Journalism in decline?
The decline of journalism is the theme in two very different articles this week in the church press. The
Church of England Newspaper carries a piece by Andrew Carey on the discovery that there are more people working in PR than there are journalists. The other, by Andrew Brown in
the Church Times, highlights one specific and highly lamentable example of this – the sacking of Jonathan Petre as religious affairs correspondent on the
Daily Telegraph.
Andrew Brown, speaks passionately about the main reason for the sacking - the Telegraphs moves to a more ‘tabloid’ approach to newsgathering. The editors will decide on what the stories are and the journalists will provide the words to go with them. It saves money but the casualty – apart from gainful employment for some very good journalists – is truth. It’s sadly ironic that we were given an insight into this change in approach when diocesan communicators visited the swanky new Telegraph offices at Victoria last November. Jonathan was there, giving up his time to get to know us and to explain about his work, little knowing what was to befall him.
In his Church Times article, Andrew speaks about the hole it leaves in religious reporting on national newspapers. In his view Jonathan was the best informed specialist working on the dailies, he was trustworthy, authoritative and respected as an honest broker.
I've known Jonathan for several years and had a good professional relationship, hav
ing an odd drink together after a hectic day at General Synod. (
See picture with JP just beyond Ruth Gledhill (on the left side of pic about half way up ) at work during a debate). My own experience of Jonathan was certainly that he was indeed “one of the good ones, the unsung professionals like ship’s engineers, who make all the pomp and ceremony possible in the first-class lounge.” After the 7/7 bombers were identified as coming from up here, he was the only religious correspondent to take the train to Leeds and find out what was really going on. During our difficulties at the Cathedral he would regularly call me for long chats to try and get the low-down.
That’s not to say that Jonathan didn’t have his own ‘Daily Telegraph shaped’ agenda. Clearly he wasn’t always interested in the good news stories we churn out – but then what national newspaper is? If he did follow up a press release it was usually to pose a sharp question I’d hoped might be overlooked (eg if the Bishop is moving house from Ripon to Leeds won’t that put the noses of those in the north of the diocese out of joint?) While up in Beeston he seemed keen to focus on whether the local mosques were hotbeds of radicalism, not only a rather dangerous question to be asking anywhere in earshot of LS11 at the time, but at odds with the emphasis we wanted to put on moderate Christians and Muslims working together.
But I am very sad too at the news, and I wish Jonathan and his wife well, hoping he very quickly gets snapped up by a more discerning ‘information centre’ as newspaper offices will soon be called.
There are now 47,800 people employed in public relations - verses 45,000 journalists, according to Andrew Carey (though thanks to the Daily Telegraph, the figure is now presumably 44,998). Andrew is astounded, and laments the effect this will have on the independence of the press and the “blurring of the impartiality of the media”. Do my eyes deceive me!? The words ‘impartiality’ and ‘media’ have never sat well together, and an ‘impartial newspaper’ is an oxymoron. Newspapers were never interested in reporting our good news or our press releases, unless we are talking about the local rag with one cub reporter on a job creation scheme. I can personally count on the fingers of one hand the number of times a TV crew from regional news has turned up at an event I’ve been involved in publicising in the last two years. That’s why organisations have always had to employ PR officers to play the media game, creating statistics, carrying out surveys, paying celebrities, engineering controversy, all to catch the eye of the editor.
Part of the reason for fewer journalists and more PR professionals is the decline of newspapers and the growth in new media. Newspapers themselves tacitly acknowledge this as they downsize their traditional journalism staff while employing more video and web specialists for newly created video departments, websites and ‘information hubs’. The spin off is that well meaning organisations and charities can begin to rely less on the vagaries and mood swings of journalists, newspaper editors and media bosses to transmit their news. After all, why does the audience need to go to a newspaper’s brand new all-singing all-dancing website when they can Google the topic and go direct to horses mouth on an equally well produced web page. The playing field is levelling out. Will there be any place for professional journalists at all in a future of citizen journalism and home grown internet tv?. Perhaps, in the not too distant future, we will laugh at the way we had to rely on BBC Look North to turn up before anyone heard about the new Bishop, chuckle ruefully at the way we had to try and catch the eye of a reporter to get a new campaign into the public eye. In the words of Bob Dylan, The Times (and the Telegraph) they are a changing.
Labels: Church of England Newspaper, Church Times, Citizen journalism, Daily Telegraph, Jonathan Petre, Journalists, PR
That was the week that was
This may not be the best blog posting I’ve ever done.. a tiring day after a tiring week so a few random and unconnected observations, though all germaine, one hopes, to the overall raison d’etre of this electronic diary..
1) Last Sunday,
the Archbishop of York’s Press Officer’s phone suddenly started ringing as journalists called asking for more details about the boss's dramatic TV coup. Arun Arora told me in church that evening that the phone hadn’t stopped since John Sentamu had cut up his dog collar on the Andrew Marr show. Not only was this piece of television drama covered on bulletins and in every major newspaper throughout the following week, but clearly has caught the popular imagination too, if the conversations I’ve been having since are any indication. Apparently the Archbishop had been having trouble sleeping the night before the programme and felt God prompting him to think about the people of Zimbabwe, suffering under the Mugabe regime. He hadn’t actually warned Arun before the broadcast that he was carrying a pair of scissors in his pocket, but when he pulled them out and decimated his collar there was cheering in the Gallery, and not surprising. It was both dramatic and heartfelt and reminded me of the sort of spontaneous acts of the Old testament Prophets. He’s promised not to put the collar back on until Mugabe is deposed. Let’s hope it’s not too long.
