What’s the PR perspective?

I’ve tried to do this in a sympathetic way, steering well clear of useless PR-bashing, and reckon that I have mostly succeeded – although my previous column did seem more condemnatory than I’d intended upon a second reading. Sorry if it peeved anyone.

Balance is very important to me, here. While we journalists have pressures and requirements so, of course, do you lot. It isn’t as simple as just giving us what we want – there are also clients to please, and sometimes old-fashioned bosses to obey. I always try to bear this in mind in my columns.

All of which is to say that I never want this to be a one-way street, not with me at least. If there’s anything I can do better – a feasible way to make your lives easier; to make the whole PR-journalist process work more smoothly – then please do suggest it. There’s no caste system here: we’re all trying to find the way to do our jobs as well as possible, and to work efficiently with those around us. We’re all equals.

There’s talk of a Roxhill column, or at least a one-off platform, whereupon PRs can make such suggestions — the PR version of a Roxstars column, effectively. I’d be up for that. I’d gladly read it. But until it happens, if it happens, please feel free to give me feedback. I might take yonks to respond and I might see it as unrealistic, but I’ll never object to receiving it.

Thanks for all your help in 2021. It was a less cr*p year for the industry than 2020, but not by much. Omicron is casting an ugly shadow over things again, but I hope that 2022 will be a year when, eventually, we consign Covid to a flu-like low-profile status.