A long time ago, other careers wouldn't even think of looking towards journalists or those with media backgrounds as potential to enhance their image. But life has a way of softening stubbornness, or as we like to call it, a hard stance.
Over this past weekend, an opinion article by Anthony Taiti, a public relations and communications professional, found its way into one of the many WhatsApp groups I am in.
As much as he did get the viral title right, it touched one of my nerves. The title read, Why organisations should not hire journalists as PR managers.
While the opinion piece states the importance of having some training in PR, I felt that he got it wrong by saying a journalist cannot be a PR manager.
Here’s why. I might not have studied journalism for my bachelor’s degree in university but I recall taking a unit that had Public Relations and Writing all in one, and yes, this is a unit journalism students take.
To therefore conclude that a journalist cannot rise to the top in PR is like blocking someone’s blessings (I heard the same happens to you when you do that).
The piece cited a trend in which many organisations, including government agencies, are poaching journalists from newsrooms whose staff numbers are shrinking in efforts to ease the financial burden of media houses, and appointing them to manage their Public Relations (Corporate Affairs/Communication dockets) despite their lack of professional training in PR. What happened to learning on the job?
Wherever you go in the world these days, people transition to other fields seamlessly depending on what you started with and the experience you amassed.
Other than the gradual pieces of training one would have to undergo as they progress, at this point only a ‘hater’ would think journalists shouldn’t make good PR managers because they don’t understand aspects like “environmental scanning to guide strategic organizational decisions, stakeholder mapping and relationship management, building strategic relationships, campaign planning and management,” among others.
Maybe the issue the writer had was that one will have to forego the ‘objective’ bit about journalism and get into the ‘subjective’ where most of the messaging revolves around enhancing the image of a company, or a person.
A friendly scribe once mentioned how valuable journalists are in any newsroom these days that when one is retrenched by a media house, another comes calling.
Depending on how much Kenyans like you, being in the media space is akin to being a beautiful woman; just as every man wants you for your ability to turn necks everywhere you walk, being a media person means that people respect you and the more you grow your craft, the more respect they hold for you.
When a lot of people start liking you in the media, the only wild thing they might ask for is for you to run for a political seat in Kenya. In 2022, we did have a number of former scribes test their mettle in politics and despite the huge amount of money one has to spend to get people to vote for them, we have seen at least one or two clinch a political seat.
Allow me to say this without fear or favour: Kenya’s media space will produce a future president. It may not be very soon, but at the rate at which journalists are being picked up by PR firms and some impressing audiences to go for political seats, it might be a reality.
I know a few friends who are PR gurus and have backgrounds in journalism, and one day they will run PR firms.
As they say that journalism isn’t synonymous with public relations, I say that anything is possible if you have the mindset for it, and I say without a doubt that I run one of the fastest-growing digital native media platforms in Kenya, yet I studied Psychology in university.
Digital journalist
