is consolidating some of its sections in an effort to cut costs. The Metro section, for example, is now part of the main news. 

And on most week days, Sports will now be part of the Business section. Why do these sections belong together, exactly? My more paranoid self concluded these are both considered “guy” things, that in an imperfect world where consolidation is necessary, these two sections are most like each other. Even if this wasn’t the motivation (and I really strained to find a production rationale that made sense to me to explain it), that’s the message it might be sending.

Yes, I know, lots of women love reading about sports. And guess what, lots and lots of women love reading the business section. So why not bring them together? Maybe I’m too preoccupied with my own bias -  my husband grabs ONLY the sports section for his commute, leaving me the rest of the paper. Now he will have nothing, because the Business section is a necessity for m. Or maybe I can learn to live without it. After all, I also get The Wall Street Journal at home. It will probably have a Sports section of its own soon enough.

It doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally an angry contact, usually trying to persuade us not to write a negative story, will explode with “You’re not The f*&#ing Wall Street Journal“!

I found the best answer is usually, “Well you’re not [f*#&ing] Jeff Immelt either”. Undignified? Well, yeah…

Even so, the usefulness of our angry reader’s insult might be waning. These days we’re all the Wall Street Journal, or none of us is, not even the Wall Street Journal.  So why aren’t we all taking advantage of this moment, instead of constantly carping about what we are losing? As a spokesperson for media companies that aren’t  The Wall Street Journal, I can see that we’ve never had a better opportunity to enrich our readers’ experience. Most of us are not doing it.

We spend a lot of time in the media worrying about the business model, but too little time focusing on relevance. Relevance is someone getting so angry at your publication that they will resort to silly insults to try and shame you into capitulating. When people stop caring, they stop yelling, and then stop reading.

Relevance is not demonstrated by ad dollars or circulation metrics alone. It is better tested through the relationship of the reader to its outlet, and in all the metrics that we evaluate - from page views to  uniques to good old fashioned pass-along readership - don’t bring us closer to understanding what we need to do to stay relevant.

I believe that many publications are growing more and more out of touch with their communities, even as we seem to be that much more engaged because of the immediacy of our digital networks. We are losing the personal connections that foster truly great journalism. Reporters are so busy blogging and twittering they don’t have time - or, rather, they don’t take time - to venture out and sit across from a table (or bar) from a contact and get at the unexpected, and the real.

I’m not going to round this off with a pithy answer. I just feel in my bones that we are missing a trick, as a media community, at a time when we don’t have to follow the herd to succeed. I hope to delve into this more during the coming weeks. Please note, there are no links in this post. In my all-too-sporadic blogging efforts, I was way too caught up in finding good stories to link to. I almost forgot that I have plenty of material without them.

The New York Times’ about the Tribune Company’s impending cuts included insight into the value placed on editorial contribution, and how the company measures - in column inches, seemingly - success. “[Tribune Company COO Randy] Mr. Michaels revealed that the company had analyzed the volume of material produced by each reporter, and the per capita production at each paper; it concluded that many people were not pulling their weight and would hardly be missed.”

It reminded me of the principles of Taylorism, which (according to Wikipedia) is also known as “scientific management”, whereby a standard method for performing work tasks is implemented, based on analysis of individuals performing tasks, designed to increase productivity and consistency. The cost, according to detractors, is initiative, morale, and fundamental humanity.

Productivity is not a term often used in conjunction with the newsroom. Had Woodward and Bernstein been judged in terms of work volume, I have a feeling that they would have abandoned the low-yield Watergate investigation in favor of far more lucrative topic.

Of course, it is the job of the journalist to supply stories and feed the beast. But any sense that a reporter’s precise contribution can be judged by the number of words he or she squeezes into a story is ludicrous. Unlike manufacturing, you can’t assume that by applying a certain level of energy to one story will achieve the same result, and deliver the most, or best, content.  

As a fan of pith, of fewer words-better chosen, I can’t help but worry that comments like this will send mediocre reporters out to pad their copy beyond the limits of editorial need. Meanwhile, the real problem - that of dwindling ad revenue even as content strategy is more targeted and reactive than ever - remains unsolved.

Robert Thomson has been managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Too bad. I was looking forward to seeing how his publishing role developed as self-proclaimed  particularly as the Journal swings fully into its new direction. Moreover, it is a signal now that a new, more uncertain day is dawning at the title.

This is not because Thomson lacks integrity, talent, or credibility, or because the standards per se will take a precipitous drop. The Journal retains a powerful brand and impeccable editorial reputation. No doubt the company will continue to hire from the top ranks of reporters and editors. But its move towards the mainstream is a mistake, and Thomson’s coronation is confirmation that this trajectory will accelerate.

