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A Rugby Ruck

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A rugby ruck

A common and growing complaint from hack land: corporate hospitality ain’t what it used to be.

Let’s leave aside for a minute whether hacks should be accepting jollies from companies they write about

(I tend to think the supposed corrupting effect is less than imagined; if anything, we learn things we otherwise wouldn’t when the stiff finance director lets his hair down).

Anyway, the complaint is this: how come I only ever get invited to rugby, a sport to which I am somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile?

I thought maybe this was just me; that I had fallen off the cricket and football lists, but colleagues concur.

A correspondent writes: “Even I am receiving rugby invitations. Apparently, someone thinks I am a key journalist for the insurance industry. They really can’t fill those corporate boxes, can they?”

Another correspondent: “I suppose, given the tendency of modern PRs to ring up and pitch stories without having even passing knowledge of our outlets or the kind of stories that work for them, we should not be surprised that they have absolutely no idea what our sporting interests are either.”

Ouch.

I think that’s harsh. And the savvier end of the PR trade has never been better at pitching things tailored very specifically to individual hacks and publications.

The other end of the PR trade seems if anything more out of touch than it used to be. The rugby invites look like evidence of just that.

Maybe it’s all an elaborate wind-up by the PR trade – a plot to distract us from proper work with endless requests to attend things we can’t stand. If so – good one. It’s working.

If it isn’t that, then from the outside it looks like a large amount of wasted effort.

Press release of the day

Internet searches for “how to delete Twitter” are up 96% since Elon Musk bought the company, says this from Fasthosts.

Twitter is telling advertisers that user growth is at an all-time high, but there is plainly uncertainty about the future of the company.

Michelle Stark said: “While we obviously aren’t looking at a mass exodus of people leaving one of the most popular social media sites on the planet, the data clearly shows that people are indeed beginning to both look into leaving it, and they’re also looking for alternatives – this is all just within the first couple of weeks of the takeover.”

Stories that will keep rolling

1) Are the employment figures indicative of recession? How far is pay lagging inflation?

2) Is Vodafone making progress on its consolidation plans?

3) When will house prices start rising again?

4) Is the crypto philanthropy movement over?

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