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Charlie Beckett

February 10th, 2014

The eternal battle between flaks & hacks, French style (lots of champagne involved)

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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Charlie Beckett

February 10th, 2014

The eternal battle between flaks & hacks, French style (lots of champagne involved)

0 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

A French student of mine has a friend in public relations and a friend in journalism in Paris. The ‘relationniste‘ and the ‘journaliste’ had an exchange about the failings of each other’s ‘profession’. Apart from references to champagne and a couple of idiosyncratic idioms, I suspect that their lists would strike a chord with anyone from those tribes anywhere in the world.

Encore du champagne?
Encore du champagne?

HOW TO BE A JOURNALIST:

  1.  Be arrogant!
  2. Be invited everywhere (and angry being so)!
  3. Be angry when not invited whereas you wish you were invited somewhere (actually)!
  4. Harass PRs (in order to be invited)!
  5. Cancel press lunches (6 minutes before)!
  6. Hang up on PRs!
  7. Never be reachable (in any way: mail, phone, etc)!
  8. Sell your papers for press lunches or press trips (preferably press trips)!
  9. Get amazing gifts for Christmas (iPads, fancy clothes…)!
  10. You don’t know how to use Internet.
  11. You don’t know what Google actually is.
  12. You are not aware of the fact you can DIRECTLY contact a place to have some info like “are you open today?” (otherwise why would PRs exist??)
  13. Never read further than the press release front page.
  14. Then be angry that the place you wanted to go to is actually closed!
  15. Then be angry that the exhibition the press release was about is not really what you were expecting! (Then: yell on the PR!)
  16. Complain about your redaction! (all the time.)
  17. Always pretend you are going to press (so you are VERY busy), even though you work for a biannual magazine
  18. Always be running out of time (even if your daily basis consists in writing two lines then having a coffe then having a 3-hour-long lunch with marketing department then picking up your children at school)!
  19. Be really angry when a PR calls you on your cell phone!
  20. Then you don’t understand why the PR didn’t call you on your cell phone to talk to you about this new info (including a press trip).
  21.  The Universal Rule: – BE UNBEARABLE TO PRs.

HOW TO BE A PR

  1. Pretend to be uber busy (especially when people call you)
  2. Never get to the office before noon (and leave preferably before 5)
  3. Harass journalist about very obscure news that no one cares and expect them to put it online after 10min
  4. Pretend that all your non HD pics are actual HD pics (if they call you and complain, lie again about it)
  5. Pretend that you can’t use we transfer (for no obvious reason)
  6. Write very pretentious press release with zero crucial informations in it (regarding the date of the product release, the price, the reason why the product is made…)
  7. AND act really annoyed if a journalist dare asking these crucial informations
  8. You don’t know how to use photoshop
  9. Act piss if a journalist explains to do you that he needs to follow the editorial line of the magazine (even if its a AA paper who refuses to write about st patrick day)
  10. If a journalist tries to contact directly the place and asks informations call his superiors and get pissed because they should contact you first even though you are unreachable and don’t know anything about it
  11. Always pretend that you have very important meetings when you actually just needs to go and drink champagnes at cocktails in Paris
  12. Drink champagne
  13. Drink champagne
  14. Complain about the buffet and the guests
  15. Drink champagne
  16. Pretend to be really unhappy
  17. Forget journalist deadline and send the press release needed 3 days later
  18. Your job is about introducing people and creating contacts but pretend that you are actually saving the world
  19. Have an over use of exclamation point
  20. The universal rule: be unbearable to everybody and act super busy

About the author

Charlie Beckett

Posted In: Director's Commentary | Journalism | Media