The World Does Not Need Journalists

I thoroughly recommend that you read http: http://www.joannageary.com/2008/10/28/quick-incoherent-thought-2-why-most-news-doesnt-need-journos  by Birmingham Post journalist Joanna Geary.

In the post Jo argues that ‘the World does not need journalists to communicate the vast majority of information that is defined as news.”

Perhaps she’s right – after all PR people are able to get their messages across effectively and efficiently through a variety of mediums. However, PR people do need to work with journalists, not against them and it is important for us all that journalists have time to receive and question our messages rather than take them at face value and reproduce, or as Nick Davies insists, ‘churn’ out our copy.

When I first started to work in PR I used to organise press conferences expecting key correspondents to come out, listen and then question robustly. Today, I just issue a release and nine times out of ten it is printed word for word. Surely this isn’t right?

Let’s champion the need for journalists to be able to research again but couple this with the increasing professionalism of PR people who provide tailored information – just as journalists want.

Comments

[Matt Anderson]

I agree we need journalists. What many PRs think is that the lack of journalists at major media outlets know means less resistance to "PR fluff".

The printing of press releases are on the increase but we must ask ourselves if the level of journalism decreases, so do (in the main) the readers.

PRs need journalists to be robust and creative in their content.

We have found that many of our blogs get picked up and used in mainstream news. So there is a lot of mileage in blogs for creative content.