Facebook has been changing in a profound way. The introduction of public usernames, friend limits have been raised, a change in privacy options, the drop in developer’s support and a calm down from user registrations. Just what is happening to Facebook? Is Facebook trying to change how users use their social networking services to gain more popularity? The ramble continues… in a dangerous unscripted podcast.

Ladies and gentlemen. As always thank you for downloading and listening to this podcast and indeed both past episodes as well. This episode comes with a bit of a twist. To honour the focus we are to make to content, free content, on the internet this podcast will be avaliable in the .ogg vorbis file format as well as the conventional .mp3 format. For those of you who are listening, rather than reading this podcast, a link has been provided on the blog to the .ogg vorbis website. A file format which is patent free but undoubtaly should be the future of audio.

For those of you who are regular visitors to the blog you may have noticed the design change. This will be coupled with new features such as the ability to track down all my social networking activity by selecting “Social Stream”. I have had very flattering feedback from a couple of people requesting that they receive email updates when new content has been uploaded to the website. Unfortunately I don’t really have enough time to do this personally (as much as I would love to). Over the next few weeks though an optional registration system will be put in place to give you this option. Of course, you can always subscribe to the podcast through iTunes.

An inky squirt

The topic of discussion we are to delve into today is really a cliché. It has been one of those questions which had always lurked around generation y like an inky dark cloud without any silver lining.

Is print dead?

Perhaps the profound question behind this concentration is simply asking a question about the future of content. Content which drives people to earn their money so that they in turn may use their money to purchase content. Print is really just a physical form of content which can be found on the internet. Of course it must be realised that the majority of the content which can be found on the internet doesn’t cost anything, not even an old American dime. Whereas the cost of print sells information.

Please forgive me as I stray into this next, currently unknown, tangent. In the slightly more geeky corners of the internet we have an open source movement which, in its fundamental form, is against any commercially created entity. Open source in programming terms means that a program’s code is officially owned by no one… One can’t help but notice the company or individual who created the program in the first place but once created you can change/adapt the code anyway you like and pass the program on as your own. This movement can typically be found within the Linux Operating System circles of which a small part of my life I was part of. This began with the joys of Simply Mepis Linux and then I saw the Gnome side and moved to Ubuntu Linux. (For those of you perplexed to what Gnome might be, or even KDE, then a link has been provided on the blog). The point of this movement is that it is seen as pure. A program has been created by normal guys, not seeking after profit but for the joys of technology. Incidentally Linux has arguably been at the forefront of ideas when it comes to how a user interacts with their operating system of choice. Opensource generally proves itself by showing…

Free is Good

Perhaps not all the time. The point of this tangent is that the vast majority of information on the internet is free and very good. Why go out and buy a newspaper when I could just access the BBC News website? Even use Google or Yahoo news to view a cosmic amount of reports, available completely free online. At the very sad news of Michael Jackson’s death or at least speculated death I was sat in the pub with a couple of friends carefully navigating through messages on Twitter referring to various news reports concerning the event. The timing of Jackson’s sad death had meant the papers were unable to piece a news headline together for the next day. To my knowledge only The Sun managed to get a headline out in time, by what I assume must have been a quick re-print. This is one of known downfalls of print media, it takes time. Time is something which frankly have no time for these days. Publishing an article on the internet takes a fraction of a second, a far more efficient method than printing thousands of newspapers. The internet pretty much guarantees up-to-date information whereas a newspaper is already out of date once it has been purchased. If it wasn’t for the crossword or useful culture sections of a newspaper then I would find it difficult ever even considering spending my hard earned cash on newspapers. Older people shouldn’t be surprised when my generation admit to not reading the papers. Often students could be blamed with being out of touch with current events but really the lack of reading newspapers may mean a much more current knowledge than the person who spends on papers. I might not be completely correct there but I hope you get what I am trying to say.

Papers are now second best. There is a new kid on the block who wields the power of news far more efficiently, freely and interactively. Don’t write a letter, submit a comment. Don’t wait for the newspaper for the news, read it online. Don’t buy the news, it is now un-necessary to do so.

But wait just one second. All of that just seems too simple.

Death of online media?

So the current track record of newspaper doesn’t seem too pleasing. We are struggling to find a purpose for this almost antique method of dispersing news but what is happening on the digital side?

