Is being a good writer a necessary skill for PR pros today? Was it ever?

I’ve worked with plenty of solid dot-your-i and cross-your-t types who didn’t even know where to put the i’s and t’s in IT. They couldn’t spell paradigms, but there they were shifting them.

Who has time to read proper English on a BlackBerry anyway? You lost me at hello.

You don’t even need to do your research in this business anymore. Credit the wrong university for famous alums who actually graduated elsewhere, and you’ll land coverage in every major news outlet in the country.

Besides, it’s all viral video these days. It’s probably more important to know how to shoot in HD than write in AP.

A blogger friend of mine said bad writers are sometimes more efficient writers. “People who don’t know how to write don’t spend a lot of time doing what they hate to do in the first place,” he said. “Good writers, on the other hand, may be more keen on describing the point than getting to it.”

I know PR pros who aren’t so great with the page but are incredibly convincing forces in person or on the social networking side. Their genuine passion and creativity turns them into that which TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis says many more of us PR folk need to be: namely, interesting.

And when was the last time you read a press release that was interesting? This is a real-time, 140 character society now. If you can’t fit your news into a tweet when it matters most, chances are it’s too much, too late.

It’s probably better not to write at all lest you find yourself on the Bad Pitch Blog. Phoning it in is safer, though I guess Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin paid dearly for assuming the same.

Okay, so maybe you need good writers in PR. You just don’t have to be a good writer to be in PR. (Of course, none of these bad writers work with me.)

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