7 ms·
Pulitzer Prize Winners Moving to PR: What Does That Say About Future Journalism?
- asdsa5325 9y agoMaking a broad claim based off the career actions of 2 individuals... Terrible Clickbait Articles: What Does That Say About Future Journalism?
- handojin 9y agoIt says maybe you should pay for your journalism if you give a shit.
- milankovic 9y agoTo be honest, and this is HN, where everyone values intellectual honesty (right?), I will only say this: I would pay for porn on the Internet, definitely, but not for journalism. They can all go die in a fire already..
- itronitron 9y agoI would pay for journalism but not for news
- dgut 9y agoCon artists in disguise right... Including Pulitzer himself.
- asdsa5325 9y agoI do pay for my preferred news. "Inside sources" is not my (or anyone's) preferred news site....
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- grnde 9y agoI think it’s great that such talented journalists are moving to Puerto Rico. Hopefully they can shine the light of truth to keep the light of electricity on.
- m52go 9y agoNot sure if you're being sarcastic, but in this case PR means Public Relations not Puerto Rico.
- bytematic 9y agoNot sure if your really unsure, but in this case OP is being sarcastic.
- fermienrico 9y agoI’m sorry to downvote you. I don’t wish to see jokes/shenanigans on HN. The reason I come to HN is for unique insights and serious conversation. Literally, the entire internet is filled with jokes - I wish HN remains this small jewel full of inspiring stories, news and content. Your comment was pretty funny though!
- johnnyfived 9y agoYou can downvote on here?
- wincy 9y agoOnce you have enough points, yes.
- vonnik 9y agoPulitzer Prize winners are rare. The fact that two recent winners had left their jobs in journalism between the date they did their prize-winning work, and the date the prize was awarded, is telling. This flight of reporters from journalism to PR is widespread. It is caused by the decline of the print business, as well as the decline in ad revenues. Those two problems are linked but not synonymous. (Print circulation is declining as print subscribers age and younger readers stay online. Ad revenues are declining because platforms like Google and Facebook now consume the bulk of the money that once went to the media that held local monopolies or oligopolies on the distribution of information.) Most of the HN community is part of system of free content distributed by online ad platforms that is slowly killing local, regional and many national publications. Not responsible for it, but part of it. And the death of those publications harms the communities that once learned about themselves through those media. It also harms the health of the political system governing those communities, since leaders are held less accountable wherever information fails to circulate. Even more pernicious than reporters leaving journalism for PR, though, is the slow corruption of journalistic organizations into instruments of propaganda. This isn't necessarily linked to the move online, since good examples of it include Sinclair Broadcast Networks and Fox News.
- arkades 9y agoPerhaps I missed something, but this article didn’t say two Pulitzer winners went into PR. It spoke of a photographer who got a non-journalism job, a journalist who found “greener pastures,” and a third journalist who got a job for the Shoah Foundation. That last one comes closest, I guess, though doing PR for a non-profit holocaust education organization isn’t the propaganda bs I think the title meant to suggest. Again, I’m open to being corrected if I misread, but I don’t see anything in this article supporting a flight from journalism to PR except for the comparison of the median salaries.
- vonnik 9y agoYou are missing something, but it's not your fault. I'm referring to information outside the article. Natalie Caula Hauff, one of the journalists cited, says on her LI page that she works in PR. https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-caula-hauff-243b3a10/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalie-caula-hauff-243b3a10/ I would qualify any job that "raises awareness" about something as a PR job, as in the case of the reporter who now raises awareness about the Shoah. Reasonable people can disagree about how to define PR. If you're dealing with external communications, how to raise awareness with the public, that is often PR, even if you work in-house rather than for an agency. In the case of Ryan Kelly, the photographer, he did not exit to PR. Newsweek says he got a digital marketing job in a Brewery. Which for a photographer probably makes more sense. http://www.newsweek.com/pulitzer-prize-ryan-kelly-charlottesville-photographer-890034 http://www.newsweek.com/pulitzer-prize-ryan-kelly-charlottes...