As PRWeek learned long ago, it is better to be a leading specialist than a competitive generalist. We learned by trying to direct every interesting mainstream story through the prism of PR, to come out with our own take on the news that people could read anywhere. The problem was, our take was quite often not different enough to make it truly a PRWeek story. Now our standards are much more strict for how we define a PRWeek element, however much attention the topic gets in the pages of USA Today and on GMA.

The Journal has an even bigger problem. The public has simply too many resources for mainstream news today to make meaningful distinctions between them. And the standards by which the general public judge their media outlets now is abysmally low, as evidenced by the dumbing down of network news, and the proliferation of celebu-journalism. Thus The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the election, for example, will not automatically create converts to the brand, who are already more than happy to read about the election in everything from the Washington Post online to the Daily Show on television. The distinction of Wall Street Journal reporting will not be immediately obvious outside its business bailiwick.

The Wall Street Journal has long held firm to its tradition of stolid, in-depth business coverage at the expense of more mainstream appeal. Thus it created an elite and enviable community, which will no doubt feel somewhat betrayed by its paper’s shift to the same grid as the few other national papers. Will its circulation numbers rise as a result? Probably. But what will be the value of those readers, and where will its community go if it feels the Journal does not deliver what they want any more?

looks at war between The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, in the era of Rupert Murdoch at the helm of the latter. To be sure, the WSJ looks very different than it did when we worked with the paper to debut its January 07 redesign to the PR community.

There are many interesting angles to this story, but one that is most cinematic is the role of Publisher with a capital P that Murdoch represents. This is old-school Charles Foster Kane stuff, where no detail is too small for Murdoch to notice, and change.

Murdoch’s US profile has never matched his reputation overseas, but no longer. The really fascinating thing will be to see what lengths his competitors will go to - including the suggestion of possible mergers with other outlets - to combat his energy and appetite.

The Wall Street Journal this week about the counterintuitive nature of rising paper costs amid a shrinking consumer appetite for the newspapers themselves.

According to the WSJ, it is the paper industry’s efforts to anticipate the extent of the newspaper industry’s woes that creates the continuing rise in prices. Paper companies are controlling supply by “idling machinery in their mills and, in some cases, selling them”, giving them more leverage in pricing. Some newspapers, like the Journal and The New York Times, moved to a smaller web width to reduce costs.

As the article points out, the two biggest costs for newspapers are people and paper. Newsrooms have shrunk, as have the publications themselves. And yet somehow it is still inconcievable that print publications will eventually be replaced by their online counterparts.  

Since I took on this new job, I get the feeling that there’s a bit of confusion about the role of publishing director. Here’s hoping I can clarify it. Some titles have “publishers”, which are basically sales directors, focused entirely on the commercial side. But the precedent for publisher actually goes across the title. In my role, both the editorial and commercial sides of the business report to me.

Who runs PRWeek editorial? Keith O’Brien, editor-in-chief. He and his team will be deciding the PR Power List, Editors’ Choice, each week’s stories, the Agency Business Report profiles, and everything else to do with the editorial content of the print and Web editions.

Who runs PRWeek advertising sales? Joanna Harp, our new advertising director. She and her team are working with clients on their marketing plans across all of PRWeek’s products, including the print magazine, the Web site, the e-newsletters, PRWeek Contact, and our various events.

So what do I do? My role is to work with both sides of our publication to forge the strategy for PRWeek. That means developing ideas for partners that are working with us to meet their marketing objectives, as well as ensuring the high standards of our content across all platforms. It means coming up with new ideas that will educate, inform, and promote the industry, and the brand, to the most critical stakeholders.

The job give me me the scope to drive an increased awareness of the role that PR is playing for today’s most sophisticated organizations and corporations. PRWeek, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary, entered the US market at a time when the PR industry was poised for great change, and it is still evolving.

My job really means figuring out where PRWeek goes next, 10 years more and then some. We’ve done some great stuff recently, with the relaunch of our Web site and the Target Green conferences, just to name a few. My new job requires me to never be satisfied with those achievements, though, and constantly push for innovation. It’s a great time to be here.

Welcome to my new blog, which will look at the intersection of media and marketing. Until recently, I was editor-in-chief of PRWeek, and now I am the title’s publishing director. I am fortunate now to be able to look at the brand of PRWeek holistically, and be its advocate, rather than just the journalist/advocate for the PR industry.

This blog is an important part of the job. The publishing environment is brutal, ever-changing, and unpredictable. That’s what makes it so exciting, frankly. No one media organization has hit on the magic formula for unqualified success in this new world order. 

Yet much of the public conversation about media strategy is taken up by journalists who have never had to manage anything more than their own deadlines and contacts. With this blog, I aim to start a discussion on what is working and what isn’t, in that place where marketing and media pressures converge.