Churnalism

Last updated

Churnalism is a pejorative term for a form of journalism in which instead of original reported news, pre-packaged material such as press releases or stories provided by news agencies are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media. [1] Its purpose is to reduce cost by reducing original news-gathering and checking sources [2] to counter revenue lost with the rise of Internet news and decline in advertising, with a particularly steep fall in late 2015. [3] The origin of the word has been credited to BBC journalist Waseem Zakir. Churnalism is a portmanteau of "churn" and "journalism", referring to the perceived "churning out" of content by the press. [4]

Contents

Churnalism has increased to the point that many stories found in the press are not original. [3]

Prevalence

In his book Flat Earth News , [5] the British journalist Nick Davies reported a study at Cardiff University by Justin Lewis and a team of researchers [6] which found that 80% of the stories in Britain's quality press were not original and that only 12% of stories were generated by reporters. [2] The result is a reduction of quality and accuracy, as the articles are open to manipulation and distortion.

A 2016 study of 1.8 million articles published by the U.S. and international editions of the HuffPost found that only 44% were written by staff journalists and thus could be considered original reporting. [7]

The journalist Waseem Zakir has been credited for coining the term churnalism while working for the BBC in 2008 [4] (however, Zakir himself recollects it being a decade earlier). [8] According to Zakir, the trend towards this form of journalism involves reporters becoming more reactive and less proactive in searching for news: "You get copy coming in on the wires and reporters churn it out, processing stuff and maybe adding the odd local quote. It's affecting every newsroom in the country and reporters are becoming churnalists."

An editorial on the matter in the British Journalism Review saw this trend as terminal for current journalism, "...a harbinger of the end of news journalism as we know it, the coroner's verdict can be nothing other than suicide." [9] Others, such as Peter Preston, former editor of The Guardian , see the issue as over-wrought, saying that there was never a golden age of journalism in which journalists were not subject to such pressures. [10]

Nick Davies and Roy Greenslade gave evidence on the matter to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in 2009. [11]

Churnalism does not only occur in newspapers; for example, Chris Anderson's wide use of "writethroughs" in his book Free: The Future of a Radical Price has been labelled churnalism. [12]

Economic causes

Traditional newspapers have cut staff as their advertising revenue has declined because of competition from other media such as television and the Internet. [13] They no longer have sufficient staff to generate news stories by making the rounds of civic and business activities. Local newspapers and trade magazines are commonly produced by only one or two staff and these rely upon stories which are increasingly brought to them by public relations representatives, according to a senior public relations professional. [14] When the matter was debated at the Foreign Press Association, it was agreed that there was a relationship between the numbers of PR staff employed and journalists unemployed. [15] There was a particularly steep fall in UK advertising revenue in the 6 months to March 2016, with the Daily Mail & General Trust issuing a warning to investors after its newspaper division reported a 29% fall in profits largely to a 13% decline in print advertising revenue; news media commentator Roy Greenslade said in response to this "print cliff fall" that newspapers had no future. [3]

Other commentators have said the modern journalism is increasingly being performed in a cheaper, high-volume way, describing the resulting product with derogatory terms such as newszak (combination of "news" and "muzak"), [16] infotainment and junk-food journalism. [17]

Speed

In their book No Time to Think , [18] authors Howard Rosenberg and Charles S. Feldman emphasised the role of speed in degrading the quality of modern journalism. [19] An example is given of the BBC guide for online staff which gives advice to ensure good quality but also the contradictory advice, "Get the story up as fast as you can… We encourage a sense of urgency—we want to be first." [19]

Combating churnalism

Some organizations and tools have arisen to combat churnalism. In April 2013, the American Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit organisation which advocates for openness and transparency, in partnership with the UK's Media Standards Trust, launched churnalism.com, an online tool to discover churn. It used a database of known press releases and compared the text of a submitted URL to determine what percentage of it was derived churn. [20]

The Register commented that some level of "churnalism" is both normal and healthy for news organisations, but said it considered the Media Standards Trust linked to campaigns supported by "wealthy and powerful individuals and celebrities" in favour of "state control of the media" in the UK, and claimed there was significant irony in the Sunlight Foundation tool launch announcement itself being "uncritically churned by many of the usual suspects". [21]

In Australia, the nationwide ABC public TV service airs a highly critical weekly 15-minute programme, Media Watch , which regularly exposes churnalism, plagiarism, media bias and unethical behaviour by journalists and radio talk-back hosts. [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation, the methods of gathering information, and the organizing literary styles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News media</span> Elements of mass media that focus on delivering news

The news media or news industry are forms of mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public. These include news agencies, newspapers, news magazines, news channels etc.

