While there may be new rules for communicating online, that doesn’t mean the old rules no longer apply. Yes, it’s true that today’s journalists are now blogging, Twittering, Facebooking, and carrying hand-held video devices to print interviews. However, they are still professional media members, which means the standard protocol and etiquette for PR practitioners remains the same.

My point?  Journalism and PR are in a significant state of flux.  As both sides scramble to gain solid footing, it’s more important than ever to adhere to the core skills we’ve spent years honing and developing - writing and research.  By default, the blogosphere presents a very casual, conversational style (which I personally love).  Unfortunately, many PR practitioners are adopting this casual approach in their execution, not just content.  We need to be smart about our content and even smarter about whom we target.  If not, the same rules apply…we lose credibility and damage our earned relationships with the media, or even worse, are publicly flogged like poor Amanda Miller on Joe Nocera’s New York Times blog.  Whether or not you agree with Nocera’s humiliating approach, one issue rings clear - excellence in our work must never take a back seat.

We, as practitioners, have a fantastic opportunity to become a value-add to journalists now expected to do the jobs of five people.  Our content, connections, access to thought leaders and research can be invaluable to them.  In return, their coverage and attention is invaluable to us (namely our clients).  Too often, we are considered “flacks.”  I strongly disagree.  We are an indispensible cog in the machine, but it’s up to us to stay well-oiled to maintain that relevance.

I’m a huge fan of Will Leitch and Deadspin, as well as Buzz Bissinger.  What this video really illustrates is a generational gap and a debate over where value lies in journalism.  Does value lie in the speed and sometimes brutal honesty of blogging or is it in the time-honored craft of reporting and filling a beat.  Probably somewhere in between.  Enjoy.

We talk a lot, both online and off.  Since an ostensible majority of this discourse in our “connected age” happens online, it follows that phrases from the “real” world slip onto web pages, into videos, vlogs, blogs, Twitters, emails, chats, forums, etc.  Words either remain static in syntax and spelling, like “long tail,” but take on different meaning, or they shift by a few characters to represent a different word entirely, like “phishing,” to convey a different meaning while still drawing on the semantic relationship with the original word (phishing is when cybercriminals “fish” for your information with legitimate looking emails or web pages).  However, my favorite morphology thus far has been the phrase “the Mullet Strategy,” let us explore:   

The phrase seems to have originated with Jonah Peretti, a founder of the Huffington Post who was quoted in a recent article by the New Yorker on the future of print news sources.   The article explains that, like the eponymous hairdo, the Mullet Strategy means, “Business up front, party in the back.”  You might be thinking “What does this have to do with cyberlinguistics and/or more importantly, with media in general?”  Well, Favored Reader, the article goes on to explain how the Mullet Strategy is deployed across the Internet, mostly as a categorization of Web 2.0 companies. In this case specifically, it refers to online news sources like the Huffington Post.  The article continues, “’User-generated content is all the rage, but most of it totally sucks,’ Peretti says. The mullet strategy invites users to ‘argue and vent on the secondary pages, but professional editors keep the front page looking sharp. The mullet strategy is here to stay, because the best way for Web companies to increase traffic is to let users have control, but the best way to sell advertising is a slick, pretty front page where corporate sponsors can admire their brands.’”  The Mullet Strategy then is the business up front of a well designed and tightly controlled home page and the party in back of the unpasteurized and messy bloggers/content providers.  

On another level, the Mullet Strategy represents the tension between traditional ad-rev driven media and emergent forms of social media (user-generated content like blogs, online videos, etc) that in most cases are still clamoring for ways to generate revenue. One must maintain the dignity and integrity of the appearance of the Home(page) to sell a house, despite the kegger raging in the basement.  It’s also no accident that the conceptual space symbolizing the informational backwaters and badlands of the Internet be mapped onto a coiffure, the Mullet, that itself is coded as jocular, and “underclass” (see: www.ratemymullet.com, www.mulletsgalore.com and numerous other humor sites dedicated to the do).  The term is therefore pre-loaded with significance, transferring the ridiculosity (what, I’m not allowed to make up words?) of the Mullet onto the online spaces that the “Mullet Strategy” attempts to describe. Basically, we have recreated the same social codes and mores online that we have offline – just on different people or concepts.  

It will be interesting to follow the trajectory of the term, from a linguistic standpoint, to see what new meanings and social codes the Mullet Strategy adopts.  However, I suspect that as media channels continue to integrate the still relatively “messy” user-generated content and Web 2.0 realms, the mullet will go on, uncut.  Companies across the board will continue to nervously pander to advertisers from the front while anxiously appealing the masses in the back.  Who knows though?  Maybe we will find a smooth and standard way to monetize the messiness and equalize UGC and traditional media, the business and the party.  We may have to move on to different styles of talking and styles of hair…Quick!  Someone figure out how a “Flock of Seagulls” cut is like social networking!  

To underscore my point, I have to plug my (favorite) client Symantec and the findings of the Norton Online Living Report (the most amazing PR campaign ever conceptualized!) that found Internet users worldwide read news online at nearly an equal rate as in traditional printed newspapers and magazines. Now, I’m one of those rare PR professionals who actually started her career before the days of the Internet, but I pride myself in keeping pace with the times. I embrace technology. I have to – as CarryOn’s Tech Practice Leader, it’s what I do for a living. Friends, I cuddle my Blackberry. So, for an Internet addict like me, the stat about reading news online is conservative. At best. Seriously, doesn’t everybody get their news from the Internet, where every report filed must be true, even if it’s posted on a site called “GoFugYourself”?

But, due exclusively to the unrelenting persistence of my scoop-hunting and news-breaking friend, I gave in. I actually got up from my desk, left my office, caught a tram to the kitchen where the papers are stashed and dirtied my hands with ink (yes, dear Internet generation, papers really do leave you messed with ink… it ain’t purdy and don’t do it wearing white). My friend’s column on the “bantering Bancrofts” was witty, but what was really memorable was my renewed love affair with the paper – the actual, physical, hard-copy version of the paper.

I spent an hour flirting with the papers that morning. I read the Journal, the Gray Lady, the Pink Sheet, and even the entertainment rags. Actually, maybe read is an understatement. I devoured them (and my coffee). And I learned something. You can tell a lot about a paper by experiencing its physical manifestation. Having not picked up a paper in years, the first thing I noticed was how thin it had gotten. It lost weight. And not just a few pounds, but it shed entire pages. This gave me an insane dose of reality on how dire the traditional journalism industry is. Gone are the pages of colorful, clever ads, and with them, the credible, authoritative, expert journalism of yesteryear. Where has the reckless ad spending gone? Once you get beyond the initial shock and awe of the skeleton of a paper, you are quickly schooled on the publisher’s priorities. Just scan the headlines and look at the print layout. Consider how the stories are placed on the page. What’s above the fold. What’s below. What story was big enough to make it to A1. What stories were abandoned on the last page. What stories merited photography and original artwork. All of this gives you invaluable insight to how the media operates. As PR professionals, it allows us to better hone our pitches, appreciate the spoils of our hard work, and remind us how lucky we are to have a choice.