Mack the Flack

Wikileaks‘ release of classified military documents about the grinding and ultimately futile nine-year war in Afghanistan, while interesting, is hardly earth-shattering. Who honestly thought the war was going well and the Taliban were soon-to-be defeated?

Apart being a PR nightmare for the US military, the document dump on the WikiLeaks website is extraordinary in that the website is the world’s first stateless news organization. It can’t be censured, sued or stopped because it exists in cyberspace. It’s a game changer because whistle blowers don’t need traditional media outlets when they can just upload the information to WikiLeaks.

To be fair the secret document release was a bigger story because WikiLeaks shared the information with solid media outlets such as the New York Times, Guardian and Der Spiegel. Their news stories were published on the same day the documents were released on the website. It was the first such media collaboration in history.

Welcome to the brave new media world.

To learn more about this new check out the PR Special Topics and PR Trends & Issues courses of SFU’s PR program at www.sfu.ca/cstudies/pr or call 778-782-5093 or email pr-staff@sfu.ca

Myth 1. No one reads the paper anymore.
While daily newspaper readership has levelled off across Canada online newspaper readership is on the rise. People still want content that helps them make decisions. They want it to be credible, objective, and easy to find.

Myth 2. We don’t need PR – we’re on Facebook!
Getting news is now a social act. Social media is now the way news spreads. Studies show that 75% of online news consumers get news forwarded from social networking sites. But social networking still runs on content and providing content is what PR professionals do.

Myth 3. Public Relations don’t generate sales.
In fact, studies have shown that PR outperforms advertising in generating sales by as much as 14 to 1. A relatively low amount spent on PR deliver high ROI and lift the impact of all other marketing.

Learn more about how Media Relations and Social Networking can help your organization. Learn from experts such as Carla Shore and Natasha Netschay Davies.  www.sfu.ca/cstudies/pr or call 778-782-5093 or email pr-staff@sfu.ca