I recently attended a workshop hosted by the National Capital Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America on “Media Relations in the Digital Age.” Panelists included a terrific lineup of reporters: Nancy Marshall-Genzer from Marketplace, Ceci Connolly from the Washington Post, Greg Ip from The Economist, and Jordan Rau from Kaiser Health News.

The group spoke candidly about their jobs, how PR practitioners can best pitch them, and their views on social media.

“Understand our environment,” stressed Connolly. “Give me groundbreaking research with data and examples,” said Ip. Rau wants “people to illustrate stories, data, and ‘dish.’ ” (gossip).

Nothing new there. Nonetheless, it’s always good to hear journalists reaffirm the basics to remind us that we actually need something new or unique to successfully pitch them.

But what did strike me as interesting was their views on social media. While all acknowledged that social media is useful in some situations, none of them said it was an effective way to reach them or for finding ideas or sources for stories. Granted, a couple of the panelists referred to themselves as “dinosaurs.” While I don’t know their exact ages, I think it’s safe to say that all of these “dinosaurs” were in their thirties and forties, not their seventies or eighties.

Greg Ip acknowledged that some of his more valuable relationships were people he met over the course of his career – through PR people!

Jordan Rau talked about the information overload that takes place nowadays, noting that his inbox fills up quicker now than when he was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times — and he attributes that to all the different ways we have of communicating with one another. His solution, he said, has been to basically disconnect from Facebook and Twitter. “I wasn’t absorbing anything.”

It would be interesting to host the same panel discussion with journalists in their twenties. Would they have the same viewpoint about social media?

As a PR practitioner, my key take-away from this workshop was that, yes, it really is about the basics. In this case, knowing your audience, which is what we continually preach to our clients.

I think everyone would agree, including the panelists, that how we communicate with each other is changing radically. Whether Facebook and Twitter will be around in the future, that’s hard to say. But social media is another tool in our toolbox. It is up to us as PR professionals to know when to pull out those tools and use them – and to counsel our clients appropriately.