Gorkana run a feature section on journalists who have moved to the 'darkside'. In other words, those who have switched their career from journalism to public relations.
These career moves do make sense, given that the skills required are interchangeable and that PR itself runs on the premise that its practitioners have a good understanding of how the media works.
Reasons for batting for the other team that are given in the interviews include being "privileged to get access to a lot of strategic information and getting to discuss the key issues with the client at the highest level", "adding value to the communications process", and "wanting to play a more active role – rather than simply sitting on the sidelines, observing and passing judgement", emphasising the current passivity of journalism.
The reason that I went for a career in public relations rather than journalism is that journalism seems more and more to be falling into the hands of public relations professionals. It seems that most of the bulk of journalism that people read in the papers every day originates from a press release.
After doing work experience at The York Press, I was an expert at writing copy from press releases. Often, the news editor would come over with a sheet of white paper flapping in his hand and simply say "Turn this press release into an article, 400 words, by 3pm." Maybe it is just the regional press that is like this, but there seemed nothing more to the job than that.
Oh, and learning shorthand...
On the other hand, a lot of the quality and substantial journalism originates from journalists who are away from their desks, out in the real world meeting people and reporting on the news and current affairs, rather than sat by their desk, searching through emails for the one press release that can make up their copy that day.
These are the journalists that are digging for hard news, winning awards, and changing not only the face of journalism but the face of the world today.
I also believe that student journalism, being that it contains the future leaders of journalism, should be supported through as many channels as possible.
There are the Guardian Student Media Awards, the NUS Student Journalism Awards (which unfortunately was on hiatus in 2007), and various other smaller supporting schemes. But nothing substantial.
That's why I was pleased to see that the Student Journalism Blog had been established. Run by Dave Lee, the blog hopes to become the best source for student journalism news in the country.
I'll be visiting it often to see how the great and the good of student journalism is progressing and I hope you will too. Let's hope it leads to student journalism being given a higher profile and maybe even saving journalism as we know it for the near future.
More 'Moving to the darkside' interviews here.
Update: It seems that even ex-Army Officers are joining the PR fraternity.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Journalism - bound by the strings of the PR puppetmaster?
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4 comments:
Hi Ben...
Thanks for your comment. Not sure about the pressure of 'saving' journalism with the blog, though! I'm hoping I can use the blog to give student journalism a bigger audience within the journalism community. At the moment I don't think we have that.
Interesting observations about PR in journalism. I was fortunate enough to work on a decent local paper, and I saw some of what you described. What I've noticed, though, is that the bigger the publication, the less this occurs.
Regards,
Dave
I completely agree that it was a great move by The Press Gazette to get that student journalism blog going, and good choice of blogger to pen it, but my experiences with journalism and PR are quite the opposite of yours. I went back to full-time journalism after a short stint of doing PR for Visit Britain + dabbling with financial PR because I couldn't stand the politics and phoniness of it, and guess I had too much sympathy for the journalists (convincing CEOs with inflated egos that no, opening a press release with "Automation levels" is not a recipe for success, and of course journos find other sources if you just talk techno babble and they write for a mainstream audience, not quoting you in this context is not the hallmark of a sleazy journo, or negotiating with airlines who try to take credit for all your work and steal your contacts in the process). Now, all of this might not make too much sense taken out of context, but the conclusion was that it felt great to get out of that world. One of my greatest mentors was one of the founders of financial PR in Britain (former financial journalist)and in his last years he longed back to his writing days (I think his greatness as a PR lay in the fact that he in many ways was a journalist/ had an amazing understanding of the news process, to the end of his days). I don't think your experiences in journalism, just writing up press releases, is entirely representative: some news organisations are worse than others in this respects, depends on policy and individuals running the show. In the UK, the newsdesks I've worked for range from The Daily Express City section to The Observer, and even at The Express this was far from the case; only writing up press releases. Sure, there was a lot of company results and press releases, but when the competition is so tough, every newspaper gets these documents, you have to find your own unique angle, ideally your own interviews or your own bit of inside information. I'm not saying that what you describe does not happen, just that journalists who only rewrite press releases won't last long and publications that only do this will be looked down upon among their own. However, I wholeheartedly agree that getting out there and doing all the real life reporting is essential, though I'd like to add that today you can accomplish similar thing by getting on the web, reporting from virtual life (not as a substitute for real life reporting, but as a great add on)...
A note on the comment setup: logging in with my google account only sucks, I'd much rather be able to link to my blog so you could see more about who I am. Just saying...
Thanks for your comments guys.
Dave - I'm glad that the PR influence doesn't hold as much with the bigger publicaitons. I guess they wouldn't be able to compete otherwise and so have to emphasise decent journalism.
Kristine - Apologies for the logging on with the Google account issue. I didn't realise that feature was on and I've now taken it off. As for the bit about "just writing press releases", I of course don't believe that that is what all journalism has been reduced to. I guess I was just upset that when I was a student journalist I preached that we should be making our own news, and when I went into a professional newsroom, I saw the editor not exactly practising the same principle. I guess every experience differs - for example, I really enjoy working in Financial PR because, much like you, I really admire my mentor and have learnt a lot for him. I just hope that all journalists/pr practitioners out there don't fall into lazy habits and continue to practise to the highest standards.
Thanks,
Ben
p.s. Do you have a blog I could link to after so generously leaving your comment?
A good mentor, or ten, is always a great thing to have. I'm here (follow the link)
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