Technorati released its “State of the Blogosphere 2008” report examining the predicted 188.9 million audience of the internet and found that, in the US, blogs have a captured audience of 77.7 million visitors. An increasing difficulty has been found with which sites qualify as blogs or mainstream websites. This has had small effects on how the word “blog” should be defined. The report also indicates that the blogosphere is still developing, which may partly be why a definition is difficult to find. Blogs have proved worthy to the media ecosystem as many feature in top 10 lists with regards to topics. It has also been noticed that the average blogger has been posting for three years. This seems accurate as I have been posting for just over 2 years (on different blogs mind you).

Although Technorati’s report seems to suggest a very healthy blogging environment this does not seem to be the case with some other studies. It has been observed that whilst a large number of blogs are being created the majority of them are not being maintained. A name I urge you to remember is a gentleman called David Sifry who takes the widely known Technorati report and generates another concerned with the broader range of social media on the internet. This is commonly known as “The State of the Live Web” report.

The blogging medium has been observed to still be in growth, still maturing. Over 120,000 blogs are being created everyday (with only a slight dip during Christmas) which roughly means a one blog is being created each second of every day. A fairly crazy thought really. Blogs are on the increase and so is their place with regards to how they are approached compared to the mainstream media. More blogs have entered the top 100 most popular websites on the internet.

I could keep travelling deeper and deeper into the analytical details of the blogosphere but I will leave that to your own choosing. I have provided links on my blog referring to the sources I have used.

The problem in the blogging world begins when we look at how many blogs are being maintained regularly. Statistics have revealed that 60% – 80% percent of all blogs are abandoned within one month. This has meant that the “average blog” has the lifespan of a fruit fly. The result means that almost 3 million blogs are only updated every couple of months or have been completely abandoned.

Twitter

So now we cast our eye over Twitter. “Oh no, not Twitter again. Can’t people stop going on about bloody Twitter? Why are you such a twazzock?” I know, I know. The only reason I am looking at Twitter with regards to online/digital media is that it has formed a very surprising backbone between blogs and other social networking websites. I believe this will only increase the possibility of Google Wave taking the throne in the future. After all, Nicholas Carr said that, “Twitter is the telegraph system of Web 2.0”. (Web 2.0 can now be found in the dictionary)

Unfortunately, despite all the hype Twitter has received, 10% of Twitter users provide 90% of the content. The majority of users who have joined Twitter have only tweeted once. I know this is true for my Dad. The reason for this has been put down quite simply to “Twitter is only a broadcast medium”. To an extent this is true for users do broadcast their messages containing happenings, ideas, links and opinions. What is really meant by Twitter being a broadcast medium is that it does not allow for the friendly communication a network like Facebook might allow. If you would like to know more about this then feel free to read my last blog entry “Twittercide”.

I know from speaking with others that many can’t be bothered to maintain another social networking website, don’t understand what Twitter is all about and even if they did would find it difficult to write anything interesting. These are a few of the, more personal problems, Twitter encounters with being a network. Twitter certainly is not made for everybody.

Just an observation

What I did there was really just quickly skim over some of the details concerning the social web. I don’t have nearly enough time, key strokes or breath to delve into every nook and cranny of social media. However I hope the quick look at Blogging and Twitter has been useful.

Back to print!

I could have made you think that I have in fact forgotten what the title of today’s podcast/article is all about. The question has been put forward about ‘Is Print Dead?’ and I intent to answer it… eventually.

Rupert Murdoch has revealed that he believes the business model for newspapers is malfunctioning. Quite right. It can’t be said that newspapers are standing still waiting for their supposed demise. There have been small changes over the years, I believe the most recent ones to be the most interesting.

Recently newspapers have been shifting towards a smaller size, in 2003 The Independent started to produce a tabloid sized edition. The Times has followed in a similar manner along with The Guardian which has produced a mid-sized paper between broadsheet and tabloid, known as Berliner. The reduction in size has increased the sales of newspapers but arguably temporarily. Sales of newspapers have been decreasing since 2004 and there is no reason to suggest why this should stop unless something radical is done about it. I am sure Rupert Murdock would be inclined to agree with me on this point. We have had the radical press, now the press needs a radical change. A change far more radical than providing pictures of partially nude women in newspapers to make some quick sales. Internet news sites can achieve high readership levels without the need of boobs ‘n’ bits, why can’t newspapers? Because ultimately, a newspaper is a product which has to be actively picked up on the shelf, a desirable need to spend for content.

