Poynter: "There is no such thing as a former journalist"

Opinion: There’s no such thing as a former journalist

The American Heritage Dictionary defines “flack” as “a press agent, a publicist,” someone who back in the day might promote a Hollywood movie. Sometimes flacks created “publicity stunts” to shine a light on a project or celebrity. (I’ve learned this from watching countless episodes of “I Love Lucy.”)

But “flack” is also a variant spelling of “flak,” defined as “the bursting shells fired from anti-aircraft artillery.” The word developed a secondary, informal meaning: “excessive or abusive criticism.” Even today we might say, “I am catching so much flak from that email I sent.”

The connection seems logical and lexical: It is the job of the public relations officer to catch the flak, that is, to protect the interests of the company and its executives from criticism, and to mitigate the effects of bad news, where a so-called hatchet job gets rebuffed by a PR job.

If that is your vision of public relations, no wonder Jedi journalists might wonder if they have crossed over to the Dark Side.

How sad, how narrow, how counterproductive. It’s the story that we continue to tell ourselves, and if we told it to a shrink, the good doctor would help us understand that it is a narrative that is keeping us sick and hurting the public good.

What if we changed the story? What if we imagined that the journalist, the mayor’s speechwriter, the grant writer for the public schools, the public information officer for the hospital, were actually members of the same tribe?

Let me give that tribe a name: Public Writers.

What do all public writers do? They gather important information. They check it out. They decide what is most important or interesting. They report it out. Along the way they tell compelling stories. They write purposefully for particular audiences.​

 

I used to love the monthly "I still believe in newspapers" farewell columns from execs who were cashing out while they still could that Poynter would run.

 

This is hilariously false. The mayor decides what is most important or interesting. So does the superintendent of schools. So does the CEO of the hospital. Your job is to present that "information" in the most positive light.

No wonder: this guy's bio makes no mention of him working as an actual journalist: Roy Peter Clark, Author at Poynter

It's horrifying that someone with such a fundamental misunderstanding of these roles is presented as an expert by Poynter.

 

Roy Clark was great on Hee Haw. And then, he died.

 

Further proof that copy editors will still be needed to avoid calling any former journalist a "Pubic Writer."

 

I guess if you don't write, you aren't a journalist? Fuck editors and designers and photographers and videographers. Hell, those all pay a role in good PR, too. Thanks, Poynter.

 

I seem to remember Poynter doing a listicle on ways to avoid paying photographers or having a photo department a few years ago, so that is completely on brand.

 

I actually don't mind this at all and I get what he's trying to say, even if we all still hate PR people for good reasons.

Yes, the journo-spox relationship will be in conflict at times. But y'all are telling me you've never used a nugget from game notes in a story or gotten a tip for a good feature from a PR person?

 

There’s no such thing as a former journalist? What the fuck does he think this is, The Nights Watch?