Tesla is today a 780bn$ public company and its CEO is the world’s richest man. What almost nobody in the mainstream media has spoken about in the recent past is that, approximately 4 months ago, Tesla has made reporters and mainstream media irrelevant for its external communication.

Since late 2019, the press@tesla.com email id had stopped responding to reporters. However, in October 2020, Tesla officially dissolved its PR department, effectively formalising their informal policy of ignoring reporters & mainstream media. Elon Musk does almost no mainstream media interviews but has chosen to go onto radio shows and podcasts of individuals he likes.

Please note that in October 2020, Tesla’s market-cap was 400bn$. Today, it is nearly twice that. It is clear that Tesla’s move to ignore reporters and mainstream media has made zero difference to its stock price or market cap.

We are living through a historic, technology-fuelled shift in the balance of power between the media and its subjects. And the subjects are winning. The internet in general, and social media platforms in particular, have destroyed one of the media’s most important sources of power: being the only place that could offer ‘access’ to an audience. If a Elon Musk can say whatever he wants to 44 million Twitter followers by tweeting & same is amplified both by news aggregators and the 44mn people who follow him, exponentially expanding its dissemination, then it is little surprise that he does not feel compelled to waste time responding to reporters.

It is crystal clear now that popular / well-followed-on-social-media people no longer need the mainstream press, and they especially don’t need those with agendas. This presents a problem more for the media than them. Because the mainstream media still needs these popular and powerful people, both for ‘inside info’ / scoops and ‘access’. If the mainstream media is left to simply copy-paste information from the company’s social media handles, why would anyone value them more than they value a news aggregator?

Closer to home, Narendra Modi has done one better. Not only is he, without question, the most followed person on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook combined in India (65mn + 51mn + 45mn), but with his Mann ki Baat radio address, he has the ability to reach out, directly, potentially to 1.3bn Indians all at the same time (radio has 99% penetration in India). He has made avoiding mainstream media until it is absolutely necessary into an art form, so that, when he does do the very few interviews that he does, mostly around elections, it carries so much more weight & value.

Mukesh Ambani (India’s richest man worth Rs6.5tn) gives maybe 2 interviews each year. That said, the RIL Annual General Meeting is anticipated and is one of India’s most watched financial events, second only to India’s Annual Budget.

In the case of BJP & Reliance though, they both have hyperactive PR departments and social media cells (the infamous BJP IT Cell included). So while mainstream media has little or no access to the top man, they do get responded to by the organisational communication machinery. In the case of Tesla, Musk has broken down that link as well. Will that happen in India in the future as well? Who knows. Only time will tell.

Anyway, this article is NOT about Modi or Ambani. It is about what can happen to a static being like the mainstream media, in a dynamic world…

That it is happening is not at all surprising for me. This is something that I have written about in the past as well, about how journalism needs to change keeping social media in mind and the power that social media provides. People with direct access do not want any filter between their words and their recipients. Especially if that filter is coloured with an agenda. I’m not saying that it is the ONLY reason for such an approach, but IMO, it is definitely one of the primary reasons. Now the media may raise all the questions they want about this lack of access to people like Musk, Modi & Ambani, but before they do that, they should look inwards and ask if they themselves are to blame. When media organisations rigidly resist change, regress into peddling agendas and choose to remain behind when the world is moving on, they in-turn demolish their own credibility, usefulness and hasten their journey to being relegated to the dustbin of irrelevance…

---

P.S.
Keely Sulprizio, the last person known to officially be in charge of PR/communications at Tesla, left the automaker in December of last year to join Impossible Foods. Following her departure, virtually every other member of Tesla’s PR team either left or moved to other positions at Tesla.After Sulprizio, Alan Cooper was the most senior member of Tesla’s communications team, and in February, his role was changed to director of demand generation, but he has now apparently left the company.
Gina Antonini, a senior manager on Tesla’s comms team for three years, saw her role changed to director of external relations and employee experience at Tesla in February.
Also in February, Tesla communications manager Alexander Ingram moved to a role as content lead for Design Studio at Tesla.
Danielle Meister, senior global communications manager at Tesla, left for WhatsApp in April.
Most recently, Rich Otto, who handled some of the latest PR projects at Tesla like exclusive videos with YouTubers and Jay Leno, is now a product manager, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Tesla still seems to have a few PR managers in European and Asian markets, but the core global team working out of the US has been dissolved. There are obviously still people arranging test-drive promotions for YouTubers but their role isn’t in a traditional public relations capacity.
Above information from https://electrek.co/2020/10/06/tesla-dissolves-pr-department/

Other references & content for this article from https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/washington-post-tesla-trump-power.php

---