Debate will go on and on for the rest of humanity about what ‘journalism’ is.
I won’t go into that argument, but something about this job description, posted on journalism.co.uk, makes me wonder how many journalists-in-making get fooled into the PR path through these sorts of adverts:
The internet is changing the way we communicate. Companies are realising that the old marketing models do not work anymore and that marketing needs to be done for people, not at people.
Spannerworks is pioneering new ways for companies to be useful to their customers. Our rapidly expanding content and media division is looking for ambitious, forward thinking journalists to join the team.
The journalist will be instrumental in researching web culture and trends as well as ideas for news and features. You will write copy for PR; case studies; articles; content pages and product descriptions.
That last line I love. The lucky journalist (ahem) will be able to write copy for PR. Great. He or she will also be able to write for case studies (whatever that means… how do you write for case studies?!), articles (doesn’t say where…), content pages (so that’s fillers, then?) and product descriptions (bit like the bloke who works for Argos writing up page 522 of the catalogue).
I have no problem with people wanting to enter the world of PR. Indeed, without PR around a journalist’s job would be a LOT harder. What I have a problem with is when jobs such as this are advertised as journalism. Journalism it is certainly not.
Bah humbug.
Ouch. Yep, that ad mixes up what a journalist is with what a copywriter or a PR person does – and we’ll replace it. It’s not what the job is.
The journalists at Spannerworks do journalism, as far as they are concerned, not PR.
We also have one former journalist from a national magazine who writes advertorial-style copy for client and advertorial websites. That blurs the line between journalism and PR / marketing for sure – but that’s also what their job entailed when they worked on magazines.
Thanks – seriously – for embarrassing me into realising a job ad had gone up that wasn’t really on the money. We’re really not in the business of fooling journalists-in-the-making or anyone else about the kind of work we do…
Bet it pays well though :p You make an excellent point though Dave, I saw that job description and was thinking a similar thing – ‘that’s not journalism as I know it’.
I think thats what you call good investigative journalism!
Not only do they need a copywriter rather than a journalist, they also need an editor. Part of the problem with that last quoted para is the use of the semi-colon. If it had read “You will write copy for PR: case studies, articles, content pages and product descriptions” it would make a lot more sense…
Hi Dave,
I’m one of the two journalists currently at Spannerworks, and I don’t think I’d have applied if I’d seen an advert with the same wording – it bears little relation to what we do.
Antony’s comment regarding how Charlie and I feel is spot-on. I think we both started with some degree of trepidation, partly because hiring journalists was a new direction for the company and nobody was entirely sure how it would work out. It’s exceeded my expectations.
I’ve written a bit about the advert and your post on our blog Hackbash, if you’re interested.
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