CorpComms Magazine

I know what you're thinking. Isn't it the height of arrogance for this magazine's editor to claim the personal view column for her own agenda? But, hey, it could have been worse, I could have profiled myself!

Rest assured that this is not the start of a new trend, nor an attempt at world domination (one magazine at a time), but a genuine effort to share my views about a matter that has dominated the PR agenda this month - the issue of churnalism.

The Media Standards Trust, a charity launched in 2006 to 'foster high standards in news media on behalf of the public', has launched a whizzy new tool, an online churn engine, to 'help the public distinguish between journalism and churnalism'.

Simply load the contents of a press release into the churn-buster and watch as it's compared to more than three million articles published by national newspaper websites, the BBC and Sky News since 2008. Hey presto! An article's churnalistic tendencies are revealed; apparently recycling just 20 per cent of a press release suggests a tendency to churn.

The sound of back slapping

Frankly, I don't know how the PR industry got any work done over the next few days as Twitter lit up with the sound of churnalism gotchas! Independent film maker Chris Atkins even tested the theory that journalists were churnalists with a spoof release about a garter for footballers' wives and girlfriends which texted those masters of ball skills if their other halves were unfaithful. Some 40 per cent of this release allegedly appeared in the science section of Mail Online (not two phrases I ever expected to see together in the same sentence!)

It's all entertaining stuff but I'm not sure what it really proves. Indeed, it reminds me of an experiment by a former colleague at The Daily Telegraph. He totted up the number of by-lined articles over a set period and created a league

table of City journalists' output. Funny? Yes. Useful? Not really; it didn't distinguish between a straight up and down results piece and an original scoop that had taken days to stand up and publish. But, it proved his point... he was among the top producers.

And so it is with churnalism.com. It appears to prove the popular theory that standards of journalism are declining rapidly and, that with all the pressures on time and dwindling resources, journalists are no more than sausage machines.

Demands of journalism

I cannot claim to have any academic or original insight that can prove or disprove the first claim regarding standards. Admittedly, I was appalled on learning from a friend recently that some of her tabloid colleagues cite Wikipedia as their main source.

But I am extremely fortunate to have worked with some of the country's top financial journalists, who fact checked stories and sought out original angles and news on a daily basis. Many still work in national media and, I am sure, adhere to the same rigorous standards today irrespective of whether they are producing copy for online, print or broadcast.

Certainly, journalists appear to produce more copy to satisfy the multi-media demands of their organisations. But they also have resources available of which I could only have dreamed on my first day on 'Fleet Street' in 1993. Accessing financial accounts from Companies House meant a journey to City Road in London, searching through the never-easy-to-use microfiche, a long queue to order the relevant documents and a return journey after 3pm to collect them.

Research involved libraries, cuttings books or trawling through boxes upon boxes of McCarthy index-sized cards of newspaper articles to read up on previous coverage. Connecting with contacts required a conversation (pre-mobile phones and emails) or a meeting. And don't get me started on the time spent unclogging the fax machine! The wonders of the Internet, which had arrived just months earlier in our office, were only revealed in the aftermath of 9/11, when a colleague had to write a short history of Swissair after it collapsed into bankruptcy. European-based press officers were notorious for both the time they took to respond and their traditional response of 'no comment'. 'I might see if Swissair has a website,' he said. 'Anybody know how that Google thing works?'

Long live the press release

Our trade's enduring tool, however, has been the press release, which has been brought bang up to date with its multimedia iteration. A good press release, written well, is invaluable. It should tell the story, contain the salient facts, offer additional information and trivia (such as, the subjects' ages) and include myriad contact details. It serves as the foundations of a good news story.

And therein lies the rub. While PRs may laugh about the extent of aggressive churnalism (which I am not defending), they perhaps should take a closer look at the source of this debate because, frankly, many press releases I receive are not worth the paper they are written on.

They are often poorly worded and difficult to follow. Forget the irrelevant releases, I am talking about the ones that need to be read several times just to understand what they mean. That is a criticism rarely levelled at newspaper articles - readers would simply stop buying them. They contain 'quotes' that are unlikely to have ever been uttered. (In my book, a quote that comprises the bulk of the release is laziness and goes straight into the bin.) They omit contact details as if implying You have all you need, now get on with it. And, more often than not, agencies follow templates with each release following a similar pattern, irrespective of whether the subject matter fits the mould.

Ever wonder why some of those spurious polls by well known brands get such widespread coverage? I can tell you: they are usually well written, easy to follow, contain a story (such as it is) that has a beginning, a middle and an end, and readers love them! Regrettably, releases like these stand out like beacons of light against the regular dross that hits news desks. I recently rang a PR man to thank him for the release he had sent: it was clear, concise and left me in no doubt of the import of the story. It was in complete contrast to others I had received that day.

When is it really churn?

But, going back to the churn-buster machine, why is reproducing 20 per cent of a press release viewed as the point when an article could move from journalism to churnalism? It seems such an arbitrary figure. Take a well constructed, easy to understand press release about a complex subject such as pensions, medical breakthroughs or criminal fraud. If the PR responsible truly knows his or her subject and has broken down the crux of the matter into layman's language in a way that the journalist cannot improve (or, for legal reasons, should not attempt to alter) then there seems to me little problem in reproducing that particular paragraph, especially if tinkering with the wording might confuse the reader or cause legal problems. (For the record, I am not advocating the wholesale duplication of the release.) Similarly, page layouts shift all the time. Every journalist has experienced the subeditor's request for 50, 100 or 200 more words NOW.

If you have nothing else in your notebook, then it might be time to plunder the press release. In both cases, if the bulk of the article is a well-constructed news piece that has added value to the debate then why is using copy from a release such a heinous crime? Journalists are crying out for PR agencies to improve the quality of their releases, so, when they do so, should we not use this input for fear of being accused of churnalism?

A good journalist should add value to every story. They should want to provide additional insight to their readers. They should want to write something that stands them apart from their contemporaries at other news organisations. They will use the knowledge of their sources (who may or may not be PROs) to bring the debate forward. At the heart of the piece may be a press release, but at its soul will be their professional pride.

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