In days of declining media, do law firms need to cover themselves?
“If your business depends on free publicity from newspapers, what do you do when the papers can no longer afford to send reporters to cover you?” That’s the question The New York Times’ Richard Perez-Pena asked in reporting on the National Hockey League’s Los Angeles Kings decision to hire a reporter to cover the team.
Rich Hammond, who had covered the Kings for The Los Angeles Daily News, will now be covering the team via a blog, LAKingsInsider.com, which will be featured on the team’s website.
Per sports journalist and blogger, Paul Oberjuerge, Hammond’s not being hired to do PR work.
Not to work as a publicist. Not to write press releases. To cover the team the way a newspaper reporter normally would cover a team. Thoroughly, daily, home or road, game day or off day … but with the edge and skepticism that a veteran newspaperman brings to any beat.
Why hire a reporter? Per Perez-Pena:
After years of trimming jobs, pages and travel budgets, many big-city papers no longer provide regular coverage of every local sports team, and sending reporters on road trips has become rare.
Team spokesman, Michael Altieri, said “We have a passionate fan base who want instant information about our team, but there’s been declining news coverage of us.”
Oberjuerge adds:
A decade ago, even the least impressive of National Hockey League teams probably had at least two full-time “traveling beat writers.” From the major metro, and its primary competition.
Meanwhile, NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball teams usually had even more reporters following them around. As we have noted on this blog, as recently as the early 1990s the Los Angeles Dodgers had as many as 10 reporters who traveled with the team full-time. Ten.
That number is now one. Unless you count the guy who works for mlb.com. And I don’t, because he works for Major League Baseball, not a newspaper.
I expect we’re going to see the same thing for law firms. Traditionally, law firms hired public relations professionals to get their lawyers, the matters the firm’s lawyers were working on, and firm news into print and onto the air.
But today we’re seeing far less reporters covering the law. In some cases whole newspapers are closing. Add to that the declining numbers of people who get their news and information in print and on TV.
We already have thousands of lawyers publishing blogs. By and large, law blogs tend to discuss legal issues and share legal information with the lawyer’s target audience. Over time, I expect we’re going to see more lawyers and law firms using blogs to report on firm news and the matters their lawyers are working on.