2) So do we need press officers at all? It’s a question asked this week on
Radio 4’s The Message (listen again) which wondered why politicians, for example needed spin doctors and couldn’t speak (Sentamu style) direct to the public. It was a question which was raised by Tim Livesey, the Lambeth Palace head of external communications as he told us about changes to the Press Office in the New Year, last week. A more accessible Archbishop of Canterbury, and more emphasis on direct communication with the public using new technology, less of the ‘old fashioned’ communication mediated by the middle men and women called journalists. And one less press officer! Well, let’s watch this space. My own feeling is that we need and will continue to need a mixed economy of communication methods. Just as announcements of the death of popular television could be premature (see previous posting) so too the view that press releases and press officers are ‘old fashioned’. After all, it was precisely the direct approach of the Archbishop which ruined m’ colleagues day off as he answered the phone and put out statements.
3) However…. The issue of more direct communication with the public, via new technology and the internet is something I recognise I need to spend more time on , especially as we start work on a new
Ripon and Leeds website and look at the potential for generating video news, podcasts, and effectively TV and Radio on the web. Are we starting our own Christian broadcasting? Across the CofE communicators network, it has long been the strategy not to try and develop religious tv and radio but get the message across through the existing secular channels. But as the communications landscape rapidly shifts, that position is looking increasingly anachronistic – and when is a Christian video podcast not a broadcast? It’s an attractive thought to believe that we no longer need to rely on the hit and miss approach of relying on the vagaries of the newsroom to mediate our message – but is it realistic? Lots of questions and plenty to think about..
4) I managed to get together a programme of
Communications training for Spring of 2008 at last – phew! Working with Bradford and Wakefield dioceses we’ll be making use of Trinity and All Saints College as well as an evening session with TV producer Andrew Graystone who is also
Director of the Churches’ Media Council. Senior clergy will hopefully be learning how to handle television interviews, using the excellent facilities at the Horsforth college, as well as Geoff Druett, the genial Yorkshire TV presenter. So, hopefully if we do need to continue r
elying on journalists (of the TV variety), at least we’ll hopefully not make too much of a mess of it. (
Geoff Druett pictured right)
Labels: Andrew Graystone, archbishop of canterbury, Archbishop of York, Churches' Media Council, Diocese of Ripon and Leeds, Geoff Druett, Lambeth, Mugabe, PR, Press Officers, Sentamu, The Message
Oh Come all ye Faithless
The Churches Advertising Network (CAN) will be bringing out its posters and radio ads very soon, celebrating Christmas and getting people to think about the Christian faith. But in a reversal of the old Salvation Army motto, ‘why should the Devil have all the good tunes?’, they’ve been pipped by the opposition this year. The anti-Christ, Richard Dawkins himself, author of ‘The God Delusion’ along with his devilish hordes, the Borders book chain, hav
e cleverly scooped this year’s award for the best Christmas campaign, or rather, anti-Christmas campaign.
Of course it’s wrong, wrong, wrong on so many levels! ‘Faithless’? … Militant, fundamentalist atheism is a faith like any other, dependent on a belief that the human race with all its wonders, it’s incredible sense of self- understanding, love, poetry and music, is as much a cosmic accident as a chunk of rock circling Saturn. The adherents of this faith are completely confident that death is the end, that life has no meaning, that matter came about by chance.
A Christmas PR campaign for a book that would like to see the end of Christmas? I’m sure it’s done with a touch of irony (though possibly, I fear, an irony lost on the staff at Borders.) However, if Christmas is a delusion, then linking a campaign with this worldwide festival is also dishonest. Those of us with doubts, those who are agnostic, even the less militant branch of the atheistic persuasion, would all probably admit that the world would be a duller place without festivals like Christmas, and Borders certainly know they would be out of business without their Christmas stocking fillers and the season of goodwill to all.
Wrong, too, from a PR point of view. As CAN has discovered in the past PR campaigns that miss the mark can backfire dangerously. Would Borders have dared bring out this campaign poking fun at Divali, or Ramadan? Hardly. Dawkins is against those too, of course, as he is against anything which cannot be proved by science. Watch out for the backlash.
Labels: Borders, Christmas, Dawkins, O Come All Ye Faithless, PR
ing an odd drink together after a hectic day at General Synod. (See picture with JP just beyond Ruth Gledhill (on the left side of pic about half way up ) at work during a debate). My own experience of Jonathan was certainly that he was indeed “one of the good ones, the unsung professionals like ship’s engineers, who make all the pomp and ceremony possible in the first-class lounge.” After the 7/7 bombers were identified as coming from up here, he was the only religious correspondent to take the train to Leeds and find out what was really going on. During our difficulties at the Cathedral he would regularly call me for long chats to try and get the low-down.