Content, content, content again. There are possibly dozens of reasons to why there is a decline of newspaper sales. Admittedly I can only think of a few. Notably how advertising has declined in an economy which has been bled dry by debt. My local Guardian newspaper for Sutton (locally known as slutton) had to stop trading for a few weeks because of a lack of advertising revenue. This has been a fairly widespread phenomenon for locally distributed newspapers. As the United Kingdom is a small island local newspapers aren’t as prominent compared to a large land masses such as America. The problems with the advertising industry, the large costs for promotion has created problems for funding printed publications across the board; Newspapers and magazines alike. Subscription seems like the only real alternative to avoid the problems the advertising industry is facing (May I add that PR is still in growth? Fantastic)

A view I have held for a while and only recently come to light within the media is the advent of a digital subscription to newspapers. What if you could download a newspaper to your eBook reader and have a digital copy of your newspaper sent to it every day. I guess the proposed view is why not just view a news website on your PDA? This is just the problem, there are a minefield of problems for the future of printed media. Perhaps the balance will be found with premium content? Of course the real challenge comes from the BBC which will seemingly provide content completely free due to the license fee. The BBC does give value for money and big corporations cannot compete with this.

So is the problem really with the print media or instead with the whole industry of news? How are journalists meant to make their money? The structure of content on the internet is fairly simple as I explained earlier, it should be free… but should it? One of my dreams would be to be a journalist but people still need to earn their living. The industry is certainly in trouble, no doubt about it. Regrettably I don’t really have the answers. As the philosopher Daniel Dennet wrote in his book “Breaking the Spell” the real task of philosophy is to find the right question to ask, not to find the answers. I believe we together, reader/listener, have come to a profound moment in our discussion, our muse.

The question really in our discussion is how is news meant to make money in the digital age? The answer to this question will, in my view, will answer our question ‘Is Print Dead?’  To purchase a newspaper is a public convenience. We cannot pretend to ignore the growth of free newspapers within the United Kingdom. If any of you have visited London (or indeed any other city recently) you will know that free newspapers are everywhere. In central London there will almost be a newspaper man giving away papers for free around every corner. In a tube stations every few yards lies a free newspaper pick up point. If you have failed to find a newspaper on the pavements, under the city, then you will mostly certainly find an abandoned free newspaper on the train. On the whole, these newspapers are fantastic reads and causes the consumer to ask further questions about newspapers. Newspapers might be a commodity but are they really worth the money we spend? After all, we can now easily get newspapers for free. I would rather save the money.

Save that money and journalists unfortunately lose their jobs. Some journalists aren’t able to find another job back into journalism, some make the move into Public Relations and others, who were lucky enough to keep working, are most passionate to see the journalism industry survive and evolve with the times. A blog I highly recommend reading is by a lady called Gina Chen, especially her post, “What newspapers can learn from sewing machine companies”.

Is this the end?

A joke is always made about conclusions. How it is needless and unnecessary to read or listen to the bulk of an article when you could just skip to the conclusion. In conclusion I must admit that I do not yet have a full opinion about the state of print media. We have to remember that print media, in regards to books, still works. eBook readers have been disappointing sales and have shown that even in a digital age paper can still serve a purpose. Newspapers on the other hand are dying, not quite dead, but getting there. This could be said for the whole trade of journalism, the trade of opinion. To buy opinion when you can view and write it on the internet is harmful of the trade. Something needs to be done to fix the journalism industry, which is another article altogether…

And if I ever have an idea about the business model needed to save the newspaper industry then don’t go searching for it on my blog. Such an idea would be too precious, too important, to give away for free.

I hope you have enjoyed reading/listening to this article and until next time.

Good bye x                    

Thank you very much for downloading the second podcast. How am I doing? Very well thank you. Before continuing any further with this podcast a little bit of housekeeping.

Housekeeping

This podcast can now be found on the iTunes Store. Simply search for “Musings of a Public Relations Student” or click the text link I have provided on the written article for this podcast.

For those of you who are regular visitors to my blog you may have noticed that the shrink and expand options on all the blog articles have been disabled. Unfortunately this has resulted the home page of my blog to be stretched down your monitor by thousands of words. This bug will be fixed once Ajaxed WordPress, the plugin I use for the shrink and expand feature, has become compatible with the latest version of WordPress which I currently run.

On with the substance of this podcast.

