Two centuries ago, media came into common usage, referring to the role that newspapers played within society. As Thomas Carlyle (1869) noted, they were the fourth estate : the medium that existed between the political sphere and the individual citizen. It was their responsibility to frame political issues and provide citizens with the information they needed to make political decisions.
So in this paradigm, the media played the role of gatekeeper – it was their responsibility to decide what was newsworthy and what wasn’t and it was in this role that public relations became a practice – and for many years the main part of the job of the PR practitioner has been to engage with the media and try to get coverage for their client or company.
News and readers have gone online – so what? Multimedia – social – search driven… Well online news changes… The rules of the game change as do the players… Before…news was driven by editors and publications – now news is driven by user interest…
When journalists were asked how they follow the news
When journalists were asked how they follow the news
Over 360,000,000 searches per month across the top search engines with 90% growth over year. - Search Engine Watch
44% of respondents reported taking some kind of action as a result of seeing a video advertisement. - Online Publishers Association