Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

John Collins has a really interesting review of Irish tech media marketplace in 2005 on his site. If there’s any one sector that is feeling the impact of the war between paper media and electronic media, it has to be Irish technology journalism.

2005 was quite interesting for me because it was my first year in PR. Having come from a background of writing for a couple of websites and now penning this journal in my spare time, I can definitely see the power the modern consumer has at his fingertips. I can find out about the latest developments online on personal websites before I hear anything about them through traditional media. More importantly, I can use Internet forums to get unbiased reviews and real feedback from other consumers.

I’m subscribing to the likes of Cnet and Gizmodo for tech and gadget news and in terms of Irish content, I’m not getting all that I want from our journalists. For example, Fergus Burns is doing some really interesting stuff with Nooked, but I come across more stuff about him online than in the Irish press. I can’t recall seeing Nooked mentioned in the press this year. Why?

Now I’d be the first to admit that RSS might be a bit too techy for the general public, but if our media is prepared to talk about blogs and podcasts then why don’t they talk about its underlying architecture?

Staying on the topic of RSS, why don’t Silicon Republic have a feed? If the likes of RTE and the Irish Times are offering them, never mind Cnet et al, why aren’t they? It’s a proven tool to build readership.

John makes a really interesting point about the contraction of publications in the market and journalists jumping ship to PR, “I’ve joked to a few other journalists that our ex-colleagues will soon have no one to pr to“. It may sound a little over the top, but he’s got a point.

One thing I would say though is that we’re beginning to see traditional tech content begin to filter into other sections of the media. As a country, Ireland is slowly, but surely becoming more tech savy. So from that point of view I don’t think that it will be as doom and gloom as made out.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see an Irish tech blog emerge in 2006. That would be interesting to say the least. The only concern I have about it is impartiality. The majority of Irish bloggers out there who would be most likely to contribute are involved with tech companies in some shape or form.

If I could offer one piece of advice to those with any influence, I’d point them in the direction of this recent Media Culpa post, specifically to the following quote - In an article published shortly after his death, Steve Chaffee (writing with Miriam Metzger in 2001) argued that new media transform the assumptions of traditional communications theory. Anticipating the developments we have seen with web logs, he predicted that “the key problem for agenda-setting theory will change from what issues the media tell people to think about to what issues people tell the media they want to think about”.

You only have to venture onto Boards.ie or flick through a few blogs to see what people are talking about and how they feel about certain companies and products. Is this being accurately reflected in the technology press? If what is being discussed isn’t relevant or credible to the public, then how are they going to retain their faith in Irish media, when so much other content is readily available to them?

The real worry though about the decline in Irish tech media is that the traditionally uninteresting and complicated topics like hosting or security risk being overlooked.

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