Dylan Jones, editor of men’s magazine GQ, reveals in Media Guardian (reg. required) that more than half of the magazine’s editorial content has emanated from PR efforts. And he does not view it as a problem.
“In the last issue of GQ, of 155 editorial pages, over half were originally generated by PR. GQ is full of PR-generated material and this usually stems from personal relationships,” he told a PR Week conference, PR and the Media.
On a similar note, this week’s edition of Swedish business weekly Veckans Affärer has a long article about the ever growing importance of the PR industry (subscr. required).
Larsåke Larsson, associate professor at Örebro university, is about to publish a study about PR consultants, journalists and democracy. He says:
“PR consultants claim that they get a lot of articles in papers, while journalists claim that they can’t. But my impression is that it is the PR consultants’ view that is most correct. They do get a lot of stuff in.”