The Real Issue
28 Feb 2008
In today’s post on politickernj.com website, written by their media critic, Debbie Holtz, she writes, “These days it seems like a week does not pass by without news of red ink running through daily newspapers. Is the troubled financial condition of the newspaper industry driving more and more reporters to PR jobs?”
Those of us in the business know that newspapers are losing money, and as a result they are chopping heads. Just this week, the Philly Inquirer chopped over 60…mostly administrative positions. They cleared the newsroom about a year ago.
Yes, more and more reporters are moving to PR…heck, we’re hiring them! They are also going into other fields. Let’s face it, journalists either get into management or get out if they have mouths to feed.
There are two issues here. The first is that the newspaper publishing industry is slow to change and is long overdue to update its model. Until they take a more innovative approach to how they do business, they’ll continue to lose money.
The second issue is the effect this downsizing has on the quality of news and the PR profession.
Journalists have always populated the ranks of PR…that’s nothing new. Is it happening at a faster rate these days? Yes, because PR is growing and journalism is shrinking. It is a simple case of supply and demand.
The bigger issue that I see is the fact that there is less and less original reporting. As a result, television news steals from the wires, local newspapers steal from television and then pass it through their own wire network, local radio takes from a national feed, and on down it goes through the news food chain. So, if the original reporting is inaccurate or biased, it carries through a variety of media, and we have less checks and balances. Less voices.
Moreover, overworked reporters mean new ethical issues. Reporters are younger and less experienced (because it’s a cheaper labor pool). They are working multiple beats and paying less attention to researching stories due to time constraints. There is less fact checking and more reliance on news releases, hearsay and online content research (which can be grossly inaccurate) in an effort to make deadlines that are now 24/7 with online distribution.
Consequently, I believe the ethical issue revolves less around where they are moving when they leave journalism, but on who and what is filling the void.
