“So much has changed, and we are at a turning point,” said Arianna Huffington, keynoting the opening session for the Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) International Conference. (I’m one of several BurrellesLuce representatives attending the conference this week.) She went on to say that, “Old media can be consumed on the couch and new media is like a galloping horse.” Another way to put it is that new media is ADD and old media is OCD.

Flickr Image: kevindooley

Not surprisingly, Huffington touted citizen journalism, which she believes can help make journalism better. In fact, The Huffington Post had a citizen journalism project during the election, which broke some big stories. Currently, they are asking citizen journalists to tell the stories about the economic crisis.

Some other takeaways from her keynote:

We need to look for the drama. Huffington gave the example of a story she recently wrote with the headline, “Biden Should Resign.” Had she headlined it, “The U.S. Should Pull-out of Afghanistan,” which is what the story was really about, very few people would have read it. The drama gave the story legs, and allowed her to tout it on talk shows. She also suggested using drama in communications to do good and gain support for worthy causes.

She wrapped her presentation encouraging everyone to listen. When we are not talking, we can hear what others have to say and gain knowledge from others.

What are you doing to encourage listening in your organization?

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 4:45 pm and is filed under Industry Events, News Coverage, Public Relations, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.