Media access a costly commodity

My studies and involvement in the communications industry taught me that a list of broadcast, press and news websites is just not enough for an effective PR person.

Professionals say one needs a media list per province as some communication alerts are directed to a particular province and would be irrelevant to the rest of the country. Another tip I got is that the provincial list on its own is still not enough – one needs to further break it down by the categorisation of each particular media, and for instance, get contacts of who reports on youth development (for example) from the media directly, as the rest would not be relevant to the business of my organisation.

'Marketing public relations'

When my list is in order, I can then send press releases about our activities and expect some media coverage… Some call the exercise ‘marketing public relations' – keeping my organisation in the news without payment. I'm sure my employer would be impressed to get mentioned in the media without paying exorbitant amounts on advertising.

I guess they hired me to save on advertising, looking at what the organisation should be paying for the monthly centimeters/duration of media coverage compared to my monthly salary!

So I started my mission to develop a media list according to said received advice…

Impossible task

I found it impossible to get the relevant information as many institutions that should have the list are not doing their work.

I had hope in the GCIS website with its media contact directory. But my anticipation was dashed to find that media details are not categorised by province. I was even more discouraged to find out that some information on the list is just incorrect and some outdated. For example, the list indicates that Jovial Rantao is editor-in-chief of Sunday Times (although he is also – correctly – listed as editor of Sunday Independent).

Well, I did not expect them to list Ray Hartley as editor of the new Sunday Times embedded daily, The Times. That would be too much to ask as the list does not even have the contacts of The Weekender. It seems Mondli Makhanya has been ‘blacklisted' though, wonder why…

My next stop was the Independent Communications Authority (ICASA). There is no list of broadcasting media on its website, which is strange from the country's industry regulator. Then I thought the Media Development & Diversity Agency website would have a list of community media as its mandate is to support this often-neglected, but important, section of the media. But again, the MDDA website has no complete list.

Industry news portal www.journalism.co.za had something, although some contact details are missing and it seems to pay more attention to newspapers.

Pay up

So I asked myself, if it is so difficult to get a comprehensive media list, how am I going to sub divide contact details by provinces and then section journalists?

Then I finally noticed that a couple of companies are providing ‘targeted list of media contacts and journalists' relevant to my publicity campaign!

But one has to pay and some organisations do not have budget for that PR luxury. I just want to believe they have a complete list divided by industry journalists… and by province.