On the corruption of content
Oct 26th, 2008 by handolio
I’m 36 and no longer could I exactly be described as young.
But age has its advantages. I like to think that what I lose in elasticity, I gain in wisdom. Still, sometimes I fall victim to the unfettered idealism with which I grew up.
It wouldn’t be fair to say that I took a job at a marketing company with an empty mind and a whistle on my lips. But inspired by a wonderful HR woman and the brilliant mind of our department head, I decided it was worth a go. I was right – such was the pace of change at Spannerworks last Spring that Charlie and I started much better jobs than we applied for. Coming into a company that had almost no editorial experience or expertise, it was easy to define the rules and to make sure that they defined what we were doing as journalism. Not its highest expression, granted, but honest at least.
The optimistic view goes like this: we produce content that a company’s potential customers might find useful. News stories, sometimes features, sometimes guides, e-books, videos or whatever. In publishing such content, our customer is being useful to its community. A happy side-benefit is that Google likes fresh content, and relevant, user-first content tends to contain the kind of phrases for which a company wants to be found.
But what we’re doing isn’t new any more, and our output vies for attention with the work of an army of rent-a-hacks who, for the most part, don’t have our scruples. Charlie and I see daily examples of work where a search-first mentality makes it to the published word unchallenged. And that’s a terribly bad thing when it’s presented as journalism.
Reality cheque
The simple truth is this: proper old-school marketers exist to sell. They’re very good at it. They sometimes sell ‘journalism’, for example, without knowing what it is. To people who don’t know what it is.
But they’re so good at selling that they sell more than the products on which they’re working. Without realising it, perhaps, they sell themselves, and they sell their ideas – very convincingly.
The ideal is this:
The web enables people to talk freely, sharing experience and information. Bad experiences are shared, but so are the good. If a company wants to succeed in an age of interconnectedness, it must be better than its competitors: cheaper, quicker, fairer, smarter. If it’s not, we’ll all know, and we’ll take our business elsewhere.
This realisation drives companies to be better and we all benefit. The age of hiding behind marketing – shaping the concept of a brand rather than its reality – are over. A marketing company that understands this engineers the downfall of its own industry, and places itself at the vanguard of a new one.
The reality, at least in late 2008, is rather more familiar. It’s easier, rather than embracing the opportunity to be openly better, to subvert the mechanism by which ‘betterness’ is communicated.
Thus we have shit news*, press releases published as news, advertorials used as a Google-safe method to buy a link*, advertorials published as news, spam blogs, corporate blogs, engagement, and a dollar sign on every fucking thing on the internet.
* Self-preservation instinct kicked in; links removed.
Ahhh . . . you’re going for the *standing up for real journalism dollar*, right?
Huge market; we’ve done research.
I see you have my blog listed as a spam blog.
Who was it elected you to judge other people’s websites? Oh. A self-selected role you created for yourself.
Your own site looks, what? A tad self-indulgent?
But gee, seeing as you have such a lot of experience in the real world of journalism and all…
See you at the next NUJ meeting? No. Thought, not.
Incidentally, I would be pleased if you would refrain from claiming that my website is a spam blog. It isn’t. I think it would be helpful if your removed the erroneous claim as soon as it is practicable for you to do so. Thank you.
Hi Martin, I’m sorry if I offended you with my reference to That’s News.
I can see that there are some original posts on your site, but the bulk of its content appears to be press releases. Thus, while I accept that “spam blog” might be harsh, I don’t personally believe That’s News is accurately described as a “news magazine that is written by professional journalists”.
You’re welcome to your opinion about Hackbash, and to express it here.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with corporate blogs done well, and the one you’ve linked to – Fast Lane – is one of the earliest and still best examples of them done well.
I think that the ideal you mentioned holds true. We’re not arriving at that ideal – I’m not sure the web will ever be close to anyone’s ideal state and is all the better for it – but we can keep pushing for it, toward it.
Agreed Antony, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with corporate blogs (or inoffensive engagement, for that matter). Perhaps Fast Lane wasn’t the best example.
I realise that I’m coming across as finger-pointing, but I’m questioning what we do, too. Should we keep pushing, or is it time to reassess our understanding of the changes going on?
Thank you for your point.
However, all news magazines and broadcasters use press releases as the basis for their stories.
From the private briefings that Robert Peston gets to the general news releases from the Coastguard regarding a missing ship, they are all press releases.
I generally re-write press releases unless they are so well-written that they are good enough to be published ‘as is’. Sometimes these are by-lined, sometimes not.
Your local newspaper uses press releases, too. Look out for stories that are by-lined as being written by: “Staff Reporter” or similar. They are almost always press releases. I re-write press releases for a local print magazine. It is amusing to me to see the local evening paper print press releases verbatim and have them by-lined as: “By our Staff Reporter”!
Why do I use blogging software to publish online magazines? Because I was fed-up of finding good stories (‘stuff’ that interests me!) and not being able to fit them in to the print-based magazines I work on in my day job. Often as the story arrives too late to be included in the print magazine and will be no longer news by the time the next issue comes out. Also stories that pique my interest, but which do not fit in the publications I work on.
After looking at several options I hit on the idea of using Blogger. Why? It was easy to use and I could use Adwords on the site. It’s also free.
Some people use blogging software for online diaries. And that is great. Others use it to promote their own firms. That’s fine, too.
Others, like me, using blogging software to publish our own online magazines. There’s room for all types of publisher on the Internet, proessional, semi-pro, or amateur.
And if a small business (for example, a farmer’s wife who produces fudge from the farm kitchen) doesn’t have a massive marketing budget, so just emails out a press release to a list of journalists, why on earth shouldn’t I -or anyone else- give them a bit of free publicity by publishing their story, for nothing, in my online magazine?
There’s nothing wrong with using press releases as the basis for a story.
Great post Simon!
Re: Press Releases and Martin’s comments. Accepted that Press Releases form the basis for many ‘news’ stories. And that sometimes those stories are useful and very valid. (ie I take Martin’s point and agree with it)
But aside from your suggestion that “rather than embracing the opportunity to be openly better” marketers and PR people are chosing to “subvert the mechanism by which ‘betterness’ is communicated.” with which I completely agree, I think the rot set in much earlier. PR now has such a grip over the news agenda – particularly of smaller publications (both online and off) with limited budgets – that ‘real’ (ie proper investigative, thoughtful, unbiassed) news and features are fast becoming a luxury… particularly in a world where people increasingly expect the media they consume to be free. As PR has moved over the years from a structure whereby a company responded to requests from the media and engaged in damage limitation when necessary, towards a struture where the company now attempts to set and influence the news agenda in the first place so the quality (ie integrity) of much of our ‘news’ has diminished. I write this particularly from the pespective of Travel journalism which is my niche… PR is killing travel journalism.
True, Simon. There are problems -which can be worked around- but there was the case of a council employee who got sacked. For talking to a journalist. It’s now a sacking offence to speak to a journalist. “Got to go through the press office” is the message.