We’ve noticed that while there are increasing numbers of news media outlets, the numbers of stories being reported on is actually less.
This year’s “State of the News Media” report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism calls this “the new paradox of journalism... more outlets covering fewer stories.” Simply put, increasing numbers of news media outlets – print, electronic and online -- are thinning out the audience, thus reducing the number of journalists each outlet can afford to have.
Having more media outlets with fewer reporters each is redefining the relationship between the business press and the institutions they cover. On a national level, corporate newsmakers often have more leverage to manage major story coverage because there are so many competing news organizations jockeying for fresh information and access to official sources. Competitive pressure can also cause a stampede to unconfirmed headlines, as when the national media reported that the Sago miners had been found alive.
And some companies make their own negative situations worse when they arrogantly interpret the media’s limitations as an blanket invitation to obfuscate or obstruct coverage of bad financial reports, industrial accidents, executive malfeasance and other “bad news” events.
On a more local level, competition among thinly staffed newsrooms keeps many corporate stories – positive and negative – from being covered at all. Business editors are obligated to commit reporters to the same major stories as everyone else, and this understandably makes them protective of what discretionary news hole they have left. As a result, local-market business editors around the country routinely pass on legitimately newsworthy events because they simply don’t have reporters available, or because the story is being covered by someone else.
This of course doesn’t phase the flackery industry, which continues to inundate business media with unsolicited company press releases and story “pitches.” Rocky Mountain News business editor Rob Reuteman figures he gets 1,200 publicity pitches each week.
If he spent on average two minutes reading and considering everything directed to him – he’d spend 40 hours a week doing nothing else.