OhmyNews (Korean: 오마이뉴스) is a South Korean online news website. It was founded by Oh Yeon Ho on 22 February 2000.

Newsquest Media Group Limited is the second largest publisher of regional and local newspapers in the United Kingdom. It is owned by the American mass media holding company Gannett. It has 205 brands across the UK, publishing online and in print and reaches 28 million visitors a month online and 6.5 million readers a week in print. Based in London, Newsquest employs a total of more than 5,500 people across the UK. It also has a specialist arm that publishes both commercial and business-to-business (B2B) titles such as Insurance Times, The Strad and Boxing News.

The Community Telegraph was a free distribution newspaper published by Independent News & Media. The newspaper, a sister paper of the paid-for title, The Belfast Telegraph, was created in order to replace its direct predecessor, the now defunct Herald and Post, also a freesheet.

<i>Houston Press</i> Online newspaper in Houston, Texas, US

The Houston Press is an online newspaper published in Houston, Texas, United States. It is headquartered in the Midtown area. It was also a weekly print newspaper until November 2017.

Journalistic objectivity is a considerable notion within the discussion of journalistic professionalism. Journalistic objectivity may refer to fairness, disinterestedness, factuality, and nonpartisanship, but most often encompasses all of these qualities. First evolving as a practice in the 18th century, a number of critiques and alternatives to the notion have emerged since, fuelling ongoing and dynamic discourse surrounding the ideal of objectivity in journalism.

A weekly newspaper is a general-news or current affairs publication that is issued once or twice a week in a wide variety broadsheet, magazine, and digital formats. Similarly, a biweekly newspaper is published once every two weeks. Weekly newspapers tend to have smaller circulations than daily newspapers, and often cover smaller territories, such as one or more smaller towns, a rural county, or a few neighborhoods in a large city. Frequently, weeklies cover local news and engage in community journalism.

The Sunday World is an Irish newspaper published by Independent News & Media. It is the second largest selling "popular" newspaper in the Republic of Ireland, and is also sold in Northern Ireland where a modified edition with more stories relevant to that region is produced. It was first published on 25 March 1973. Until 25 December 1988 all editions were printed in Dublin but since 1 January 1989 a Northern Ireland edition has been published and an English edition has been printed in London since March 1992.

Press Gazette, formerly known as UK Press Gazette (UKPG), is a British trade magazine dedicated to journalism and the press. First published in 1965, it had a circulation of about 2,500 before becoming online-only in 2013. Published with the strapline "Future of Media", it covers news about newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and the online press, dealing with launches, closures, moves, legislation and technological advances affecting journalists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Witherow</span> British newspaper editor (born 1952)

John Witherow is a former editor of British newspaper The Times. A former journalist with Reuters, he joined News International in 1980 and was appointed editor of The Sunday Times in 1994 and editor of The Times in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Greenslade</span> British academic and journalist (born 1946)

Roy Greenslade is a British author and freelance journalist, and a former professor of journalism. He worked in the UK newspaper industry from the 1960s onwards. As a media commentator, he wrote a daily blog from 2006 to 2018 for The Guardian and a column for London's Evening Standard from 2006 to 2016. Under a pseudonym, Greenslade also wrote for the Sinn Féin newspaper An Phoblacht during the late 1980s whilst also working on Fleet Street. In 2021, it was reported in The Times newspaper, citing an article by Greenslade in the British Journalism Review, that he supported the bombing campaign of the Provisional IRA. Following this revelation, Greenslade resigned as Honorary Visiting Professor at City, University of London.

The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, published in a tabloid format. It is the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the UK and was founded in 1982 by Lord Rothermere. Its sister paper, the Daily Mail, was first published in 1896.

The Media Standards Trust is a British media think tank formed in 2006. It carries out research on issues in the media sector. It also advocates for press freedom as well as industry quality, transparency and accountability. It is a registered charity and is not aligned with any political party or media company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Decline of newspapers</span> Decline of newspaper sales

The decline of newspapers in the 21st century is region dependent. Data supports that in the U.S and Europe popularity and sales are wavering. In these regions, industry is facing slumping ad sales, the loss of much classified advertising, and precipitous drops in circulation. The U.S. saw the loss of an average of two newspapers per week between late 2019 and May 2022, leaving an estimated 70 million people in places that are already news deserts and areas that are in high risk of becoming so. Prior to that steep decline, newspapers' weekday circulation had fallen 7% and Sunday circulation 4% in the United States, their greatest declines since 2010. If the trend continues, a third of newspapers will be lost by 2025, according to a 2022 study published by Northwestern University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newspaper</span> Scheduled publication of information about current events

A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports, art, and science. They often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns.