Ambassador of business

In the last podcast I mentioned that I had been a Student Ambassador for one of my old colleges. The title “Student Ambassador” sounds far grander than the job role actually is. The basics of the job is to promote the university where you study at along with the course you are taking. Now, I am aware that Public Relations students and practitioners visit this blog. This podcast might be more interesting for those of you who actually work within the PR industry rather than a student. In fact, if you are a prospective student thinking about studying any subject at all, you should find this podcast useful as one student’s perspective with how university has been as a whole. Obviously, I can only give you one side of the story as I only study at the University of Gloucestershire and purely focus on Media, Journalism, Marketing and, of course, Public Relations.

Part of the job of being a Student Ambassador is to not only show prospective students around my university but to also visit different schools. I don’t view this as a role of propaganda. If there is one value I have held through life it is that people are free to make their own decisions, no matter how bad they might be. We are all on our own sort of journeys through life. This journey is social, emotional, academic – anything but plutonic. We adapt ourselves as we go to university, because lets face it, everything changes. You are in a different location, with new people, studying a new course, most of us have to cook for ourselves and understand how to live with ourselves. Anybody who says that going to university is an easy transition is wrong. I imagine that even if you come from a tough background university will still be a change. It is important to realise though that this change is a good thing. Even if university does not work out well for you, you will learn a lot from your experience. Either a little bit more about the world but more likely, to learn to a greater depth what you are like as a person.

Several months ago I received an email from my college inviting me to an ambassador’s day. Anything but political, they were asking for university students to speak with sixth form students about what life is like after they had finished their A level studies. My college was split between two schools; Richard Challoner and Holy Cross. As both names suggests they are Catholic schools, but despite being an Atheist myself, they offered a fantastic education. After all, I am at the University which I first applied for.

The set up of this ambassador’s day was rather simple. Each university student was placed in a room concerning their subject area. For this reason I was placed in the, not very exciting title, ‘Business Room’. Part of me felt that Public Relations was better destined for the media rooms where the turnout would inevitably be far greater that those who visited the ‘Business Room’. The merit of the room I was placed in was that ‘Public Relations’ was put as the title on the door. Must have been a little annoying for those uni students who were with me in the room doing other business related courses! After all, I was the only student ambassador, out of 5 others, who was actually studying Public Relations as a degree.

The students who came into our room to chat about university were hugely mixed. There is this idea that those who mostly study business studies are foreign students. As my college is based in New Malden/Kingston there is a very high Korean population but surprisingly for me, the prospective student mix was, well, very mixed. All of the students seemed very bright and very interested in what university was all about. Before I stepped into the room I had made a promise to myself that I would be as open about my experiences as possible… Now, instead of putting you readers/listeners through the pains of each individual Question and Answer asked to me on the day I thought I would write down an honest account of my experiences. It is very likely that I will unable to ever be Prime Minister after this account. So I hope you enjoy it and don’t judge me too much at the end.

First fucking fortnight

So the honesty begins, when I first visited the University of Gloucestershire I thought it looked like a scrap yard. I was right. The University is made up of four different campuses, I am based at Pittville campus, the arty campus. Which makes me hugely jealous since I am not arty myself and so being around students all day who have the talent to draw from imagination or to copy an image precisely seems like witchcraft to me. It isn’t even like there are no arty people in my family. My granddad ran his own printing company for years, could tell a hundred different colour mixes and can copy perfectly. The gene pool must not have been in my favour! But anyway, the campus I am based on is a polystyrene campus. I used to joke about our halls being constructed out of polystyrene and cardboard. Until the day I mentioned the joke to my taxi driver in Cheltenham and he responded, “Oh yes, controversial build”. I must be honest, that did take me by surprise. There is no doubt that where Pittville lacks for its archtecutre, it pays back in community. I know it sounds cheesy and fan boyish. I can just hear the screams of “Pittville till I die!” now. It is true though. Out of all the campuses at the university Pittville has the warmer community. Which is clearly evident in the student union bar.

None of this though was apparent to me when I first began at the university. I stepped out the car trying to hide my shakes from the super star help team, collected my keys and headed to my new room with my parents. Stepping into that small room was fairly terrifying. I knew that my university life had begun and this room would be my hide out from now on. It really was a hide out in a strange way. I am not the sort of person who enjoys clubbing or hard drinking. I may drink fairly consistently during the week but I never usually drink vast quantities in one evening. Obviously university was a change in this respect.

