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Pulitzer 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
by vonnik 9y ago
Pulitzer 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...
- krapht 9y agoI wonder how similar our current situation is to the 1890's, specifically yellow journalism with Pulitzer and Hearst.
- forapurpose 9y agoThere's no relationship between the two? There was no Internet in the 1890s, or even telephones, and journalism was completely different? Or is this another 'all news is fake' talking point?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- milankovic 9y agoYou really believe that journalism was fundamentally different back then? You never heard that famous John Swinton quote before? I find that a bit hard to believe, actually.
- forapurpose 9y agoIn the absence of any evidence to the contrary ... yes?
- jadedhacker 9y agoI hadn't heard it before, here it is: "There is no such a thing in America as an independent press, unless it is out in country towns. You are all slaves. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to express an honest opinion. If you expressed it, you would know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid $150 for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, I would be like Othello before twenty-four hours: my occupation would be gone. The man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread, or for what is about the same — his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an "Independent Press"! We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks. They pull the string and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Swinton https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Swinton