When big organizations like colleges and universities are looking to cut cost, they often turn to high-priced consultants to tell them how to do it. But do those consultants really save as much money as they claim? No, say consultants who consulted on the consultants.
Former MSNBC guy Dan Abrams seems to have noticed that his plan to start a PR firm made up of actively employed members of the media who will sell their consulting services to corporate clients is causing some uproar among people who believe that it would be a blatant conflict of interest for any journalist to be part of it. Which should include you, and anyone else who doesn't think members of the media should take outside pay for PR work. Abrams and his cohort in the project, former HuffPo media critic Rachel Sklar, offered long defenses of the idea to Daily Intel. Let's do some critical analysis, shall we?
So, former MSNBC guy Dan Abrams is starting a "consulting" firm full of random media people to give advice to rich corporate clients about how to handle media-related issues. Do you know what that's called? It's called a PR firm. But this PR firm would never call itself that, because that would make the media people it employs sound corrupt. The thing is, this firm's business plan is so annoying that the rest of the media (us) is going to cover its clients even harder to make up for it. For example! Abrams' first client is billionaire Ron Perelman. Now why would Ron Perelman need to worry about his reputation?
Are we in a bubble yet? One indicator: When there's a lot of demand for talent, the smartest talent goes freelance, because there's no upper limit to what you can charge when you're a consultant. Open-source programming guru Nat Torkington notes that many of his techy friends have done just that, presumably in search of $300 per hour IT consulting fees.. The flipside: when contractors start heading for the security of regular jobs, watch out.