I won’t deny it though. The first evening was good. I head down to a BBQ which the uni had planned for the freshers with my new floor mates and went around searching for people who were on my course. I met a couple but quickly went with the crowd to a whole host of different halls on campus. Until I got bored and decided to head back to my own hall, Spencer. Where, by chance, a drinking game was going on, which I didn’t take part in but I did slowly learn who everybody was through listening. That evening one girl revealed that she had anal sex in the past and enjoyed it. After that every time I saw the girl I couldn’t help but think “she has had anal sex”. A word of advice, don’t be too open straight away, as whatever dirty fact you reveal, you will be remembered by. For those of you who are listening rather than reading this article I have included a picture of a very tired/sad me which was taken that evening.

Getting to know people, for me, does take a while though. Although I may come across as a confident person I do find it difficult to connect with people. Just a personal problem of mine really. The first fortnight of university went very slowly and it was very lonely. Most people seemed to go out to a club every night, which I would be far too frightened to attend, which meant I hardly left my room. It was here that one of my vices became a virtue, I am a smoker. Before university I was mostly a smoker of cigars but it became clear early on that cigarettes were more, shall we say normal to smoke regularly. I switched over from the Hamlets to the Marlboros and through smoking outside the halls occasionally I met new people. For such a bad habit smoking helped me meet some really great people at university. Smoking also gave me an excuse to stand outside to escape the hormonal, sweaty, drunk, noisy clubs for a few minutes. It may have been a drunk conversation outside full of tin pot philosophies, empty ambitious plans and meaningless praise to absolute strangers. Much better than the looming dance floor and sticky floor within.

That first fortnight at university was the worst though. Although I did have a smile on during the day, inside I was feeling hopelessly depressed. For this reason everything was an act to a certain extent. My sleeping patterns were terrible – going to bed at 3am and waking up at 7:30am. At which time I would leave my hall, walk to a random road nearby and phone my parents. Many of the times I spoke with my parents on the phone I was holding back tears. I am still unsure about how much of this depressed mood was purely caused by university. Around the end of the first fortnight I was sitting in my room and that crazy feeling descended upon me. It happens sometimes. I was just sitting by my computer and realised that I could leave the university.

Without any hesitation I picked up my small bag, emptied the contents of it on my floor (which mostly consisted of pens and paper), packed a toothbrush and left the university. In the past I remember having looked at a map of Cheltenham, from which I remembered the patterns of the roads leading to the train station. At this stage I had only been at the University of Gloucestershire for just over 2 weeks. I found it difficult walking into town, let alone trying to find the train station. It took about an hour to walk to the train station with nothing but a mental image. I walked down the wrong road once but somehow I made it. Now, to get a perspective with how I felt – the only thought running through my head was to see London again. I wanted to arrive in London whist it was dark so that I could see the lights of the Thames and the millennium wheel. No doubt about it, I was being seduced by the picture of London in my head.

The train cost me £50 which I spent without hesitation. I got onto that train with no suitcase or packed clothes. Everyone travelling to London was required to switch lines at Bristol station. I got off at Bristol, and suddenly my brain kicked started into life again. The image of London was thrown aside; pictures and thoughts of before university filled my mind and I cried again. I tried phoning both my parents and managed to get through to my Dad.

I felt bad for worrying my family. I think my Grandparents were the ones who were most concerned. I had to spend another £10 travelling back to Cheltenham and helpzone advisers (the delightful people who look after the students, who I think run the most important part of the university, a student’s wellbeing) met up with me. They were very kind, as they always are, and helped me make my university transition a little smoother. Occasionally I was meet one of them whilst walking to a lecture and they would make sure everything was still alright with me.

At the time I told both my parents that if I still hated university at the end of that month then I would leave. I didn’t have to leave in the end. I made some of the strongest friendships I had ever experienced in the following few months. That transition, for me, was painful. What I only can describe as intense loneliness. It is true that it is much easier to focus on the bad. *Phew* But anyway, on with the happier part of this podcast.

Questions and Answers

There are just so many questions about continuing into further education. Obviously I can only offer the university side of the spectrum. We have the treacherous arena of finances, we have over 10,000 courses on offer which can each be studied at 100 different universities, where should we study and what will be the result of our studies in the future. Obviously prospective students will have a lot of questions to ask. I have listed some of my points in paragraphs:

1. To begin with the dry question of finances. Do not worry about them. Well, not exactly, make sure that you don’t spend over the budget you have set for your first year. The fact of the matter is that some point in life you will need a loan. The largest of which will probably be for your mortgage which could possibly climb to hundreds of thousands. I am expecting to leave university with a loan of around £20,000 but the loans are apparently very easy to pay off. Otherwise you would be better of killing your parents and moving country.

