Journalism and PR in the Time of COVID-19

 Alex Semancik

as477018@ohio.edu

COVID-19 has altered virtually everyone's lives and the way society as a whole functions. The world has moved toward increasing digitization but the pandemic has appeared to extrapolate this digitization on a level that no one was expecting. This rapid change in how the world functions did not spare the fields of journalism and public relations. COVID-19 has changed these two industries and how they operate completely.

Reporters and those in the journalism and PR professions will tell anyone the same. On the journalism end of the spectrum, reporters are tasked with covering a phenomenon the likes of which no one living has ever seen before. According to an article from Agility PR solutions, "Nearly every reporter out there has had their beat shifted to include coronavirus coverage. As opposed to events like the infamous 9/11 attacks in the U.S. that have already happened or have a definitive beginning and end, COVID-19 is unique as it has no definitive end in sight. The pandemic is an ongoing issue that must be considered with every decision a journalist makes. As a reporter interviewed in the article from Agility PR Solutions states: "I don't think this is really comparable to any other event I've covered or any that's been covered in history."

Photo courtesy of istockphoto.com

Public relations specialists, social media coordinators, advertisers and everyone else under the PR umbrella are equally as impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as their journalistic counterparts. The power of social media and advertising was truly unleashed as a result of the pandemic. In the early stages of lockdown in March, April and May of 2020 when people could hardly leave their homes, social media was essentially the only thing connecting a lot of people and fostering relationships (business or otherwise) that would normally be delegated as an in-person activity. Advertisers certainly took advantage of the pandemic as well, making sure to incorporate the COVID-19 pandemic into branding, messaging and the like (as if we weren't sick of hearing about it already).

Although COVID-19 has impacted nearly everything and everyone in the world in some way, I believe the fields of journalism and PR were specially altered. Reporters and broadcast journalists were required to add pandemic coverage to their already complex and long list of stories to report on. Nearly every story covered unrelated to COVID-19  could also have some sort of pandemic spin or impact from the pandemic. Those in the fields of PR, advertising and social media were given the reigns of powerful tools in a time of limited social contact and witnessed firsthand how those tools can shape an ever-digitizing world.