Journalism should reflect more than the usual suspects

As a teacher, I challenge my students to go beyond event-based reporting. I push my students to focus on an issue, get great visuals and sound, seek out an unofficial person to represent an issue, and encourage them to incorporate useful information in their stories. This process truly challenges student to go beyond the university’s events calendar, press releases and stories found in local publications. Researchers estimate that 25% to 80% of traditional news media stories contain information from public relations officials or press releases. Research has not only demonstrated that a significant portion of information stems from press releases, but news stories also tend to be identical in the framing and the wording of press releases.

I have been pushing the incorporation of the previously mentioned components for years, but I was struck by this post by Jack Lail is managing editor/multimedia for The Knoxville News-Sentinel. Lail argues that journalists should include information in their stories that is value to readers.

“If you don’t think your business is being useful to your users/readers/viewers, then I would suggest your journalism is failing.”

I believe that many successful bloggers use their blogs for this purpose. I love to learn, and I encourage my students to construct content that provides useful information in both their blogs and in their stories, and I encourage you to push your students to go beyond including the usual suspects in their stories as well.

Glen Terrence Cameron, Lynne M. Sallot, and Patricia A. Curtin, “Public Relations and the Production of News: A Critical Review and a Theoretical Framework,” in Communication Yearbook 20, ed. B. R. Burleson (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 111-55.

Lynda Lee Kaid, “Newspaper Treatment of a Candidate’s News Releases,” Journalism Quarterly 53 (1976): 135-57

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