2. Whatever you do live away from home. Don’t worry about the costs, living away from home is a good experience. If you live at home and go to university then you are not having the full experience. Fair enough, living on campus might be expensive but you are not just buying a small room, you are buying into an experience. The change you will see in yourself after having lived away for a few months would possibly stagger you. With regards to having catering done for you. Are you really that lazy? Cooking is a life skill. Living away should force this need to cook upon you. Don’t be that lazy sort of person that allows somebody else to cook all their food for you.

3. Get stuck into everything at university. Join the societies which interest you and grab every opportunity which is thrown at you. At no other time in your life will you have the chance to possibly write for a newspaper, join a radio station, run event management etc. The list of chances university provides for every student is amazing and it would be a blasphemy against the good nature of university to turn anything down.

4. Choose a course that you think sounds interesting, not a course which you ought to do. I originally made this mistake when I first applied for Computer Science courses. People had told me I was good at computing therefore I should follow this passion. Last minute decisions with my UCAS application found me applying for Public Relations. Do think about where a course could end you up. The lkilihood getting a job within business just based off a theology degree is almost 0%. You would need some really good work experience to back any jobs you apply in the future.

Which leads us onto our next point.

5. Gain work experience! There is no point receiving a degree without any experience with the industry you want to get into. It isn’t too difficult to find work experience. Most companies seem very happy for students to enter their businesses and share some of the latest news and approaches which you have learnt about the industry.

6. Build up that list of contacts. You will be surprised how easy it is to find contacts in the world. At the start of my first year I met Stephen Fry and got contact information with a lady who worked in publishing who was standing in the queue.

Finally, point,

7. Work on that balance between social and work time. Some people don’t understand the balance and fail university as a result, or decide to drop out. I think we have had at least four different people on my own course leave because they spent far too much time drinking during the week, missing lectures and falling dangerously behind workloads.

Apparently we are all meant to meet the person we will marry in the future at University. Quite a terrifying thought but just shows how much university could influence your life.

And without any sense of bias do continue into some form of education after sixth form. With the problems of the job market at the moment further education is the best place to be. Of course, you could always study Public Relations at the University of Gloucestershire.

Happy holidays

I am afraid that is all we have time for this week and now I am off on holiday. I hope you have enjoyed this brutally honest blog/podcast. As always, thank you for listening/reading and feel free to join in with me on Twitter at twitter.com/michaelwhite1.

Until next time, goodbye.     

This article marks the beginning of a new series of podcasts giving you the option to listen rather than read from the glare of your monitor. Depending on the format of the podcasts the majority of recordings will also be avaliable in standard text form. Podcasts can either be streamed or downloaded from this website. Before not too long podcasts will also be avaliable through the iTunes store.

Before I begin I want to thank you for downloading and listening to this first podcast. Not too sure how the audio will sound as I have no official recording gear as such. Most microphones seem to give me some sort of artificial lisp. Unless, of course, I do have a lisp… Anyway, I hope everything sounds bearable. I have tried the art of podcasting in the past and unfortunately I never really felt it to catch on. This time though, I will make an effort. I know from my own experience that constantly reading all the time can become quite tedious and so I hope listening provides a breath of fresh air into my tiny corner of the interweb.

I’m not too sure about the frequency of podcasts which will bless this site currently or how this new form of media will aid in my PR related articles. I’m sure time will tell though. Before I discourse any further into this microphone I must first detail my sort of terms and conditions… I do not pretend to know everything. Starting this blog was a leap of faith as I am still a student and so I gradually learn more as I walk down the path towards achieving my degree. If learning works as planned then I should be able to listen and read these articles in a years’ time and feel embarrassed that I could hold such a pile of drivel as an opinion in the first place. Learning has the vice to which no man can ever say “I am sure”. So perhaps I could be better described as an agnostic evangelist of the PR realm. Who knows? I certainly don’t. How could I have the audacity, the chutzpah to loquaciously say that I am right? Of course I don’t. Anything on this blog and in these podcasts is the sole product of my own reasoning and knowledge. Jeremy Vine recently revealed how the listeners provide much of the content for his radio programmes. I implore you to do the same, write down your opinion by commenting on any of my articles or write a rebuke on your own website/blog. Anything which aids learning would be greatly appreciated. So without further ado it is time to add my opinion into the academic mix.

