13 responses to “PR Business closes as a weekly”
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Antony, what news! I actually feel a bit sad at the thought of losing PR Business as a weekly.
Content wise it was miles ahead of PR Week (for the most part). It wrote about issues that were relevant to me as a practitioner, rather than PR Week which wrote about issues it perceived to be relevant but in fact weren’t to 99% of the profession.
Plus as a PR blogger it addressed issues that were more at the fore of new media.
Very sad news indeed. Is it perhaps something to do with PR Week being re-offered free to CIPR members?
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Sad news: PR Business goes monthly
Antony Mayfield reports the sad news this morning that PR Business is closing as a weekly mag and will re-launch as a monthly later in the year. There is a lot of background on the closure from Antony, who writes/wrote
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I don’t think there is room for another weekly publication. From an advertising perspective, the market isn’t large enough to provide sufficient funding. Perhaps more importantly though, a lot of news is being broken via PR blogs such as your own.
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I have been a bit critic of PR Business but am sad to see it go. PR Week is okay, and it has definitely improved, but having competition is always healthy.
Is there room for two weekly print-based PR titles? Probably not – I would estimate the advertising spend simply isn’t there.
But there is definitely room for another proper PR publication online. I always thought the saddest thing about PR Business was that it didn’t seize the opportunity to create an online brand. It’s something PR Week doesn’t do well. There is an opportunity there to build an online news, feature, commentary site for the UK PR business. Throw in blogs, message boards and the like and it could get really exciting very quickly. The closest we had to it was agencyworld in the dot.com era (anyone remember that?). Can it done again today? I hope so.
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Presumably another factor in this was the U-turn by PR Week on its subscription charge. It’s to become free once again for CIPR members. PR Week’s rapprochement with the CIPR nullified one of PR Business’s assets.
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The power of blogs: PR Business RIP
Tech PR gossip site …the world’s leading… has posted some interesting ‘rumours’ about the demise of a weekly PR Business (see below). The main points raised by …TWL… include the departure of Lord ‘Shandwick’ Chadlington from the magazine’s boar…
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The World’s Leading is ‘aggressive to people on a personal level’?
Just because we said you looked like Phil Mitchell?
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Perhaps the model is changing. We all have an emotional relationship with favoured publications (Guy Constadine did the research).
Can one create the same sense of emotional attachment to a blog?
Print, when news controversial, up-to-date and relevant has influence. Online, we do it all the time and so it does not have the same effect. Many of us rant about how slow the profession is in recognising never mind adopting more than tri-channel communication. It is one of the things we can do but in our own space. It is a space where most PR people do not venture.
As I pointed out on the Hobson Holtz Report this week, we have been usurped anyway and, as with the advent of the web, the PR industry has lost the initiative.
Had PR Business continued, there was a chance that a weekly print book could have made the right noises.
Media Guardian is not quite the right forum. I cannot imagine it running a headline about PR watching sails in the sunset but when a civil engineer tells me that he is using social software embedded in virtual environments to build roads, bridges and cities and a banker tells much the same story. One can only marvel at the reticence of the communication trade to grasp the opportunity.
Equally, PRW has not much of a track record in looking beyond London, luvvy centric spiffing ideas.
Once again the communications industry will fragment and will make it hard for organisations to make communications decisions because their advisers understand a small part of the toolbox.
With luck, by this Autumn, there will be some really good courses from academia but these are being driven by a few enthusiasts and we have reach outside the profession to see examples of good practice.
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I too believe the content of PR Business was superior to PR Week’s. Unfortunately, today’s publishing world is based on advertising rather than content quality only, and it did seem that PR Business was somehow struggling to get the right balance between solid editorial and advertising volumes.
I look forward to seeing what the monthly edition brings us, hopefully a similar focus on new media and all the new opportunities that are offered to the PR industry.
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Thanks all for your comments – very interesting indeed. This discussion has got me thinking about the role of trade / specialist media in the online age in more depth than previously. I am questioning what we want and need from it and how that is changing as more expert content is available from experts within the industry itself.
I wish PR Business all the best and I hope we can all make it a success in its new format. But I also know that we need something more…
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Is that a suggestion, Antony? Count me in if so. You know where to reach me!
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Of course it has everything to do with PR Week being re-offered free to CIPR members. But we kicked PR Week out of its fur-lined rut and made it sit up and take notice, which I think is incredible given that PRB was put together with such scant resources. And we’ve had a part to play in PR Week improving its offering, which can only be a good thing, surely?
I’m not taking this as a sign of defeat, though: I want to take the monthly into far deeper waters in terms of social media, blogging, technology and so on; there’s so much out there, and I’m excited that we’ll have an opportunity to delve deeper into this area, as well as others.
I have personally kicked up a fuss about the website and told the powers that be that it needs addressing, and urgently. Please continue to watch this space, and do get in touch with me with your ideas and comments, so we can make our monthly all it needs – and deserves – to be for this industry. -
In the meantime, I hope that PR Week is taking note of the comments made on this and other PR blogs. We all understand that business is business and decisions are made on how to tackle the competition from a commercial point of view. However, readers are extremely influential and ignoring them would be foolish.
There is clearly room for more than one trade publication as the content in PR Business has proven. PR Week should recognise this as an opportunity and embrace it.
I will continue to support PR Business and am sure that the monthly edition (and hopefully the online edition?) will continue to deliver fresh and inspiring content, reflective of this entire industry. Just one thing guys, hide the website behind a home page until you’re ready to reveal it in all its glory!
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