

The decline of journalism and the rise of public relations - samsolomon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/11/the-decline-of-journalism-and-the-rise-of-public-relations/

======
ilamont
Former tech journalist here.

From 2000-2002, after the first dot-com bubble burst, the industry experienced
the first wave of mass layoffs. At that time, the newspaper and magazine
sectors were still relatively strong and were able to absorb some displaced
writers and editors, but some started to go over to the "dark side" (PR). At
my company it was also possible for senior writers and editors to go into
research, which was seen as a more respectable alternative career path than
corporate PR.

There was a slight recovery from 2003-2004, but then an interesting thing
started to happen: a steady trickle of slow-motion layoffs, consolidations,
and other cost-cutting measures. The weaker pubs began to fail as demand for
print advertising dried up, and events began to feel the heat too as new
entrants muscled their way into the scene. In some cases, staff were shifted
to growing online units, but overall there was a net loss of staff in
editorial, ad operations, and events.

Starting around 2005 or so, I began to notice a curious thing: Many of the
30-something journalists in my organization were voluntarily moving to
industry. Some started to work for PR agencies, but in many cases they moved
to in-house marketing units of large tech companies -- Microsoft, CA, Bose,
etc. Certainly the pay and benefits were attractive but my own sense was there
didn't seem to be much of a future staying in journalism. Why keep a job which
offers little chance to advance and could probably lead to layoffs in the near
future?

People stopped using the term "the dark side" around that time. It's hard to
make some ethical stand about the purity of the profession when people are
getting laid off or taking a salary cut while serious journalism is being
sacrificed for the sake of pageview-heavy slideshows and blogs.

~~~
TheCowboy
There has been another narrative that "citizen journalists" would either
disrupt the industry, or replace the roles of journalists whose industry had
been disrupted. This has come with mixed results for everyday journalism. In
the case of investigative journalism, it just doesn't seem to be happening.

This level of depth in journalism requires time and skill. The choice seems to
either work a full time job to supplement this hobby and having zero time for
other things in life, or living without financial security. There is the other
risk that this type of journalism tends to create enemies which can hurt job
security. It can also hurt your career if you are seen as someone who isn't
able to keep a secret. Individuals also expose themselves to the risks of
libel and slander lawsuits.

Most people who can pull off journalism like this are usually going to be
capable of pursuing a dozen other more lucrative and less stressful careers.

~~~
anigbrowl
_There has been another narrative that "citizen journalists" would either
disrupt the industry, or replace the roles of journalists whose industry had
been disrupted._

Yeah, I think the results are in on that one. It turns out that the people who
are most motivated to work for peanuts to establish 'the truth' are often also
the most partisan on any given issue and with the least commitment to
journalistic neutrality. The websites that solicit content creation from the
readership tend towards becoming echo chambers.

------
ch215
I've worked in journalism and little worries me more than the growth of PR
within police, government and other public bodies.

Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, himself said PR is a just
polite term for propaganda.

I've had news stories that were in the public interest spiked because of spin
doctors meddling.

In the UK, central government alone employs more than 1,500 communications
staff[1]. I think that's bad for democracy and a waste of public money.

I'm with Noam Chomsky who said: "Propaganda is to a democracy what the
bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."

[1] [http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/central-government-has-
nearly-...](http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/central-government-has-
nearly-1500-communications-staff-and-its-still-impossible-get-answers-until)

------
cs702
The presented statistics are misleading, because they miss:(1) all the
individuals who are neither paid journalists nor peddlers of PR but who
nonetheless actively write thoughtful pieces on their subject of expertise,
e.g., Scott Aaronson, the late Roger Ebert; and (2) all the new platforms and
communities for publishing, sharing, discussing, and evaluating news that are
hostile to PR and don't employ journalists, e.g., HN, many (but not all)
subreddits.

~~~
UweSchmidt
Reddit, HN etc. are an excellent platform for "peddlers of PR". Sure you need
to write thoughtful pieces, and anyone can do that. But professionals do it
better. They have the well-researched articles ready when a relevant story
pops, and maybe a sockpuppet account or two for support. Or is there any PR
agency left in 2015 who is confused about Reddit's hivemind and clueless about
protecting their clients' interest on the internet?

~~~
gus_massa
> _and maybe a sockpuppet account or two for support_

If you use two or three sockpuppets that write empty comments like "Awesome,
this is fantastic!!", the comments will almost sure be downvoted and that
removes the support effect.

If you use four or five you'll probably get your own personalized message from
the moderator asking to stop and banning the sockpuppets.

You may be more lucky using sockpuppets that say something useful for the
discussion. Obligatory xkcd: [http://xkcd.com/810/](http://xkcd.com/810/)

------
austenallred
I've talked about this in a few HN threads, but it bears repeating.

