In the battle of hacks v flaks, a winner emerges

A yelp of anguish this way comes from a hack turned banker turned hack again.

“Is it me” she asks. “Or has the financial PR industry become useless in the past 10 years? They don’t seem to give a toss about communicating with the financial media.”

When she was last doing this, the flak trade treated her with something close to reverence.

As she has noticed, financial hacks have fallen down the pecking order in terms of who the PR industry most wants to be in with.

The FT details this shift in an excellent piece that explains why PR firms have swapped “leaks over lunch” for board whispering.

The part of PR that hacks see – handling newspapers – was always only a slice of what the flaks did, but it was perhaps the most important bit.

Now, it isn’t. The PR firms are selling wider services, consulting on risk, corporate culture and politics. They don’t even describe themselves as PRs anymore.

The implications for this are bad for the hacks, whose egos may be getting a (well deserved?) slap.

But good for the PR trade. It spends less time dealing with grubby Fleet Streeters and more time wooing private equity kings.

They are less fun than us, but massively more lucrative.

According to the PRCA the number of people in PR in the UK is up 30% to about 109,000 since 2016. That’s just the numbers for those who are registered with the PRCA of course.

This power shift is arguably bad for democracy, or perhaps it means the hacks will have to work harder to get attention.

Papers know this, which is why there is a drive for ever more complex investigations into shady areas.

This is time consuming and expensive, but is probably the only way for traditional media to stay relevant.

It requires skills and resources few have.

An adjunct to the FT piece: last week a Reform UK leader banned his councillors from having any engagement with The Nottingham Post.

In the old days, you’d have said that this approach doesn’t work.

It would surely just create a newsroom with more time – and motivation – to dig up stories Reform would rather hide. 

I doubt that is true anymore. The Post is a shadow of what it once was. Its ability to punch back weakened by the reality of its finances.

The Post’s editor Natalie Fahy called Reform’s move “a massive attack on local democracy”. But, is it, really?

Ignoring the press in favour of your own messaging looks like a reasonable tactic at this point.

The flaks are winning. Hacks need to bite back.

Please send candidates for press release of the day to:

Simon.english@roxhillmedia.com