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It's just not news

Companies, PRs and even journalists seem to have forgotten the purpose of the media: to serve the reader.
Kimberly Guest
By Kimberly Guest, ITWeb contributor
Johannesburg, 28 Feb 2007

A while back, a colleague recounted her first journalism lecture at Rhodes University. According to this colleague, the lecturer's first lesson was a simple illustration of what was and wasn't news.

It went something like this: "Dog bites man - not news. Man bites dog - news."

I wish my colleague could remember the name of the particular lecturer, as organisations, PRs and even journalists seem to battle with what is ultimately a simple premise: news is defined by what is of interest to the reader and is always as current as possible.

Reader's reality

Unfortunately, companies - and oftentimes their communication owners - mostly prefer to believe that you, the reader, want nothing more than to hear about their new products, which often happen not to be new; unique innovations, which are somehow closely related to a competitor's; and company sales pitches.

But the public has become far more sophisticated. It has a wealth of resources available to it and is far less likely to accept company statements as reflections of the full truth.

Gartner has noted a new consumer, whom it calls the "Google client". This client does not immediately trust what is put to him or her by companies or the media, instead trawling the information super-highway for details companies and public entities would rather they not know about.

Media exclusivity

Those journalists and publications that bend to these influences will find a public that is increasingly suspicious of the impartiality of the medium.

Kimberly Guest, senior journalist, ITWeb

With pressure mounting on media to be first with news stories, companies and individuals have found that, to get coverage, exclusivity to a particular publication has to be promised.

But offering a "story" to a publication or journalist as an exclusive should not guarantee coverage and definitely should not result in "cut-and-paste" journalism. Instead, the essential acid test for news reporting should be applied: is this of interest to the reader?

Reporting vs journalism

Contrary to popular belief, journalists are human. As such, we will always be prone to the influence of personal preference, interest and relationships.

Nevertheless, these influences should never be allowed to interfere in our duty to the reader. Our own inclinations to believe that a particular product/service/company/action is cool/reprehensible/without merit/interesting should never factor in reporting - that is after all what columns are for.

Those journalists and publications that bend to these influences will find a public that is increasingly suspicious of the impartiality of the medium. At best, these people will stop reading the publication in question; at worst, they will tell the world through a little technology called blogging.

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