mediations

Scoop! William Boyd on why (PR) fiction is true

One of the premisses on which my PR in Fiction (Stirling21) and Scoop! projects are based is that authors must depict the disciplines and their practitioners in a way which resonates with the reader's preconceptions.

Perhaps he is thinking more about emotion that accurate description, but here is William Boyd talking to Mariella Frostrup on Radio 4's Open Book (Sept 17, 2009, 14.30 into the podcast).

"What is the truth?

".... Everything is subjective and one person's lie is another person's true story and, funnily enough, the more I have written, the more I think the power of the novel, the power of fiction resides in the fact that even though it is completely made up, we actually guarantee its versacity thereby.

"So if you want to know how people react, or how people feel in certain situations, it maybe in time of war, or in a love affair, funnily enough, the place to go is a novel or a short story because everything in that depiction has been made up, but made up in a way to achieve absolute authenticity, Whereas if you go to a memoir, or a biography, or a work of history, or a work of reportage it is selected and shaped by the author in a way that cannot possibly replicate whatever that truth was.

"So it is one of those strange paradoxes that to find out what life is like in all its complexities, read fiction."

I am not sure I can sustain the argument that Confessions of a Shopaholic is "made up in a way to achieve absolute authenticity" but I was pleased that quite a few people at Stirling 21 seemed to find some value in my approach. None would admit to having read Shopaholic, which I think is rather a shame, but I did pick up a couple of very promising titles for PR in Fiction.  

Scoop! Online media claims first fiction victim

Crime correspondent Laurie Lane, the central character in Duncan Campbell's amusing If It Bleeds (2009), is the first fictional journalist I have come across to face career oblivion for not adapting to the demands of the online world. I suspect we will see many, many more in the next few years.

If It Bleeds is destined to feature strongly in Scoop!, not least because Guardian reporter Campbell knows what he is talking about and writes with an entertaining and perceptive cynicism.

News editor Stark, "all white shirt ...and spray-on" smile is discussing the future with Lane, a veteran of 22 years on the crime beat.

"It's just, as you know, with all the challenges we now face in -"

"An integrated, multimedia, internet world.."

"That sort of thing..."

Laurie has a good idea where this chat is going.

"We do really need people who are happy to make full use of all the new tools at our disposal. You know, producing podcasting and blogging, taking the old camera out on a job. Look, to cut to the chase: we just feel that maybe now there's a window of opportunity both for you and for someone more digitally, you know, savvy.."

"Sounds more like a defenestration than a window of opportunity," said Laurie. "Are you sacking me?"

Not quite. Stark wants him to become the motoring correspondent...

Here lies Eric Ambler....

Just finished reading Eric Ambler's Uncommon Danger, partly for Scoop! (central character Kenton is a journalist) and partly because Ambler was admired by Greene and Hitchcock. In his introduction to the just released Penguin Modern Classics edition Thomas Jones notes that Ambler's writing career took off in the late 1920s:

 

"He was asked to compose a press release extolling the bogus virtues of a batch of dodgy bulbs for car headlights. They sold so quickly on the back of it that the company even thought about making more. As for Ambler, the experience may or may not have given him a taste for concocting plausible fictions with a pseudo-technical bent, but it certainly showed he had a talent for it. Before long he was working full-time as an advertising copywriter."  

 

Splendidly, the author called his autobiography Here Lies Eric Ambler... 

 

You can read a version of Thomas Jones's essay in the Guardian.

Guilty secrets, forbidden books

Not long ago there was a story about the books people pretended they had read but hadn't really (bizarrely the short and readable 1984 was high on the list). I am not sure I have ever done that... but I have read quite a few books I would be quite embarrassed to admit I'd read. In fact I have two on the go at the moment that I might think about covering with brown paper before daring to be seen in public reading.

Officially I am engrossed in Jan Kjaerstad's The Discoverer but I have galloped through the first 65 pages of I Did a Bad Thing (but haven't we all!), by Linda Green. The thing is it has one of the those red on orangey-yellow, all handwritten curly letters chick-lit covers that I am far too cool and intellectual to even look at.

I was uneasy with this to start with - then my daughter picked it up and accused me of reading 'girly books'!

It's for work, I said, lamely.

And it is. The central character is a regional journalist. Quite early on she is treated rather shabbily by a boyfriend who worked on the Stockport Express, so I felt a bit guilty on her behalf, and anyway, this means it is prime material for my much-loved Scoop! project. Post(s) to follow.

The second guilty secret is Can We Do That? Outrageous PR Stunts That Work - and Why Your Company Needs Them, by Peter Shankman. This is tricky. It is public relations as publicity, column inches are everything, and written in a breathless self-help style that is close to the parody of my current favourite finally-bought-on-CD-20+-years-after-I-bought-the-record albums, Kissing With Confidence, by Will Powers (well worth a listen).

Dare I point my students to Shankman? Should I encourage them to read a such a stridently non-academic text? Believe me, this is not Grunig, Theaker or Gregory. It is not even Phillips and Young (Online PR 2nd Ed comes out in May!!!!).

But it has energy and ideas. I am enjoying it.

But nowhere near as much as Linda Green...   

Stranger than fiction...?

David Miliband reads Neville Hobson; I wonder if John Prescott reads Scoop!?

Spin doctors

An exchange about spin doctors on Corporate Engagement, sparked by comments from Paul Taaffe (see below), chimed with a book I have just re-read for Scoop!, called ... Spin Doctor, and written by Michael Shea, who spent ten years as press secretary to the Queen.

