I used to get The Beano each Wednesday. Sometimes, I would sneak a look at my brother’s Look In. We had three TV channels at home. I listened to Radio 1′s Top 40 countdown on Sunday evenings, usually hosted by Tony Blackburn. Sometimes I would look at The Times, when I felt like trying to be all grown-up. That was my weekly taste of life outside as seen through the eyes of my media.

30 years on I ‘consume’ content from somewhere in the region of 70 media sources every day. Seven or eight national newspapers, four regionals/locals, three business magazines, about a dozen trade media, around 15 TV channels (including the many guises of Sky Sports), about 20 blogs and social media, five or six radio stations. Moreover, there are many, many more people delivering all of that content. I’m in PR, but I’m not atypical (media-wise at least).

But for the PR department it not just a case of more volume means more content. There is also the question of pace.

There are many ways to put some colour around this but for my simple brain the most straightforward example is one from working in local journalism. I worked on a daily regional paper. It had eight editions, with four deadline sets for each. So 32 deadlines a day, the first at 7.35am and the last at 3.02pm. That could make for a pretty exhausting day.

Flash forward 15 years and deadlines are not set in stone in the case of latest news. Nor is the next deadline as case of as soon as possible – it is a case of as soon as you have typed it.

For today’s PR person, working out which conventional and social media will have the greatest impact for a client is a big challenge. Then meeting the multitude of differing deadlines that entails can be like landing every plane in the world at Heathrow within the space of half an hour.

Time is (not) on my side
For PR departments, meeting media deadlines has long been a headache. In many cases, opportunities that crop up and those that are pre-planned fall by the wayside as brands are simply not able to field facts, opinions and people in time.

The problem is part resource allocation, part authorisation. There has to be a balance in a PR department between meeting all media requests and meeting those that will be of most commercial advantage to the organisation – it is not worth simply hiring an army of PRs to meet the need of a diversified and pacier media. Brands must figure out what matters most. Authorisation is, potentially, an area where PR departments can begin to crack the time challenge.

Most PR departments in commercial organisations are structured to fulfil the company’s external media needs by both extracting and shaping the most important information from within, and acting as gatekeeper for media requests. In both cases, clarification and authorisation on what to say and do can mean consulting numerous people in many departments, offices and across time zones.

Meanwhile, in frontline services such as the police, that won’t work. Imagine a convicted murderer is on the loose from prison. He scaled the wall of the yard at 2pm. A manhunt began at 2.01pm. Local police issue a media bulletin with a public warning at 2.15pm. At 2.20pm a radio station calls to clarify details ahead of its 3pm news bulletin. Sorry, the journalist is told, we’ll look at your questions but have to check this out with some colleagues first, so we hope to get back to you tomorrow.

The fragility of agility
Many PR teams will talk about how they want to take a more agile approach to the media. Few succeed. In too many cases, short-term media deadlines are met by the skin of the teeth.

PR departments in the private sector can be really agile, if they try hard, if they exclude many of their other priorities and if they cross their fingers really hard. That is of course a gross generalisation, but typically unless the organisation deals each day with matters that can cause life or death, they are not set up to move at the pace of the majority of today’s news.

Yet not all media content requires a turning on the heels and a rush of blood. Many features, for example, are planned over the course of weeks if not months. Even so though, their need to be relevant upon publication means last-minute changes can be made, putting pressure on PR departments to deliver content that impacts the reputation of thier brands at very short notice.

To use very low-grade rhyming approach to prose, PR’s ability to meet shifting media deadlines today tends to be more fragile than agile. The question is how PR departments can both gain the appropriate organisational authorisations faster, and divide responsibility between themselves and agencies, to best meet the needs of changing media. In a way that delivers the best commercial returns. It is not easy.

Thankfully I have a week on a few beaches and in a few bars to think about it. In the meantime my colleague @Sophie_Hodgson will be sticking a few posts up here. She has assured me it will all be legal and within the bounds of her own morality.