A little autobiography

But before continuing I thought I would do a little summary of myself. Oh, how dreary! Can’t you talk about anything else? Well, yes but I wouldn’t want any of you under the impression that I actually know what I’m talking about when it comes to public relations and the media. I am a first year PR student. I have actually finished my first year now and so technically I could be regarded as a second year student who hasn’t yet done the readings! Not that all students to the necessary readings each week anyway. I chose to study PR at the University of Gloucestershire. A University which I believed and still believe to be one of the best universities for teaching pr in the country. Perhaps a bold claim but I think “what the best uni is” is mostly to do with personal preference. I looked around at least eight different universities before making my final choice and the friendly, small class sizes of Gloucestershire won my interest very early on.

Whilst studying for my A levels and going through the horrible labyrinth which is the apply process for uni I had to make some very big decisions about my future. Every student, has to make these decisions. Should I go to university? Learn a trade? Or just trot out into the world of work. Anybody who chooses the latter option in the current economic meltdown of the world would be very unwise. Originally I had been looking at a variety of computer science courses. Computers and other forms of technology have always been a passion of mine and so it seemed sensible to follow this passion. At the same time though a large part of me would think far into the future and wonder what my perfect job would be. I have no objections with stand alone programming or server side scripting. Most of my younger teenage years were spent starting new software or internet projects. I just didn’t want to spend my later years sitting behind a desk as a programmer. I don’t want to eat fast food all day long, grow a large belly and lose almost all hope of finding a girlfriend, let alone a wife! Okay, I did just build a rather stereotypical view but I hope you understand what I mean. I wanted a job in the future which would be a mix of inside and outside. Something to compliment my own character which waves between seclusion and attention.

After having attended a university fair one day (for those who haven’t been to a university fare they are amazing places. Lots of free gifts, colourful people and cheesy advertising) I built up a collection of at least 12 different university prospectuses for undergraduate students. Public Relations was known about very early on but never in my mind seriously considered. The title ‘Public Relations’ just didn’t seem that tasty or chocolately, rather bland in many ways. This was the first reason which put me off taking pr as a course before I even had read the content. It was when I attended a computer science talk at Lincoln university that by chance I was edged closer to public relations.

We had an hour before lunch and by chance a journalism talk fitted well with our timings, I decided to attend the presentation and listen with an open mind. The lecturer was a brilliant witty man who wore tatty jeans, un-ironed white shirt and had who’s facial skin seemed to suggest a life harder than I have ever had to bare. The talk was very interesting and reinforced the passion to write inside me. A passion which has been so ingrained through my life that sometimes I forget it is even there. When we came to questions and answers a boy at the back asked the question:

“Why should I study journalism?”

Quite a cheeky question really but actually perfectly valid. Instead of the lecturer replying back in some sort of sarcastic tone who was very sincere and said:

“Most people live their life in a box. They drive to work in a box, they work behind a desk in a box, they drive home to their box and spend their evenings watching the box. The course I am offering you is outside of this box.”

I realised after this that, for me, computer science was too concerned with that box. I might still spend my life around the box but I certainly wasn’t going to waste time repairing the box of my computer. I had considered journalism as a degree but public relations seemed better. Of course, some journalists move to public relations in later life. Perhaps in my later life I will move to journalism. Who knows? What I do know is that I need to get out of that box. That is why I chose Public Relations.

Generation why?

So on with the real substance of this podcast and it begins with a series of questions. Why, Oh why, Oh why? What a waste of time. You could have tidied your bedroom, done the washing up, finished your homework, oh anything! Anything would have been far more productive than just sitting on the internet all the time.

I’m a proud member of generation ‘Oh why?!’ Generally generation y are those who were born late 1980s – early 1990s. In the respect which I will be looking at generation y though will be with regards to the internet. Although I am technically a different generation to those who had children in the late 1990s we all have one thing in common. To us technology and the internet is a mother language. People born before computers were commonly found in the home learnt technology as a second language. This can be easily seen in my grandparents, a 3^rd generation down, who are far more competent with mending a bike than I am but struggle to send an email. Of course, we all have different abilities of learning, both my parents can use computers well. There is a lack of passion or buzz missing though. A certain bond missing. Such as how my age find using the Apple iTunes store a simple task, Microsoft Office suite speaks for itself and navigating through an Operating System is learnt through messing about. The vast majority of older people need the instruction.

