Today White House Correspondent Helen Thomas celebrates her 89th birthday. After starting her journalism career in 1942 (when my grandmother was just 17), Thomas is still at it, now as a columnist for Hearst Newspapers.
When Thomas began as a reporter, most American households didn’t have a television. Network newscasts didn’t exist yet, let-alone the 24-hour cable variety. And the Internet? Still decades away. The first bloggers weren’t even glimmers in their parents’ eyes yet. A tweet was something birds did.
At the speed technology moves today, most of us have a hard time imagining what things will be like in six months, let alone 10, 20 or 60 years. It’s impossible to predict what the media landscape will look like when I’m 89, should I make it to that age.
It can be overwhelming for PR professionals trying to keep up with new tools and trying to figure out what’s useful and what’s a fad. Should I create a blog for our organization? Is Twitter the right platform to share company promotions? Should we invest the resources in creating video? Is SecondLife still worth it? How do I reach customers on their mobile devices?
But adapting, learning and innovating is what makes us professionals. It’s what helps us grow and lays the foundation for long and successful careers. We don’t know what’s coming next, but those of us who are smart and talented will have no problem taking exciting new technologies and running with them — integrating them into our communications strategies or coming up with altogether new ones.
Because in the end, the fundamentals of communicating and interacting with people won’t change, regardless of what crazy new technologies are cooked up by the time we’re all 89. People respond to genuine messages no matter the medium. They want personal, meaningful connections and interactions. They don’t want to be lectured. They don’t want to have to sort through jargon to get to facts. They want to feel like people care about them.
The channels in which Helen Thomas’ stories appear today are far different from what they were her first day on the job in 1942. The channels we use for communicating will likely be just as different for us when we look back on our long careers — or even when we look back in five years’ time. But as long as we continue to challenge ourselves and our organizations and remember those communication fundamentals, we won’t be witnessing the technology passing us by. We’ll be able to harness that technology to help us do what communicators have done for decades: reach people.
Happy Birthday, Ms. Thomas.