- txsh 9y agoAnybody else wonder why writers were moving to Puerto Rico?
- ci5er 9y agoNo. EDIT: Sorry - that was brusque of me. Having read the article, which the rules at this place assume you have done, you might assume that P.R. does not equate to Puerto Rico. It turns out, that there are other acronyms that apply to this story.
- txsh 9y agoI think it’s reasonable to read the title before the article.
- jister 9y agoSomething I found: "Pulitzer Prize-winning piece peddled fake news" http://www.manilatimes.net/pulitzer-prize-winning-piece-peddled-fake-news/393648/ http://www.manilatimes.net/pulitzer-prize-winning-piece-pedd...
- blackbagboys 9y agoThe Philippine press is not free. Duterte has made his "fake news" nonsense a key part of his project to crush opposition media. It's no surprise that the Manila Times has gone out of its way to avoid stepping on his toes, although the overheated stuff about 'communist propaganda' is maybe a little too obvious. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/world/asia/philippines-duterte-news-website.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/world/asia/philippines-du...
- jister 9y agoOr maybe you can read these instead? "Responsible journalism also means complying with the law," said NPC President Paul Gutierrez in a statement released Tuesday. "To say that the fate of one media entity found to have run afoul with the law translates to media repression in the country is stretching the argument a bit too much." "The SEC finding is quite clear: that Rappler Inc., has indeed violated the law when it allowed the entry of foreign investors and also allowed, specifically, Omidyar Network Fund LLC, to have control on 'corporate matters' of Rappler based on its own submissions to the SEC" http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2018/01/18/NPC-on-SEC-ruling-vs-Rappler.html http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2018/01/18/NPC-on-SEC-ruling-... http://opinion.inquirer.net/110628/rappler-stop-misleading-everyone http://opinion.inquirer.net/110628/rappler-stop-misleading-e... http://www.manilatimes.net/rappler-stop-misleading-everyone/377251/ http://www.manilatimes.net/rappler-stop-misleading-everyone/...
- blackbagboys 9y agoYes, it's unsurprising that the pro-government press supports the government's campaign against their rivals.
- git_rancher 9y agoA lot of journalism is basically PR. I forget who, but someone did a study showing that a large percentage of journalism source material is basically press releases. Edit: typo fix
- soared 9y agoYeah but using a press release as a source doesn’t mean the article is basically pr. You can get info from a press release and write a completely negative article about the topic for example.
- danso 9y agoThere's a difference between journalists first learning about things through a press release, and the journalism actually just being PR, i.e. parroting PR rather than challenging or extrapolating upon it.
- carapat_virulat 9y agoThe Knife Media usually does analysis about how much spin different newspapers add to current news stories: https://www.theknifemedia.com/world-news/pompeo-kim-jong-un-media-spun-political-spin/ https://www.theknifemedia.com/world-news/pompeo-kim-jong-un-...
- mirimir 9y agotl;dr - There's no real money in it, so hey.
- jknz 9y agoWork in politics for a better world during a few years and then use your network relations to sell contracts to governments and make money Work as a security researcher for a few years and then sell your skills to bad governments for money Work in journalism a few years and then use your network for PR and make money https://moxie.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/ https://moxie.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/ Edit: some professional bodies have conversations about unethical uses of their skills and networks (security researchers). Some others are already lost (incestuous relationship between politicians and the companies that sell government contracts). Journalists? We will see but it may be the right time to pay for subscriptions and get journalists pay raises.
