I had a nice conversation yesterday with one of our favorite journalists, Keith Shaw of Network World. I’ve worked with Keith for years and have developed a good relationship (he sends me pictures of his adorable daughter; I send him good products to review) so I was very excited to hear him tell me about his new promotion. Keith has been named Programming Director for Network World. He is in charge of driving their multimedia strategy – videos, pod casts, and developing an interactive chat channel. Keith will continue his work in the labs of Network World but limit himself to only coordinating wireless testing. He is keeping his Cool Tools blog and weekly video show (our favorite). He will also continue to be the other half of Network World’s Twisted Pair weekly pod cast with Jason Meserve. Keith’s weekly blog for DEMOletter will continue, as well. As if he doesn’t have enough on his plate, Keith also continues to drive traffic to his snack food review web site Taquitos.net. Who would have known – top technology journalist by day, snack food aficionado by night?!

Network World creating this new position for Keith is a clear indication of the direction that media is going. “Until two years ago, print was the most important,” says Keith. “All of the extra material was thrown online.” Times are certainly changing. From our experience at BLAST, we know that a blog mention may result in higher web traffic to a client’s web site than an article in print. It’s happening more and more as blogs become more popular, more targeted and more familiar. Keith made a good point when he told me that with his labs reviews, in addition to being in print, he can put them online and add graphs, a pod cast interview with the developer, or a sidebar. Online space is limitless. “You can’t record on a piece of paper,” he says. “You can just do so much more online and provide much more information to your readers.” And another positive - the shelf life is certainly longer online than for print. We can testify to that – we could save a few trees with all of the magazines and newspapers we throw out each month here at BLAST. Keith said that if he could tell PR people one thing it is “Stop trying so hard for print.” Blog coverage or a mention in a pod cast could very well drive more traffic and result in more sales than a print article – we see it happen every week

It’s an exciting time to be in the media industry – media is changing rapidly and you either adapt, or get left behind. There is one thing Keith and I discussed that will never change, however. That is the relationships between media and PR people. The relationships we’ve built with reporters, journalists, editors and producers are priceless. You need those relationships to be successful in PR and to make your clients successful. It can be the difference between getting your client average coverage, and getting your client consistent and quality coverage. It’s a give and take relationship between the media and PR people – give them good news angles and good products, they give you time, expert opinions and (hopefully) coverage. As online media takes away some of the dominance of print, there is one thing in the industry that will remain unchanged. Keith and I agree, “Relationships won’t go away.”