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He believes personal contact is the best way of working in this field and he travels round the area to talk to key pressmen at meetings lined up by the regional offices. He is currently reviewing the effectiveness of this operation but gave me the impression more travel may be required. The regional offices are not so well informed on central political information and such briefings were usually done by him personally, with the regional offices concentrating on commercial information. On a much smaller scale, Hong Kong might well adopt a similar liaison system with advantage. If we had a senior Government Information Counsellor or co-ordinator based in Europe (possibly travelling out of London initially) with a number of government information officers attached to existing T.D.C. offices or government offices within continental Europe we would have the nucleus for a broader-based, and more intensive co-ordinated public relations effort but only if it was backed by effective central co-ordination in Hong Kong as discussed earlier.
61. It is perhaps worth recording that only between 3% and 5% of the space in the German press is devoted to Foreign Affairs there- fore the first line of attack should be on German correspondents based on London or in S.E. Asia since on the general and political side this is likely to be more productive in terms of published results. Within the technical field, direct contact with the technical papers in Germany is essential. Within this latter category British success with the placing of a technical features service and the methods involved, is worth recording. "British Features", as they are called, are operated out of the Bonn Embassy by an ex-journalist on the staff of the commercial information section. He travels extensively, one week in every month, and offers Central Office of Information 'special order' features in German to Technical Editors in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and places about 400 such articles per year. Suggestions for subjects come from three sources: from magazine or newspaper editors to him; from him to the Central Office in London and from the Central Office back to him. If an editor wants a special article researching and writing it would be ordered for him with photographs from the Central Office of Information in London who engage free-lance writers and photographers on a fee basis for the work. If the editor accepts the article he pays his normal lineage rates. He is given it exclusively but asked if he will allow second rights to go elsewhere. Obviously, the lineage rates in the technical press do not cover the production costs and in practice only about 10% of the costs are recovered but the charge and the exclusivity give the service a much greater attraction to editors than a general relcase 'give away' service of a similar type. I believe the days of preparing costly, in-depth, photo-features in the hope of publication have passed. I am not referring to brief, straight-forward, product news-items, with one or two photographs, which fall in a different category and should continue to be produced for a possible market. But much more can be done to 'float' ideas with representatives and editors on the spot before preparing costly literature and pictures. The co-ordinating group in Hong Kong should 'pool' more ideas for discussion with representatives overseas. A contract writing unit with the necessary funds should be established under I.S.D. to respond to selected requests. Such response must be quick and editors should be given the article and photographs within a week or at the most
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