The term "journalism genres" refers to various journalism styles, fields or separate genres, in writing accounts of events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on journalism</span> Consequences of COVID-19 outbreak for media and publishing

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly impacted the journalism industry and affected journalists' work. Many local newspapers have been severely affected by losses in advertising revenues from COVID-19; journalists have been laid off, and some publications have folded. Many newspapers with paywalls lowered them for some or all of their COVID-19 coverage. The pandemic was characterized as a potential "extinction event" for journalism as hundreds of news outlets closed and journalists were laid off around the world, advertising budgets were slashed, and many were forced to rethink how to do their jobs amid restrictions on movement and limited access to information or public officials. Journalists and media organizations have had to address new challenges, including figuring out how to do their jobs safely and how to navigate increased repression and censorship brought on by the response to the pandemic, with freelancers facing additional difficulties in countries where press cards or official designations limit who can be considered a journalist.

<i>Flat Earth News</i> (book) Non-fiction book by Nick Davies

Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media is a 2008 non-fiction book by Nick Davies in which he investigating malpractice on Fleet Street. The Flat Earth News is considered to be the sister book to Davies' 2014 publication, Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch.

This glossary of journalism is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in journalism, its sub-disciplines, and related fields, including news reporting, publishing, broadcast journalism, and various types of journalistic media.

References

  1. ↑ Harcup, Tony (2015). Journalism: Principles and Practice (3 ed.). SAGE. p. 8. ISBN   978-1-4739-1813-9 . Retrieved 23 November 2020.
  2. 1 2 Jackson, Sally (5 June 2008), "Fearing the rise of 'churnalism'", The Australian, archived from the original on 31 May 2009
  3. 1 2 3 Roy Greenslade (27 May 2016). "Suddenly, national newspapers are heading for that print cliff fall". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 May 2016.
  4. 1 2 Harcup, Tony (2004), Journalism, pp. 3–4, ISBN   0-7619-7499-7
  5. ↑ Davies, Nicholas (2008). Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN   978-0-7011-8145-1.
  6. ↑ Merrill, Gary, Criticising the critical, The Journalist
  7. ↑ Roy, Jean-Hugues (9 November 2017). "L'agrégation de news : quel taux d'originalité au HuffPost ?". European Journalism Observatory. EJO. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  8. ↑ Zakir, Waseem (25 January 2018), Waseem Zakir on Twitter
  9. ↑ "Trivia pursuit", British Journalism Review, 19 (1): 3–4, 2008, doi: 10.1177/0956474808090188
  10. ↑ Wasserman, Herman (30 June 2008), "The dangers of 'churnalism'", moneyweb.co.za
  11. ↑ Press standards, privacy and libel, vol. 2, House of Commons, 21 April 2009, ISBN   978-0-215-54407-0
  12. ↑ Orlowski, Andrew (25 June 2009). "WiReD editor 'fesses to churnalism: Information wants to be stolen". The Register.
  13. ↑ Nyhan, David (2 May 1991), "When trash appears as news", The Boston Globe
  14. ↑ Macnamara, Jim R., The Impact of PR on the Media (PDF), Mass Communication Group, archived from the original (PDF) on 12 August 2008
  15. ↑ Mair, John (19 May 2009), Hacks beat Flacks to knockout in Pall Mall debate
  16. ↑ newszak Archived 12 July 2014 at the Wayback Machine Word Spy. Retrieved: 9 July 2011.
  17. ↑ Davis, Aeron (2010), Political Communication and Social Theory, Taylor & Francis, p. 60, ISBN   978-0-415-54712-3
  18. ↑ Rosenberg, Howard; S. Feldman, Charles (2008), No Time to Think, ISBN   978-0-8264-2931-5
  19. 1 2 Rosenberg, Howard; S. Feldman, Charles (19 August 2008), "Why Is Speed So Bad?", USA Today
  20. ↑ Gitlin, Jonathan M. (24 April 2013). ""Churnalism" tracker catches journalists copying press releases, Wikipedia". Ars Technica. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
  21. ↑ Page, Lewis (26 April 2013). "Announcement of 'churnalism detector' gets furiously churned". The Register. Retrieved 9 July 2013.
  22. ↑ Media Watch official web site
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.