At the NBA draft in Madison Square Garden on June 25, Mike Soltys grasped his Blackberry and typed in live updates to his Twitter account, espnmikes.
Soltys, the longtime vice president of communications at ESPN, started posting daily news about the sports network to Twitter in May. By the end of June, he had nearly 200 followers, including many reporters who want the latest news from ESPN’s Bristol headquarters.
Though he was initially skeptical about Facebook and Twitter, Soltys, like other public relations professionals in Connecticut, are turning to social media, direct mail, e-mail, blogs and YouTube to reach their audience.
They say it’s necessary to fill the void as newspapers have closed or drastically cut news pages and reporting staffs in the past two to three years.
“I think it’s had a tremendous impact on our ability to get coverage,’’ said Constance Fraser, director of communications for the state Department of Higher Education. “The coverage is just not there, both in terms of quantity or quality.”
Her agency now uses direct e-mails to guidance counselors to keep them informed on college and financial aid matters. It has placed its Education and Employment Information Center on Facebook to try to reach young people, and higher education commissioner Michael Meotti started blogging this spring about higher education issues, Fraser said.
Fran Onofrio, president of Mason Onofrio Public Relations in Bethany, said for years, he had relationships with reporters who knew he had credibility, would listen to his story ideas and often follow up with stories.
Now, many reporters have been laid off, and those who remain have switched beats or had so many beats piled on that they can rarely get to Onofrio’s story ideas.
“It has had an impact on our ability to target a news release or a story pitch to a beat reporter,’’ Onofrio said. “It’s very difficult to pitch a feature story. You have to get in a queue.”
On her Paper Cuts blog, Erica Smith, a designer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, estimates that nearly 16,000 journalism jobs were lost in 2008 and that 10,000 more have been cut in 2009.
In February, cuts at The Hartford Courant brought its news staff to 135 employees, down from 232 in June 2008.
Just as the Internet has fractured the audience for newspapers, it has similarly affected the public relations industry.
“You have to communicate with people on multiple fronts,” said Kathy Frega, director of communications for the Connecticut Education Association.
A year ago, the teachers union hired a new media coordinator who sets up Google chat groups with teachers, posts videos on YouTube and sends out e-mail alerts using the Constant Contact software program, Frega said. CEA also sets up “micro sites” to drive debate about issues such as last fall’s proposed constitutional convention, she said.
“The audiences have really broken down, so you have to reach people on their own digital turf,” she said.
The University of Connecticut is also using new ways to inform people because newspaper cutbacks make it harder to reach a general audience, said Karen Grava, UConn’s longtime spokeswoman, who retired June 30.
“We need to tell our story more than ever before because other people are not telling it for us as much,’’ she said.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences regularly interviews professors about their research and posts them as podcasts. President Michael Hogan has his own blog, and the university and students regularly post videos on YouTube.
UConn will also launch a news web site in the fall, called “UConn Today,” that will allow parents, students, faculty, alumni and others to view news, sign up for e-mail alerts and RSS feeds.
Students and some parents want to receive text messages about news, and UConn does use text messages to students when it has crime alerts, Grava said.
There is pressure to post news quickly, but UConn worries about placing speed over accuracy, Grava said.
“They want it instantaneously, but we won’t post any message until we know it’s true,” she said.
In the past five years, marketing has really merged with public relations, and the role of a publicist, who “placed” stories in the Wall Street Journal or The Courant, has been reduced, said Ira Yellen, president and CEO of First Experience Communications in Glastonbury.
“It’s harder and harder to even find the reporters to talk to,’’ he said. “There’s no guarantee that anything will get in the newspaper.”
Yellen and Onofrio said weekly newspapers in Connecticut have filled a void for printing press releases. And some of Onofrio’s clients, including the Hospital for Special Care in New Britain, have used The Courant’s iTowns section to post their own photos and stories on Courant.com.
Yellen advises clients to become their own publishers, printing newsletters or posting newsletters online, holding “webinars” to reach small audiences and directing e-mails to customers and other businesses.
“We used to be publicists,’’ he said. “We’re the editors and publishers now.’’
Yellen, however, is skeptical that Facebook and Twitter are successful ways for many traditional businesses to get the word out.
“They seem to be for people with too much time on their hands,’’ he said. “There’s more talking and not a lot of listening.”
But ESPN’s Soltys is a convert. He uses Twitter to drive people to ESPN’s web site to see more complete stories and press releases. He said it’s imperative that the public relations industry embrace the social media.
“The social media give you the opportunity to go directly to people,’’ Soltys said. “In the public relations business, it’s an important thing to play with.’’
ESPN’s Mike Soltys types a Twitter entry at the recent NBA draft in New York.