A lot of hard-hitting journalism is disappearing rapidly, and for one reason:
it costs more to produce than it brings in. Almost no one in this day and age
has figured out how to produce investigative or interesting journalism without
subsidizing it with charitable contributions, listicles or cat videos.

That causes a lot of things. Copy editors are largely a thing of the past, as
is the vast majority of fact-checking (more on that later). But mostly it
produces journalists whose value is produced on how many page views they can
produce in return for their time. Journalists are measured in PV/h.

That means even if you _are_ willing to produce Journalism (with a capital J),
you'll be splitting that proverbial journalistic baby with the other 10
publications that are trying to do the same thing, writing about the same
story. It's an unforgiving, cutthroat, penny-pinching world.

So you try to expedite it. You publish things fast and loose, you delve into
clickbait, or, in this case, you take pitches from PR and publish them
wholesale or with a few additions. You do whatever you can to stay alive, or
you're fucked. If you hold your head high, you face the unfortunate
probability that you'll go down in flames with your reputation intact. You end
up like GigaOm with thousands of people bemoaning your fall, but still unable
to pay back your debts.

We don't need to look any further for this than ISIS. Not only is ISIS
controlling the whole world's talking points by carefully crafting what news
they'll release, but they're spreading stories all the time that are
completely bogus. But you publish it, because ISIS sells every damn time.
Look, for example, at this story about ISIS crucifying one of its own members
for corruption: [http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-
east/2014/06/27/...](http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-
east/2014/06/27/ISIS-crucifies-one-of-its-own-in-Syria-for-corruption-.html).
It all started with a tweet from a now-deleted Twitter account, because ISIS
wanted to spread the idea of how intense they are and how strongly they fight
their perceived evil. So they plant a story about how they crucified one of
their own members. Every media organization knows that's free pageviews, so
they report it.

Of course, you could look at the feature photo in that story, which
constitutes most of the "tip" from the tweet, and you'd find that the entire
story is BS. Do a reverse image search and you find the original source: It's
a Danish Roman Catholic reenacting Christ's crucifixion in the Philippines.
[http://d.pr/i/183Sf](http://d.pr/i/183Sf). The story of the ISIS crucifixion
was made up out of thin air, based on a photo that was easily discoverable
(and in the AFP database), but now the lie is in every mainstream media
publication I can think of, from CNN and The Telegraph to The Guardian and the
New York Times. They didn't even have time for a reverse image search. And
ISIS wins.

A lot of what my startup does is fact-check stuff that's going on in the media
(it's a newsroom for the Internet -
[https://grasswire.com](https://grasswire.com)), and every media organization
(and I mean _every_ ) from Al Arabiya and the New York Times to Newsweek to
Rolling Stone and New York Magazine are quite frequently full of inaccuracies
and intentional lies. They're chock full of PR, which is probably the lesser
of two evils. Sometimes people catch these lies, a few people freak out for
<24 hours, and we all forget about it.

In Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, Ryan Holiday talks
about how easy it is to get lies to spread throughout the Internet, and
thereby all of mainstream media. The premise is very simple. You find someone
at the bottom of the press pyramid - the person responsible for putting out 4
or 5 articles a day so that his or her publication can get enough pageviews to
stay alive. There's not a chance that person can do any sort of verification.
You send them a "tip," get a few smaller blogs to write about it, and the
snowball starts rolling.

I don't know what the solution is (I'm trying to find/create one), and I don't
want to pretend like this has only happened since the Internet came into
existence, but I find most people put way too much trust in the press machine
we've created. I would like to think that somewhere there are independent
reporters and people who are digging up stories, but I've come to realize that
most stories aren't ever dug up - they're pitched.

~~~
dredmorbius
Quite. "Why Information Goods and Markets are a Poor Match"

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_inf...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vm2da/why_information_goods_and_markets_are_a_poor_match/)

BTW, your droplr link is 404.

And ... Grasswire would be a _lot_ more compelling if it didn't throw up a
registration roadblock.

~~~
austenallred
Thanks. Apparently droplr wants me to pay to use my archived screenshots. One
more reason I'm glad I moved to monosnap.

And it's that way for a really good reason currently. Will be open soon.

------
malandrew
I wish instead of a table, there was time series data of the numbers
presented. I'm curious how much these values have changed and how quickly
they've changed.

~~~
sitkack
And are reporters switching into PR? What jobs are the news people leaving to?

~~~
ghaff
Some go into PR--both agency and in-house. My intuition is that's the most
common case given that it's a fairly natural path. Where I work, we also have
some in community management and various marketing roles. Some freelance,
doing various types of jobs involving writing. I don't think you'll get those
numbers from the BLS statistics though which are forecasting overall
employment.

------
sparkzilla
Most tech blogs appear to be Apple's PR arm

~~~
dredmorbius
10-15 years ago it was Microsoft.

Except the were called "columns" back then.

