Journalism’s decline is more threatening than PR’s power

Seven years ago today, I left newspapers and became one of a seemingly growing number of journalists to ‘jump the ship’ into PR. As someone who loved news (and still does), it was a tough decision. But with no similar jobs available in Manchester, where I was moving to, it made sense to follow the work.

So I read with interest today research from the USA written jointly by ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Review, which reports that there are three times more PR professionals than journalists in the States.  The article, called ‘PR industry fills vacuum left by shrinking newsrooms,’ warns the decline of journalism makes it easier for Governments and corporations to get own message out.

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Another view of how ‘churnalism’ works

Heather Yaxley makes some key points about the Media Standards Trust’s ‘churnalism’ website in the post below, which I blogged about earlier in the week. It’s an inteligent viewpoint on a multi-faceted issue.

Churnalism is not PR’s fault According to the Guardian, “PR has taken over the media” based on the launch of the website, churnalism.com (created by charity the Media Standards Trust) which reveals the extent to which certain national online news is derived direct from press releases. There’s a rather muddled premise here with the confusion of several different points. Firstly, there’s the assertion that it is easy to get ‘faux stories’ into the mainstream media – examples b … Read More

via Heather Yaxley – Greenbanana views of public relations and more