Churning leads to depression
by Nick Petrie on July 23, 2010
I am currently reading Nick Davies’ ‘Flat Earth News’ and I am only a chapter and a half in and I am already more depressed about the prospects of a career in Journalism that I have been for a long time. I had not realised the decline in proper fact-checked journalism was so widespread and ingrained (especially among locals).
But more than that; the reliance on press releases and other material produced by those with an agenda is staggering – I had a policy of trashing most if not all press releases that arrived in the Redbrick inbox – I was incredulous to the point that persistent PR contact just got spammed. I could not for the life of me understand why we would use this substandard self-serving copy when we had reporters to go out, find stories and then write them up.
I was careful to maintain mutually beneficial relationships and of course sections like Film and Music relied heavily on industry contacts for interviews, CDs and screenings – however there was a direct benefit to the students reading the paper (better content – previews etc..) so I could see the point in growing such relationships.
I do of course realise that Redbrick did not need to turn a profit and that our reporters are all voluntary, so the dynamics of our content production was very different to that off a local or regional, but you do wonder what has happened to the integrity and principles that I am sure most young journos started out with – according to Davies it just gets ground away by news desks and editors.
It makes me feel better that we ignored all the PR that came our way, concentrating on developing our reporters and finding and confirming our own stories. It also makes me wonder about the terrible relationship between most student papers and their local and regional papers. Enthusiastic and hardworking student journos could be helping to contribute real stories and actual reporting to their locals – instead they just tend to be ignored.
I hope I never have to produce ‘churnalism’ – but I am sure I will in due course.
2 comments
Amen to that. However, churnalism only exists as a result of the business instincts which drive papers nowadays. They are used as money making ventures, which makes the content of the stories suffer. Like Davies says, the need for high output and low production costs make it necessary to use the PR stories rather than follow leads. It's a sad state of affairs which is likely to persist.
by Pope on July 23, 2010 at 1:15 pm. #
You may also find Bad Science by Ben Goldacre interesting.
by Dominic Haigh on July 23, 2010 at 3:56 pm. #