I recently received a strange reproach from the PR department of an institute: “Why did you interview our expert without permission?” The question was asked with a tone as if a journalist is a trespasser, not someone who makes quality, relevant content for the entire industry. But let’s be honest.
Experts are not the property of the PR department. These are people with a professional voice, blogs, speaking engagements, experience and thoughts. When they share knowledge – it is not a violation, but a contribution to development. Especially if the material is accurate, excerpted, and verified by the hero himself.
I don’t “bypass PR.” I work in a different way. My audience are specialists, students, managers. They are interested in real cases, real technologies and problems. To make such texts, I speak directly with experts from our industry. And it is easy for me to do this: I am from this environment myself. I understand how geologists feel in the field, what a core looks like and where the real difficulties arise. Our interview is not a question-and-answer format as in classical journalism. It is a professional dialog.
We recently spoke to Sasha Volkova, an expert in seismic exploration. And she said: “Masha, you don’t just ask questions – you give feedback. We are having a conversation as equals, not just an interview.
It really is. After the interview, not only the transcripts remain, but also the ideas, projects, and hypotheses that we generate together. Because a conversation with an expert is not just a way to learn facts. It is a mutual exchange of experience, which makes the material truly lively and accurate.
I don’t need an intermediary to hear a person. “And I’d give you another expert,” the PR person says to me.
But we don’t choose people by convenience, we choose by meaning. When I look for a hero for a story, I turn to my own people – geologists, geophysicists, managers, those who can tell me who I should trust. Experts are advised to me by other experts. Not the PR service, which uses internal criteria to evaluate who is “right” or “convenient”. But the community – the very community that drives the industry forward. Because the voice in the article is not just a title. It’s not an administrative position, a press release or an agreed-upon persona. It’s attitude, experience, integrity, and inner strength. It is this voice that the reader comes for.
What has changed: from PR quotes to live expert content
Things used to be different. To get an expert’s opinion, a journalist would go to the PR department, which would look for a suitable expert, formulate a quote, send it for approval and make revisions. The result was a smooth, safe, but meaningless text. A commentary approved by everyone but the reader. That’s how it was when information was scarce. When only press services had access to the heroes. When a journalist simply had nowhere else to go. But today everything has changed.
Now every expert has a smartphone with a camera, YouTube and social networks. Experts make themselves known, speak at conferences, share their opinions in articles, and post videos from the fields. And the journalist can – and should – hear them directly, without intermediaries. This is how live, accurate and professional content is created, where real opinion is heard, not a quote edited to sterility. This is new age journalism. We don’t take “commentary on demand.” We create materials in which we understand the essence, respect the reader and give the floor to those who work with their hands and heads – in the laboratory, on the rig, in the field.
Where does the institution end and the person begin?
Here it is important to understand: expert opinion, personal experience, professional point of view belong to the expert himself. If an expert tells how he worked in the fields, what methods he used, what worked and what did not – this is not the “property of the institute”. It is his professional history. His voice. His contribution to the industry. He has the right to analyze, to reason, to share. And if every comment he makes goes through the filter of the PR department, we will not only lose a lively thought, but we will never know how and what the industry lives on
The world has changed. Experts are no longer just employees. They are participants in a professional community that lives, develops and discusses industry topics outside the framework of orders and formal regulations. If you want to be heard, don’t ban them, but join the conversation. Be part of it, not its censors.
A new approach to working with expert content
PR services should no longer be “gatekeepers” banning and controlling every comment. Their role is changing from censors to partners. In today’s media space, where every expert has a voice, a blog and an audience, it is no longer possible to “forbid” them to talk about their experience. But it is possible – and necessary – to help this experience to sound more precise, stronger and broader.
What makes PR useful in the new environment:
- It doesn’t forbid it, it accompanies it. Helps the expert be heard, not shoves him or her away.
- It’s not filtering, it’s supporting. Together with the journalist, it makes the text stronger without killing its liveliness.
- Doesn’t impose experts, but offers to the point. Takes media request into account, helps with selection, but doesn’t tuck in the “handy” ones.
- Not fear, but reputation management. Tracks where and how the institute sounds and works with that – openly, on time and without panic.
- Not controlling, but embedding. Offers ideas, formats, topics. Helps embed expert opinion in the context of industry conversations.
This is the new approach: not trying to keep the water in the sieve, but learning to channel it.
