish I frequented, or have never seen before. I have learned about Twitter, which I still don’t really understand, but most importantly I have learned about PR and marketing in the Internet age, which is supremely interesting because it not only affects the communicators themselves, but also the media, because the only income newspapers can somewhat rely on right now is their advertising revenue, and it isn’t enough.

The past few weeks, there’s been a note going around Facebook called “25 Random Things About Me.” The concept is simple. You write 25 random things about yourself, tag 25 friends in the note, and these friends in turn write their own 25 things and tag their own 25 friends, and so on. It’s the new age chain letter or chain email, without the threats. I’ve been tagged a couple times now, and I haven’t responded. Why would people want to read 25 things about me? People won’t read them anyway. I can’t think of that many things about me. I don’t have time for this. But yesterday I was feeling particularly introspective, and after having skimmed several of my friends’ versions, I was thinking of a lot of random things about myself that I could write. So I did. But then I felt silly and overly divulegent (Word says this is not a word, and so does Merriam-Webster, but it should be) and juvenile and I didn’t post it. Now it appears I’m too late—Slate says I’ve missed the bandwagon, though perhaps their article will spark a new round.

As Slate says, communicators would be interested in this phenomenon because it illustrates just what can happen if a few people think something is cool and then tell their friends about it. The way to start a viral/grass-roots marketing campaign, the article says, “is to introduce a wide variety of schemes into the wild and pray like hell that one of them evolves into a virulent meme (good word).” So there’s really no guarantee at all that any of their schemes will work in this new Internet world. Tough break for them and newspapers both.

My friend, little thinker, goes the philosophical route he often does, and thinks it’s just further proof that our generation loves to talk about ourselves. (He hasn’t written about this yet, but maybe he will now). Maybe we do like to talk about ourselves. I’ve talked, or wrote, a whole lot about myself in the form of blogs since 2000 (!!). Or maybe we’re just tired of staring at computers and reading emails and using cell phones and limiting our face-to-face interactions with people and we want some good, old fashioned attention.

I guess that’s what Valentine’s Day is for.

Look at me, still staring at my computer.

Note: I have included a lot of good links that I don't explain, like bloggers are known to do. The links are to a lot of interesting articles that relate to what I talk about in the post. You should click on them.