- briandear 9y ago> but it may be the right time to pay for subscriptions and get journalists pay raises. Lol. And you post this on Hacker News where every paywall article has some variation of “how can I get around the paywall?” We have a significant number of people on here that think it’s perfectly ok to steal movies, music, books, bypass paywalls yet, somehow lament the loss of “good journalism” while complaining about being tracked, i.e. “being the product,” all while devising ways to steal content, use stuff for “free” or otherwise do everything possible to avoid giving a single cent to a content creator. The HN community is just a tiny slice of humanity, but damnit, you/we are supposed to be the vanguard, yet we actually allow “how do I bypass the paywall” to be allowed. Now imagine the rest of the world bypassing the paywalls. And here we are. If we had comments asking people “how can I more easily shoplift video game consoles?” — would we allow that? /rant
- tjoff 9y agoWell, paywalls are just an insanely bad concept when coupled with a site such as HN. I will not start a subscription on a random site because it was linked on HN. I'm most certainly not even part of their target group. And even if I was, reading 1 article a month on 100 different sites is equally insane. (that said, I don't bypass the paywall, I just don't read it) Personally I'm also not fond of the idea to pay money so that they can track me better, but I know I'm in minority there. We need better ways to pay for content. Preferably one which rewards good content. Today everything is clickbait and the idea to pay for clickbait is extremely off putting to me.
- teddyh 9y agoThe article never explains what “PR” stands for, and only incidentally uses the phrase “public relations” about halfway into the article. It seems to be an article written for journalists, not for the general public.
- Caprinicus 9y agoI thought they were moving to Puerto Rico, and wondered why they would pick now to do that
- DoreenMichele 9y agoThat's actually what I thought as well.
- codetrotter 9y agoWe all have different words that we are unfamiliar with of course but “PR” is most accurately categorized as an economics / marketing term IMO, and I think the meaning of the word “PR” is widely known so I don’t agree that the article is written for journalists based on that alone. I generally agree that abbreviations should be explained on first use but personally I would not bother to have explained what PR stood for because I (perhaps incorrectly) would have expected that word to be so widely known that no explanation would be necessary.
- motohagiography 9y agoIn my experience, the only time it is appropriate to refer to a reporter as a "journalist" is if they are either unemployed, or dead. Reporters report, writers write, where "journalists" occupy a kind of vague institutional gatekeeper profession that is (rightly) being usurped by people taking up the former trades using tech and social media. I have strong opinions about this. Writing press releases, ad copy or doing PR work is only offensive to a small cadre of journalists who try to cleanse themselves of the "taint of trade" as to somehow differentiate their role from people who are judged by the quality of their work, and not their approval by an institution, credentials, or perceived political legitimacy. A reporter is an artist taking risks in a trade with real public value. The modern journalist is a kind of official court jester, selectively using the cover of speech protection to carefully trade favors for "access." If as a society we want better reporting, reporters need money and autonomy. Viewed this way, the availability of gigs in PR to support the art, especially at the expense of the preciousness of journalism, is of net benefit to all.
- OtterCoder 9y agoI really dislike the recent flood of random news on HN. I'm not ready for this September. Is there a new haven ready yet?
- humanrebar 9y agoI also think the content has become haphazard and mostly uninteresting. Is it because tech culture is stabilizing around a new normal? Smart phones are stabilized. Several next big things are growing slower than we hoped. Even JS frameworks are less dynamic than before. Or is it all just as dynamic and we just became more jaded?
- OtterCoder 9y agoI think it's still a dynamic and interesting field, and there are still good tech articles on HN's front page every day. I firmly believe that we are still in the wild-west of programming as a profession, and anyone who says they know what the next twenty years will look like is delusional. The problem here is simply dilution. Every niche social site that grows large will eventually face the Eternal September, when the userbase grows too large for moderation, and the content drifts dramatically. At that point you simply have to move on and find somewhere that still has a focus on the topic you originally were looking for.
- humanrebar 9y agoI don't think it's accurate to describe HN as too focused. The mods and algorithms discourage controversial content for example.
- himom 9y agoLet’s celebrate the corporate manufacturing of consent, in all forms. is what it says. )’: