Digital PR Thoughts: The value of "close reading"

This is an excerpt from my newsletter, Manufacturing Serendipity –– each fortnight I send out a loosely connected, somewhat rambling collection of the unexpected things I’ve recently encountered, plus a short essay about whatever happens to be knocking around in my brain .

If this is your jam, you can check out the archives here, and sign up here.

Today, the latest edition of the London Lit Lab newsletter landed in my inbox. In it, author Zoe Gilbert talks a little about the distinction between art and craft in relation to creative writing, and the value of “close reading”; she notes:

“Close reading as a writer is quite different from the sort of close reading many of us did at school in the name of ‘comprehension’, or even the kind of close reading of English literature required at degree level. We are analysing in a different way, digging for clues as to the conscious and subconscious decisions the author made, thinking about the choices they had and why they chose differently from another author. We imagine, or even try, making a similar choice in a piece of our own writing, and compare the effect. We learn new tricks that can be not just detected, but applied.”

It got me thinking, and I feel like the benefits of “close reading” might also be usefully applied in the realm of Digital PR too.

For me, the first step in the ideation process is to gather inspiration — essentially what I’m looking to do here is gain a better understanding of what the journalists in the media outlets I’m seeking to target are writing about, and why. As I’m doing this research I’ll collate a bunch of stuff I find interesting into an inspiration file, which I’ll then use later to generate ideas.

However, it occurs to me that the way in which I read the articles on these media outlets is probably a little different to a “regular” reader, (or someone who doesn’t work in Digital PR) — what I’m doing is more akin to “close reading”.

I’m not just reading a bunch of articles on any given media outlet, I’m looking to better understand what makes these stories compelling (or otherwise), and ultimately, I’m looking to learn things which I can later apply to my own ideas.

This is really tricky to explain in abstract, so I’m going to talk a little about Bottled Imagination’s Final Flush campaign for Victorian Plumbing. (NB I’m in no way affiliated with Bottled Imagination, and I was not involved with the production of this campaign).

The team at Bottled Imagination analysed a range of data sources in order to highlight the speed at which public toilets were closing across the UK. Let’s look at a piece of coverage the campaign received in the Huffington Post:

The headline: “The Cities Where Public Toilets Are Set To Go Extinct” sparks my interest because of the language used: “extinct” is a really clever word choice — there are any number of alternatives which could have been used.

For example, they could have elected to say something like: The Cities Where Public Toilets Are Disappearing”; or “The Cities Where Public Toilets Are Vanishing” but, in my opinion, that wouldn’t have been so compelling — “extinct” is a far more emotive word — it doesn’t just mean gone, it means gone forever.

A regular reader, (or someone who doesn’t work in Digital PR) might not notice this, or appreciate the significance of this word choice. Moreover, they may not realise that this was a deliberate choice by the team at Bottled Imagination — i.e. they’ve elected to use this word in order to heighten the emotional appeal of this campaign.

Smart, huh?

Let’s dig into the article a little more:

“Disabled people are frequently being left behind in Britain. From leaving their homes for ‘warm spaces’ this winter to hate crimes towards disabled people still being rampant across the country and even the government pushing unfair reforms against disabled people, it’s a bleak landscape.”

This article is tagged in both the “life” and “disability” news sections of HuffPo, and the journalist, Sarah-Louise Kelly has essentially elected to open the article with more reasons to care about this story, by including references to other related articles. What she’s done here is highlight one of the core groups of people who are likely to be impacted.

Later in the article she refers to further groups of people who are likely to be impacted, in order to demonstrate the scale and seriousness of the issue:

“While this may seem on the surface something that may just leave you uncomfortable in a pinch, for many disabled and unhoused people, this is just another example of how some of the most vulnerable people in our society are being left behind.

Now, I can’t know for sure how or why this came about — possibly some, or all of these elements were included within Bottled Imagination’s media pitch; or, possibly some, or all of these elements were independently sourced by the journalist herself.

Either way, this is useful for me to understand. What this demonstrates is the importance not just of an emotionally compelling headline; but also supporting data which demonstrates the real-world impact of this story.

What’s also noteworthy, is that the team at Bottled Imagination have used existing data in a really novel way. Rather than just reporting on either the number of public toilet closures, or the cities with the fewest public facilities, they’ve gone a step further, and used the rate of closure in order to forecast ‘extinction’ dates:

“Now, new data from Victoria Plumbing indicates that UK public toilets are expected to be ‘extinct’ by 2105 and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne expected to be loo-less as early as 2028.”

Finally, rather than just highlighting this issue, the teams at Bottled Imagination and Victorian Plumbing are encouraging people to take action:

“Brenna Ryan from Victoria Plumbing said that the UK Government needs to take a stand now saying, “When people are left with no options, they resort to methods that are detrimental to our environment, our health, and our shared spaces.”

What have I learned from this ‘close reading’?

• Language can be a powerful way to position a story for a journalist.
• The importance of offering more than just an emotive headline.
• The benefits of novel uses of existing data.
• For cause-related stories like this, consider offering people the option to take some form of action in order to drive change.

Pretty cool, huh?

Got thoughts / feelings / questions? Leave me a comment below :)