I interviewed Shea about his book for The Journal, Newcastle, back in 1996. Here are a few excerpts:

"I believe the spin doctors rule. I believe that so much in political life is to do with perception, to how people are perceived, not what they really are. Perception is reality in public life and the people who control perception are the ones that are really running the place," says Shea.

"You take a B-movie actor (Ronald Reagan) and make him into a president, you take a nice little bank clerk in the shape of John Major and you make him into a prime minister."

Spin doctor is an Americanism, a term for those who practise the black art of manipulating public image, the illusionists who plant an idea here, a rumour there. Theirs is an ancient art, but one that has come into its own in these days of instant communication and media frenzy.

Shea explains: "The whole question of behind the scenes manipulation in political and public life is very interesting. There are the front of stage players, prime ministers, ministers, captains of industry and others in the public eye but I am interested in the people one step behind, those who are whispering the guidelines, the pullers of strings, the writers of briefs, the people who write the speeches for them.

"I am interested in the people who are setting agendas, the grey men and women of the inner corridors of power. That is much more fascinating, and also rather horrifying because these people are not elected, they are not answerable to anybody apart from the person they are working for."

Shea has created his own consummate practitioner, Dr Mark Ivor, to take centre stage in a gripping political thriller Spin Doctor. Ivor, dubbed 'the modern Machiavelli', is one of several people with the access and influence to 'play the PM'; his principal opponent in this web of intrigue is an old-style aristocrat with neo-fascist leanings, Lord Shand. Big business, the secret service, sex, murder and blackmail all play their part in a novel with a plot and texture that should make Jeffrey Archer weep with envy.

Because he has been there, Shea makes Spin Doctor sound all too plausible; indeed Ivor makes a rather self-conscious speech: "With a novel you can ignore reality, put in as fact precisely what you want... A novelist can blend truth and fiction, build warm, sexy relationships."

This reminds readers the book is fiction, but in a way that suggests there might not be so very much blending after all.

There can be a fine line between presentation and distortion, as Shea acknowledges: "Harold Wilson called PR organised lying and a fair amount of organised lying goes on, otherwise we would not have had the Nolan committee and the Scott report. At its worst it can be pretty obnoxious."

But Shea sees benefits too. He prefaces Spin Doctor with a quote from Talleyrand which has a resonance for him: 'Nations would be terrified if they knew by what small men they were governed'.

He explains: "A large number of people in public and political life today are pretty second rate individuals and if you have second rate individuals in high office the field is open for cleverer people to come in and manipulate them.”

Men like Michael Shea play the long game. As he says: "I am quite good at working out what the consequences are going to be of any given action, at weighing up various alternative courses of action and knowing how best to frame statements to put across a point of view."

PR: Artists or scientists?

The Scoop! meme project, asking people to nominate a (European) journalist who features in fiction, and nudge/ tag three other people is still spreading - thanks Jack, Jeff and Andrea for latest additions.  Interestingly, most of the respondents so far have nudged/ tagged others working in PR/ Marketing - and most say are more likely to read non-fiction than fiction.

Maybe that gives us a clue as to whether PR practitioners are artists or scientists! 

The Scoop! meme

Following on from the 'four things' tag meme I have been thinking a bit more about how messages travel, and an idea I had which suggested people need two types of information (yes, I know it is worryingly reminiscent of Donald Rumsfield):

• Stuff you are aware of but need to know more about...
• Stuff you don’t know about but would want to know more about if you did...

The challenge for PR falls often surrounds the latter category, which I characterise it as the "Amazon problem." I buy a lot of books from Amazon because it is cheap and they have an enormous stock; the drawback is that I don't often chance upon a title I didn't know about - The Page You Made and "Other people who shopped for..." recommendations are sometimes helpful but it is nothing like as rewarding as going to a bookshop and browsing.

I think my other blog - Scoop! - falls into the second category. Plenty of people read Mediations(thanks!), but I presume most of you either work in or study PR. They are apparently not greatly interested in Journalists in Fiction and there is not much cross traffic.

But I do think someone somewhere would be interested - but how do they find it? More particularly, how do they know to look for it? I could launch a PR (media relations) campaign btu I don't want to!

What I am going to do is tag three people and ask them to mention Scoop! on their own blog, name a PR practitioner or journalist who appears in fiction, add a comment to this post on Scoop! with the name of the character, the name of the book, and if they want, why they made their choice, AND tag three other people to carry on the meme. To make it harder, I want the characters limited to those who appear in UK/European fiction....

Over to you, Serge No Copy Cornelus, Stuart PR Guru Bruce and Stephen PR Blogger Davies...       

Blog stars go Scoop! crazy

Some of the biggest names in blogging met up in Manchester this week to discuss the exciting new project that is taking the blogosphere by storm - Scoop! Journalists in Fiction.

Pictured in animated conversation about Scoop are, from left, Paul Miller (Romeike) Stuart (PR Guru) Bruce, Elizabeth (Corporate PR) Albrycht, Chris Rushton (Head of PR and Journalism at the University of Sunderland), me, Neville (NevOn) Hobson and Tom (PR Opinions) Murphy.

Well, to be honest, we were together at Lancashire County Cricket ground for Sunderland's highly succcessful Delivering the News conference, but the Scoop! experience has been interesting. Like a lot of UK PRs I was once a journalist and have long been collecting quotes about newshounds in novels. Scoop! is meant to be fun (really, Andrea) but I am also learning a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of blogs as ways of stimulating conversations and of developing ideas.

I have actually been running Mediations for almost two years and, partly because there are so many good PR bloggers out there, I have long felt part of an (albeit competitive) community. The serious point was making was that once you step out from that community, as PRs continually encourage clients to do, into a new area without established networks, it can be a little harder to get noticed.