America's Waning Attention Span

I read a recent blurb in Advertising Age by Steve Rubel, Edelman's SVP/Director of Insights, that really opened my eyes to what we have become as a society, and it involves our waning media attention span.

Part of the reason I'm always appreciative of those who read this blog is that they have the patience to make it through articles longer than 140 characters (thank you twitter).
And that's what I'm getting at: as information is delivered faster, more concisely and more precisely, we have less patience for quality forms of content. We'd much rather read 3 or 4 short articles, or even just a few headlines, than one long one.

As Rubel himself expressed, part of the reason that websites like Twitter and Youtube have been so successful is because they are straight to point- it usually does not take too long before you are being entertained somehow. The draw of longer, more feature-style articles is their depth and attention to detail.

Just the other day I was putting together a multi-media press release, and was astounded at the sheer lack of centrality (if that wasn't a word it is now) involved. I had no idea where to start.
This was not your typical press release, with a title, sub-title and a body.
Instead, the entire release was formatted in small boxes over two pages.

There was a box for each contact, a box for the title, another one for the subtitle. Then there were 4 little boxes underneath: one for RSS feeds, twitter feeds, pictures, videos- that's what press releases have come to now, just a bunch of little boxes, each one taking you into a whole 'nother world of information streaming.

There are a lot of pros and cons to this new type of media. From a PR standpoint, the quicker we can get our news out, and the more of it we can get out, the better. If journalists won't spend the time reading through a whole release anymore, then it is our job to make sure they are still reading our content.

Personally, though, I wish we stayed true to our old-school roots. I feel that all these new digital tools, RSS feeds, twitter accounts, and the like, are wrestling away the control that public relations professionals used to have over the media. We are no longer informants, but facilitators, middle-men. We are now doing a great job if we provide people with enough links and online outlets to satisfy their Internet info craving. Our role is being decentralized.

Some may say this makes our job easier and more productive, but I feel it takes away some leverage from what we as PR employees do on a day-to-day basis.