PR Voice

A magazine on your laptop

The frequency of our member magazine Profile is a regular subject of debate around the St James's Square HQ. Those of my generation and older often like a magazine you can pick up, read when you have an odd few minutes at work or alternatively put in your bag to take home with you.

But producing this sort of publication, and getting enough advertising support to make it break even, is not easy. Profile Extra is an e-zine intended to fill the gaps between issues of the hard copy and has won a loyal following since it was introduced. And to be honest in this day and age a 'magazine' on your laptop is almost as portable as the real thing.

Spotted a couple of interesting articles recently on Profile Extra. Averill Gordon, a lecturer on the PR course at the University of Gloucestershire, writes about how students are responding to the rise of social media - they are already thinking about the trends online and what this means for those working in PR.

Putting the cat amongst the pigeons

Well, Colin Farrington certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons with his comments about blogging in the CIPR member magazine Profile (online as Profile Extra).

In fairness, I think his intention was to criticise bad blogging rather than blogging, and bloggers, generally. But I'll leave it to him to fight his own battles and explain himself if he chooses to.

The firestorm of comment he faced within hours of the article being published demonstrated the power of this technology - and also perhaps the reason why many people are still choosing not to blog or even post comments on what they have read.