Speaking for himself, as a scribe, Blade has no problem with PRs. They do their job, and journalists do another. There are those, such as Nick Davies, who aren’t convinced that the PR industry is a force for good, but Blade believes that across its various sectors, from legal PR to environmental PR, even including property and accountancy PR, there are good eggs, bad eggs and some boring old indifferent ones.
But those who agree with Davies – who believe that PR is the dark side, while journalism is all baubles, joy and light – will be aghast at this story from the Press Gazette. It appears that financial impoverishment thanks to the recession has led many journalists to seek a new career in… PR.
As the Gazette has it, the National Union of Journalists has even organised a conference in Bristol to introduce out-of-work journalists to the PR industry. The NUJ regrets having do this, calling it a “sad indictment of the newspaper industry”, but for those not so squeamish Saturday 4th April is the day for your diaries.
Blade does have one or two concerns. If there are diminishing numbers of journalists, and increasing numbers of PRs, won’t there be something of an imbalance? And if the trend continues, so that everyone becomes a PR, who will write the stories? Once they’re written, who will they give them to? And if newspapers keep closing, who will publish them?
Perhaps we’re heading for a world full of stories which are destined for homelessness, ones which will be written but not told. At that point, one hopes, we’ll be emerging from the recession and the new PR/Journalist will become… a newspaper proprietor.
For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.
But who uttered these lines?
(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)
The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.
“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.
Pictured: Fleet Street - not the same as it used to be.
A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:
I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.
Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?
Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).
Surfing and the favelas: how they’re connected
All OK for Desmond and Five
Heading for an airport tonight? Your experience may be different in future…
Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
In this article, Gavin Ingham Brooke and Rohit Grover of Spada examine the importance of marketing and PR in a downturn.
In the latest of our series of white papers, Spada Research examines trends in environmental reporting.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Πλάτων, Greek philosopher.