“So, tell me, how’s life on the ‘Dark Side’?”
I have been asked this question frequently over the last few months, usually (although not always) by journalists. After four happy years columnizing for the Financial Times, and after almost 20 years in total working as a journalist, last summer I took up a job in London with Edelman, the PR firm. After seven months in my new world, it seems like a good time to reflect on what I’ve found
I entered this business possessing some, if not all, of the prejudices that journalists have traditionally held against PR. Surely, I would be immersing myself in a world where some slippery, obstructive people spent their time on behalf of clients trying to hide embarrassing truths from the media, while distracting journalists’ attention with flimsy and banal “stories.” Everyone in the newsroom knows what those PR pros are like, right?
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