ROBERT BRELSFORD
Downstream Technology Editor
After nearly 3 years working for Oil & Gas Journal, the current weekly column marks this editor's first to appear in a monthly printed issue. As momentous an occasion as this first time may be for an OGJ editor, it's also as equally nerve-racking.
To see your words dance across the pixelated stage of the digitized screen is one thing. With a single click, you're able send whatever you once had to say waltzing into the outermost limits of your personal cyberspace forever. To have those words sepia-splashed across the space of a physically printed page, though-particularly one between the covers of this long-revered publication-is another thing entirely. It stirs in the writer a desire to say something impactful, inspires him to be self-reflective enough to pull back the curtain and provide an honest, useful glimpse into what life is like behind-the-scenes for the OGJ editors working to deliver the quality news and technical content on which their readers regularly rely.
To become part of the magazine's history, this act of entering its pages-whether digital or print-unquestionably carries with it both an honor and responsibility.
Honor in the sense that not every news release or technology breakthrough will be deemed by editors as important enough to our readership to merit a space.
Responsibility in the sense that, in order even to be considered for a space, the aspiring content needs to be clearly explained, applicable to actual industry operations, and most importantly, made readily accessible to the appropriate news or section editor.
'We released it in Sanskrit in a Tweet'
For this downstream technology editor, an increasingly difficult barrier to pass to make it into the pages of OGJ should be the easiest one of all to overcome: accessibility.
While I have a great many friends in public relations, our career choices naturally discourage too much shoptalk when we're together. After several conversations with company PR contacts at recent conferences, however, I'm tempted to enquire as to what PR classes actually teach these days. The exchanges to which I refer above more or less go something like this:
PR: "Why didn't OGJ cover our news item?"
RB: "You seem to have left us off your notification list."
PR:"Oh, it wasn't a formal release. We released it overnight in a post on [pick your choice] Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc."
RB:"Strange, it didn't show up on any of my feeds for your social media sites."
PR:"You mean don't also subscribe to our [again, take your pick] German, Arabic, French, Dutch, Chinese, etc. page?"
For the record, in this editor's opinion, a PR department's elusive maneuvering to make-an-announcement-without-making-an-announcement and not having that announcement picked up is a case of just desserts.
Speaking in tongues
As thorough as I am-and I am thorough-there aren't enough hours in a day to monitor even a single company's myriad English-language social media sites, much less its multiple foreign-language sites. Given the hundreds of downstream operating companies with (oftentimes) individual social media accounts for each plant location, time devoted to the act of constantly monitoring these pages would displace the act of ever actually covering the legitimate news they had to offer.
And let's not even get started on the pitiable whining for coverage from PR departments of companies that refuse to provide English translations of information in these so-called social-media news releases posted in foreign languages. As it is, I spend a good 30% of an average newswriting day undertaking translations of official press releases to ensure accurate news stories for our readers. Enough, as they say, is enough.
If social media sites are intended to enhance a company's PR, perhaps the companies should teach their PR departments how to use them...that, or maybe just how to write a good, old-fashioned press release.
