Abstract
Today, content rules as king, regardless of who creates it.
Brand journalism, corporate journalism, branded content, and native advertising all are synonyms for storytelling about a company and/or its products. Increasingly, this form of storytelling and the public relations or advertising positions that accompany it are growing while traditional news reporting positions are declining.
Students recognize that.
They are enrolling in greater numbers than ever in advertising, public relations, and strategic communications courses and programs. Enrollment survey findings by Dr. Lee Becker and his colleagues have testified to that. Tenured and tenure-track faculty lines, however, often are nonaligned with the growth spiral. Often, the majority of these positions are aligned with the traditional news side.
But employment growth opportunities are not in traditional news. “Over the last ten years, the number of reporters decreased from 52,550 to 43,630, a 17 percent loss,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, reported in MondayNote. “In contrast, the number of public relations specialists during this timeframe grew by 22 percent, from 166,210 to 202,530.” Please see http://www.mondaynote.com/.
An emphasis on storytelling, however, means employment opportunities will abound for all our students—particularly for journalists whose writing skills and abilities to tell stories make them the top picks for content creation, regardless of what the job title is.
Take Coca-Cola’s digital magazine, Journey, as an example of branded and nonbranded content. Launched in late 2012, the e-zine published 1,200 articles in 2013, and it attracted 13.1 million visitors who spent an average of four minutes forty seconds on each article. The e-publication focuses on lifestyle and culture as well as branded content and appeals to the millennial audience. It will expand to more than thirty countries in twelve languages in the next few years. “We’re a business, and if this wasn’t successful we would pull the plug,” Ashley Brown, the company’s 35-year-old director of digital communications and social media has said. For more on this topic, please go to http://contently.com/strategist/2014/05/01/a-deep-look-inside-the-coca-cola-newsroom-if-this-wasn’t-successful-we-would-pull-the-plug/.
This shift toward storytelling and content creation should not be regarded as just another blip on the continuum of change but as further evidence of the need for integration and convergence, as something organic that aligns with an emphasis on news AND advertising AND public relations AND strategic communications. We should see the shift from the perspective of “us” and “we” and get rid of historic divides between news, advertising, and public relations. If we want to rally around a unifying theme, we may have to focus on “content” and determine how best to create and foster cultures in journalism programs that help students to excel and have successful careers regardless of their ultimate job titles or the brand for which they create content.
In this new era of storytelling, we may need to acknowledge that we all share a concern for First Amendment freedoms and that we have similar ethics—seeking truth, being honest and accurate, and having a mutual desire to serve the public interest. Public relations professionals-in-the-making should be taught to question, to dig, and to be outspoken to ensure their companies make ethical and socially just decisions. And journalism programs should try to omit terms such as the Dark Side, spin, and flacks from the lexicon. We should keep in mind that these derogatory words demean some of our finest students who do not exhibit related behaviors EVER in their careers. These dated biases/stereotypes cast a shadow over journalism students who have viable career paths in content development—either with news outlets or brands.
We live in a changing world, and this editorial may reflect an ideal for which we should strive rather than the realities with which we grapple on a day-to-day basis. The ideal calls for a j-school response that is nimble, open, integrative, and future focused, and for a j-school education that places all forms of storytelling—brand journalism as well as investigative, in-depth reporting—on equal footing. The reality is that many of our programs are mired in a 1980’s model of journalism education that has to change. But change can be both awkward and frightening, and our academic systems do not permit a rapid response.
However, given the numbers in advertising, public relations, and strategic communications in many of our academic programs, and the growth in opportunities related to content creation or storytelling, both curricular and cultural shifts are important. Not only are we dealing with the demands of the digital era but also with an underlying shift in the internal culture of our programs. How we define that culture and how we manage our response to the shift and the changing dynamics it produces are among—and will continue to be among—the most interesting facets of j-program administration.
I wish to extend thanks to my colleague Sheri Salee for her insightful comments and critique and indeed for her help in shaping this editorial after I had discussed it with her. Sheri not only has had a stellar career in public relations before joining the University of Nebraska–Lincoln faculty but also is a most outspoken advocate for the immense value of a journalism education.