How journalists should spend their time

I’ve been writing a lot about how valuable press releases and content produced by government, school and businesses can be in the new news ecosystem. My company is based on making it easier for “organizationally sponsored” news content to get to the audience that it’s most relevant to. But that doesn’t mean I think journalism is nothing more than reprinting press releases.

A post from the U.K. in The Inquirer today makes this point for me: they rail on the U.S. press for its treatment of Gizmodo’s iPhone prototype revelations. (I can’t do justice to the acid tone of U.K. tabloids, so I recommend reading it yourself.) Basically they say this: the U.S. tech press — and a lot of the U.S. press in general — is so concerned with “access” and “respectability” that it refuses to challenge, criticize or offend the subjects they cover.

I agree. That’s why I think it’s ridiculous that the press still spends so much time rewriting press releases that are are factual, newsworthy, and well-written. Yesterday was a prime example.  The New York State Inspector General issued a report (via press release on readMedia’s newswire) about financial abuses at the New York State Theater Institute. It was big, important news and media in New York State should (and did) cover it. But compare the stories in the Albany Times Union and the Associated Press (here reprinted at Syracuse.com) to the original press release. The Times Union adds some historical context and reactions from the somnolent Board of Directors (shocked!) and the accused’s defense attorney (a hatchet job!), but essentially they used a senior reporter to rewrite the content of the press release as a “straight” news story. The AP gets a statement from the defense attorney, too. But both stories get most of their content and news value straight from the press release and rewrite it in their own words. Why not just print the press release and add a few lines of context?

An ink-stained wretch rewrites Apple's iPad press release

To me, rewriting a press release is not journalism. It’s a fetish for “objectivity” and distance from a subject at the expense of inexpensive newsgathering and straight reporting. Journalism — where reporters and editors can add real value — is finding and telling stories that audiences want and need to hear but that the subject might not want told. “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable” type of stuff. That type of journalism is what’s threatened as news organizations lose their hold on local ad dollars, and it’s what most of the handwringing about the “death of newspapers” is about.

But journalism is expensive. Gizmodo proved that in hard dollars and cents. It’s time consuming and not necessarily lucrative. So “journalists” need to use the rest of their time as efficiently, inexpensively and profitably as possible. That’s my advice to journalists: Stop rewriting press releases, use the ones that matter to your audience, add context that only you can bring and find the stories that the press releases can’t — or won’t — tell you.