Brace For The Corporate Journalism Wave

"Corporations are tempted to take over journalism with increasingly better contents. ... dangers and hopes for new revenue streams." Interesting figures on the decline in journalists and the rise of PR specialists, cause by 2 trends: "while the journalistic staffing is shrinking dramatically ... the public relation crowd is rising in a spectacular fashion in two dimensions: spinning [and] growing inclination for PR firms, communication agencies and corporations themselves to build fully-staffed newsrooms with editor-in-chief, writers, photo and video editors.... The second trend is the evolution of corporate communication. ... departs from the traditional advertising codes ... toward a more subtle and mature approach based on storytelling.... telling great stories about a company in a more intelligent way versus simply extolling a product’s merits." There's a lot more about how 'real' and corporate journalists will end up competing for the same story, with the spindoctors having all the aces, so go read it. It strikes me that the EU Institutions are both a leader and a laggard here - they created 'corporate newsrooms' years ago, but nobody could call what they do storytelling. - Brace For The Corporate Journalism Wave | Monday Note