Recently we came across a rather passionate LinkedIn post by a marketing professional urging everyone in the profession to hire journalists to join their communication teams.
We are journalists who write marketing content, so we’re certainly not going to argue with the general premise.
The author noted that many journalists are losing long-term jobs because of the changes in the industry, and that this represents a golden opportunity for both the marketing firms who need writing talent and for the journalists who still have a lot of talent to offer.
Yes.
All that is true.
But we’ve also seen some things that should serve as a cautionary tale, even as we generally endorse this idea (especially because we are living examples of it working).
Journalists are trained from the time they’re in J-school to be skeptical of corporate messaging, not to mention the talking points they hear from politicians and others in that realm. This is not a criticism. This is their job. As we swing between journalistic work and marketing content work, we must constantly reset our perspective about why we’re writing a piece. Marketing work is to tout a particular point of view, service or company. News writing is to report the facts without bias.
Journalists who have been reading press releases their entire careers will be familiar with the structure of how they’re written, and they’ll have the knowledge of how newsrooms work. But many of them also have a long history of scoffing and sneering at those same press releases for their promotional audacity. Many have no background in client service because it was never their job.
So the issue is this: Journalists absolutely have the skill to do the writing your clients need, but it might not come all that naturally to them to embrace the mission of your organization, which is to advocate for your clients.
That doesn’t mean they can’t be taught, or that they’re unwilling to learn.
It just means you need to work with them on that.
We’ve seen journalists come into major PR firms and flame out because they never really stopped thinking like news reporters. The last thing you want is for your client copy to be written by people who have a cynical attitude about it. It’s technically proficient but it doesn’t land the way you want it to because the heart of the writer isn’t really in it.
So yes, hire journalists. But make sure you work with them so they can make this transition. It’s not as easy as our LinkedIn author made it sound, but it’s not impossible either.
We’re really good at it, if we do say so ourselves! And we think our journalism background makes us better at telling stories for marketing purposes.
It helps us to avoid marketing cliches and tell real, engaging stories. That’s from nearly 30 years of swinging between the two and enjoying the variety.
Some other journalists can learn this as well. But they won’t all, so do apply some scrutiny before you just assume they will be a natural.