An open apology to young PR professionals

My—ahem—older colleagues and I will often swap war stories about how PR was “done in our day” and how easy the younger practitioners have it.

We’ll lament on how tedious it was to leaf through thick Bacon’s books to identify the right media contacts; we’ll remind them that we didn’t have scanners to make clips—we used tape and glue sticks and rulers to paste up boxes and boxes full of newspaper and magazine clippings from BurrellesLuce; we’ll complain about how we had to walk two miles in the snow—uphill, both ways—just to get to the office.

And then, when we didn’t see an infinite number of media interviews scheduled or scads of coverage on product launches, we remind them that “back in our day” we booked media tours that had executives scrambling to and from 10 meetings a day. We pontificate on how we landed glowing, standalone, two-pages-with-graphics pieces on our clients’ dot rev product updates.

So we asked, why, pray tell, could they not do the same? They had far more resources than we had a decade ago, so in 2012, shouldn’t it be easier than ever to score media interviews and coverage? After thinking about this for some time, the answer is no. And we’re sorry for the expectation that it should be.