A thank you from the PR industry to journalists impacted by redundancies
Recently, more than 500 News Corp employees were impacted by redundancies, as the print versions of more than 100 regional and community titles were axed, and 14 titles shuttered altogether. Here, Kerryn Anker thanks those journalists.
Dark times have fallen across the media industry over the past few weeks. More than 100 News Corp regional and community titles will no longer produce print editions, instead moving to digital-only formats. On top of this, 14 titles will cease to exist. Its women’s network, Whimn, is gone. As is Buzzfeed, 10 Daily, and a slew of regional papers.
As a former journalist who started my cadetship at a country newspaper, my condolences go to the 500+ journalists who have now lost their jobs due to News Corp’s latest closures. For many of them, telling the news isn’t simply a job, it runs in their blood.
Community newspapers have always been a wonderful source of news and information, telling real community stories that impacted the local region and the people that live there. Journalists understood the power of words and the messages they were conveying.
These were stories that mattered to the local communities, and would be splashed across the front page of the newspaper each week. They weren’t just stories of car accidents and theft, they were also inspirational stories of people who spent their lives in these communities, a history of the generations that walked the land before them.
In the PR industry, we formed strong relationships with the journalists and understood their rounds, what news stories they were working on, and how our clients could add value to them.
As the news cycle for these publications now shifts to digital, so too does the way PR agencies need to pitch and interact with media.
With this evolving news cycle, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the journalists on the ground in these communities who told the stories that matter to the people, who saw the human-interest value in our clients’ stories and brought them to life.
There are long, long hours spent in those newsrooms, sometimes covering multiple rounds, from sport, to court reporting to entertainment, sometimes all in one day.
I want to thank the journalists for meeting our clients face-to face to hear their stories first-hand. Some journalists would travel miles with their own camera in hand to conduct the interview. There was a passion for the story they were telling, there was a thrill of the chase, and a respect for each person they interviewed.
On behalf of the PR industry, thank you to the hundreds of community and regional journalists for your storytelling, for the hard work you put in each and every day, and for bringing our client’s stories to life.
Kerryn Anker is PR manager at Sustainable Marketing
Good read. Sorry to see trained journalists, guided by media law and ethics, replaced by mindless Tweeters and social media “influencers”.
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