The landscape of journalism is changing as people shift their focus from print to digital. As newsrooms search for ways to stay afloat, corporations are coming in to offer a life raft. Instead of churning out only advertisements and marketing material, companies are turning toward content that engages their audience, while also making sure their brand gets noticed. This new area is where journalists come in.
As the digital world continues to advance corporations and newsrooms alike are constantly looking for ways to keep up. As Twitter feeds and Facebook pages become more and more bogged down by advertisements and the next viral video, companies are searching for ways to break through the noise. One way they have done this is by buying out newspapers or news websites or even creating their own. This conglomeration of advertising and reporting is referred to as "brand journalism."
Even though brand journalism seems like the antithesis to what journalism used to be, that has not stopped it from gaining traction. As this new form of reporting grows, the line between journalist and public relations specialist begins to blur. The field of public relations has been growing in numbers for a few years now and has quickly outpaced journalism. According to a report done by the Pew Research Center in 2014, "the salary gap between public relations specialists and news reporters has widened over the past decade -- by over $20,000 a year." Because of this, many journalists are switching over to what would typically be considered PR work, but with brand journalism, there is still an element of reporting.
Despite the fact that corporations control these outlets, there are still aspects of journalism that go along with the marketing. Many of these news sources focus on the community that these corporations are based out of. It may not be hard-hitting investigative reporting, but journalists are still generating news and writing feature stories. Just because the people who own these sources are different than what we have come to expect, does not necessarily mean the audience is not getting the same news.
Of course, there are both pros and cons to corporate journalism. Before it started gaining traction, many news organizations were dying. It is not hard to understand why what once was mainly print media was having a hard time keeping up in a fast-evolving digital world. Once these companies came in, however, the news organizations they bought had the funding they needed to keep up their business and expand their online presence. While this funding was a positive thing, there is also the negative side of brand journalism. Because these companies control these news organizations now if they commit a crime or do something that is worth investigating, it makes it harder for journalists to look into the corporation that they work for. Also, there is the problem of one or two companies buying up all these outlets and having a monopoly on the news and what gets reported.
As the landscape for journalism changes so does who controls it. Corporate journalism is, in some ways, a positive thing. It can create more jobs and give more funding to a dying industry. However, if corporations have control of news sources, it makes it harder to investigate them. Going forward it will be important to remember to be conscious of where a story is coming from and who is actually behind it.
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