Interesting post on the changing role of the publicist by Ben Ayers at ITV. As celebrities and public figures continue to embrace new apps such as Twitter to engage directly with their fanbase, what does the future hold for publicists?
Publicists still need to have one toe in the old media pond, providing stories and stoking up excitement around a show for the traditional media outlets but to stay on top of their game the other must be fully submerged in the swirling new media waters.
On the downside, I think the future will bring a whole new level of public slip-ups too which given the highly visible nature of tools such as Twitter will require a large amount of firefighting. Let’s hope that this era of open communication that is a fan’s dream doesn’t become a publicist’s nightmare.
I am freelance 
I don’t think that the public’s taste for the detail of celebrity lives will diminish but I do think that celebrity life times will be shorter. Nobody to celeb to nobody in months not years as web highlights failings and lack of talent. Maybe the publicists will need to live with a rapidly changing client base.
Interestingly, Andrew Murray at The Guardian makes a similar point about the potential dangers of Twittering http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/20/twitter-internet
Given the potential costs of a foot in mouth gaff you would have thought there was plenty of room to get clients to sit down and work through the consequences of talking off the top of their head. Getting people to think strategically is a challenge. It can sound stuffy, but when it delivers real benefits they’ll soon appreciate it was time well spent.