UK PR blog drought, says PR Week editor

* * Updated * *

PR Week UK editor, Danny Rogers, thinks that there is a "shortage of good PR blogs in the UK".

Featured in MediaGuardian's My media spot, here is what Mr Rogers says about his new media choices:

   

brandrepublic.com and mediaguardian.co.uk are essential for media and marketing news. bbc.co.uk for podcasts, downloads and interactivity. Google news for finding out just about anything. And tripadvisor.com has completely revolutionised how people find holidays. I find blogs useful for getting feedback on the industry but there's a real lack of good PR blogs in the UK at the moment.

From that choice - his publishing house's own marketing portal, the Guardian's own site and the BBC "for interactivity" I'd hazard a guess that there's not a Bloglines account in Mr Rogers name.

But, really, I would like to know, has he read the following blogs? They really aren't too bad:

   
• Drew B - senior consultant at LEWIS
   
• Niall Cook, UK PR blog pioneer and H&K man
   
• Stuart Bruce, senior practitioner and PR's angel of the north
   
• Stephen Davies, PR graduate with a brilliant blog
   
• Hugh MacLeod,  one of the most popular and original blogs in the world
   
• ...the World's Leading... - gossip-mongerer idiot, but in a good way
   
• David Rossiter, top AR man for Insight
   
• Tony Bradley, CIPR President

[Sorry if I've missed you out, I'm in a rush - think of this as a UK sample off the top of me feeds...]

And that's just the UK. The other thing is that the conversation about PR is not a UK conversation, it's not even European - it's global. The commenters and visitors to my blog over the past 24 hours were only about 20% from the UK and included people from New Zealand, the US, Canada, Portugal, Ireland, Germany, Argentina and Ecuador.

I'll send an email to Mr Rogers as I guess he doesn't take a look at Open very often.

What do you think? Is he right? Does it matter?

* * Update * *
Danny Rogers was god enough to come back to me with this repsonse:

Thanks for sending me those links. You may be right and I simply haven't seen some of the best ones yet.

I think it does matter. As a journalist, blogs are an invaluable source of opinion on the industry - and can provide very productive feedback [on] our content.

There is a danger that some people's rather ill-considered views are given disproportionate attention, or that soem people make snap judgements on our editorial work without understanding the huge range of people we have to cater for, but that comes with the territory.

 

Tags: dannyrogers, prweek, uk, blog

Comments

[Stephen Davies]

I think it just reiterates the notion that PR Week UK still doesn't have a clue about blogs.

[Simon Collister]

Agree with Stephen. Also, Mr Rogers should read other personal PR blogs rather than the industry ones as these are where his readership lies.

For instance, I recently posted a review of the three main PR trade titles in which PR Business came out top. This was follwed by several supportive comments from other bloggers about how PR Business is getting it right where PR Week is getting it wrong.

[Antony Mayfield]

Thanks both for your comments. Simon - your blog should be on any list of top UK PR blogs too - apologies for the ommission.

By the way, PR Business promises their website will be up any day.

[Drew B's take on tech PR]

Nice work Antony! You tell 'em!

[Constantin Basturea]

Here's a list of UK blogs included in the PR Blogs List (http://tinyurl.com/f7rzr ):

- browse the list in Grazr: http://tinyurl.com/jtxmo
- OPML file: http://hosting.opml.org/basturea/uk-pr-blogs-list.opml

Hope this helps.

[Niall Cook]

At least Danny came back to you with a response.

I agree with Stephen Davies though, and the reason it matters is that most people in our industry trust PR Week. I've had people bringing me cuttings from PR Week about things the online world has known about for months.

For people who are supposed to have their finger on the pulse, this worries me greatly.

[David Phillips]

I wonder what he means by "the huge range of people we have to cater for....."

Last year I wrote a paper about the 'Domians of PR Practice' (http://www.managementclarity.com/domians_of_pr_practice.pdf).

Most of them are way beyond the scope of PRW.

I wonder what he sees if he searches Google for the 'Chartered Institure of Public Relations'.

Second on the list is a UK PR blogger - never met him but there u go.

[victoria preston]

Love the blog - hate the font.

Reading on screen for me has got to be sans serif. It's easier on the eye - lends itself to 'scanning' which is how I read screens and feels authentic to the medium.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a font is worth at least five hundred.. it frames the ideas and the way we access them. When the oil conmpany BP re-branded from the shield to the helios logo a few years back, the biggest bug bear amongst those staff I spoke to was the use of lower case 'bp' that accompanied the logo - very dot.com but not very big oil.

You're the guru Anthony and I want to pay you regular visits but I'm putting in a plea for a different font.

VP

[Antony Mayfield]

Thanks for the comment, Victoria. I'm a bit of a serif advocate though, so I'm not sure about a font change.

Could I suggest using a blog reader like http://www.bloglines.com as a happy compromise.

Of course, if anyone else feels the same about Open's design I'm open to persuasion. It'd take a fair bit of persuasion though. :-)

[Centarlpenn business]

It is a good article, Nice work.

[NJBIZ]

It,s really very nice & knowledge base.
Thanks