Journalists need to diversify, but that doesn’t mean selling your soul
As publication after publication began to close around her, freelance writer Nicole Madigan realised it was time to diversify. What she discovered was the comms world didn’t suck the life out of her. Instead, it breathed life back into her career.
Although I’m a relatively young journalist – just scraping in as a member of Gen Y – my career was born in a time before digital domination, when traditional media was king. The internet was emerging, yes, but it still played second fiddle in terms of news and information delivery.
I entered the profession with a thirst for knowledge and information, a love of the written word and a desire to share both – in those days, via newspapers, magazines, television or radio.
At the core of journalism was (and is), in my view, accuracy, authenticity, impartiality and, of course, ethical reporting. Its purpose, to share the information that the public either needed or wanted.
Sorry, Nicole, but I would argue you’re wrong. There’s one simple but profound difference between true journalism and PR: disclosure. The professional journalist will always seek out disclosure . . . revealing information someone wants kept out of the public realm. Quite often the PR professional has the opposite responsibility, preventing (certain) information from becoming known. Like you, I’ve worked in both fields. You can’t apply the same standards. Often they work together satisfactorily – they’re both into story-telling – but their principles and ethical foundations are vastly divergent.
Hi Richard,
I take your point, though I was primarily referencing content creation and copywriting, as these are the services by business provides (PR was not for me). That said, I do still think you can apply the same principles to public relations… let’s face it, as journalists working for corporations (which is were I began my career with News Limited, followed by Channel Nine), we are often given angles by our editors, and its our job to meet the brief, while adhering to public and personal ethical standards.
Thanks for reading though!
Nicole
I’m becoming a bit of broken record on this but I’ll say it again:
Being in PR and outing yourself as such is far more ethical than presenting yourself as journalist while paraphrasing press releases. In the age of click bait, far too many are calling what they do journalism when it simply isn’t accurate to do so. At least PR people are open about their role.
As Nicole alludes to in her reply above, there is plenty of scope for “angles” to interfere with ethics in commercial journalism (possibly also an oxymoron?). Which in my opinion is one of the main reasons Journalist now have to pick up some PR work to get by. The audience doesn’t trust traditional publishers anymore due to the “angles” and dodgy ethics, so to the punter there is no difference between branded content and commercial click bait.