This is far from an ageist remark and I have no intention to cause offence. It is just true. The generation which grew up with the internet, my generation, are generally far more competent with technology. No other generation had the wide opportunity to learn whilst a toddler how to use computers or programme as a teenager. Bill Gates had to visit a local business to develop the art of programming. I just had to walk down some stairs in a small house, next to Nonsuch Park in Cheam.

It was a good 6 months after having started programming that I started first enquiring into owning my own website. I had no idea what I wanted the website to be based around. At the time I was a fairly devout Christian so I had considered constructing a Christian gaming website. How dire… The only other option was to develop a website about myself. This must have been early 2002, April I believe and I’ll never forget what my friends Dad told me.

“Why would anybody want to visit a website all about you? Personal websites have no purpose. They simply do not work.”

Hehe, how wrong he was. In the following two years social networking accelerated, blogs started to appear over the internet. Blogs have been around since the late 90s but Google may have been the catalyst when they purchased Blogger in 2003. It is difficult to say where they all spawned from, part of me believes blogs are the evolutionary offspring of bulletin boards and forums. Not exactly a love child but more an evolutionary cousin, much like chimpanzees are to humans.

But anyway, before I delve any further into this podcast I must give my thanks to Phil Hicks, who works at Montpellier Marketing Communications in Cheltenham, for providing the seed of thought for rest of this recording.

Social media rumour

Even as a member of generation Y, everyone, across all generations, wonders what the future of the internet will be. In the late 1980s many believed that the highstreet would be dead by the time we had the millennium. This prediction has truthfully been proven false. Shops have closed down, for a variety of reasons, but the high street still lives on and I’m sure will flourish once again. The point is this, whilst it is not possible to see into the future it is possible to predict where the patterns of the internet may lead.

It is not impossible by any degree to guess where communication on the internet will result. You may have seen a couple of weeks ago that I wrote an article on my blog about Google Wave. What I believe will possibly be the successor of Facebook as the social network has the ability to merge with other social networking mediums, this includes Twitter. Although, of course, Twitter isn’t really a social networking tool, which might owe to its success. On any other social networking website you can agree a friendship with an individual but then have constant mutual interaction with them. Twitter gives users the choice to interact, you don’t have to follow somebody just because they have followed you. Some believe it is courteous to follow back, I agree with this to a certain extent I but never follow everyone back. Some accounts really are a bit questionable…

The real question which we have to ask about social media is what difference it is making to the world. From a wider point of view we have globalisation, the concept of a ‘global village’  coined by Marshall McLuhan. From a media point of view we have a new form of communication offered by the social networking boom. Earlier today I visited one of my old colleges, Holy Cross, and was mainly inundated by questions asking what Public Relations is. The best way I found to describe it was partly through the theory of new media which is best compared against advertising. Whilst advertising could be described as parasitical, PR is far more focused, at least well done PR.

An article I wrote last month in response to a man called Loic Le Meur tackled this question of advertising and public relations. It is not uncommon to get the two confused as they are both essentially promotion and awareness tools. Like all tools though, they age and they change. It is best to view advertising as a vast sheet covering the necessary parts of your audience whilst PR accurately focuses on the necessary individuals in an way which could be best described as perhaps economical. PR does not waste promotion and awareness on the wrong people and with regards to digital PR usually judges success from an audiences response.

I am actually fortunate enough to be working for several companies in my summer break which is all about using ePR (Electronic Public Relations). From this I have learnt just how important it is to promote a product effectively and how Public Relations provides the necessary tools. A part of me believes PR is a free thought alternative to promote. The best campaigns have originality such as the Torches of Freedom campaign overlooked by Edward Bernays.

From this perspective online Public Relations does have a limit. ePR has the unfortunate problem of being bound in by the social construct it has to work within. However, this might be a topic best suited for another podcast episode sometime.

Until next time…

So here marketh the end of the podcast. I hope it didn’t sound too much like a lesson! Despite the serious tones I am just a student and this blog is my playground. Feel free to follow my updates on twitter at http://twitter.com/michaelwhite1. The account Michael White seems to be taken by the Guardian political correspondent. Although I do almost have his amount of followers! Keep watching out for new podcast episodes, the podcasts should be available on iTunes shortly.

Until next time, thank you for listening and goodbye.