Journalism is only PR

I'm a journalist. I do carry a torch for some technologies (open source, cloud) and even some companies (Google, Pickering's Sausages), but I'm a journalist. I do research. I phone people. I do some thinking. Then I write. It's not guaranteed unbiased, but it is 'all my own work' as we used to say in Class 3b.

Now I know that in some areas of the trade press, press releases pretty often get printed without much rewriting if there's space to fill.

And occasionally you can tell that a press release has been reassessed a little, added to, then reprinted. The kind that hotels put out on 'interesting things left in our luggage room' or '101 of a Corby trouser press', or surveys that show that 3 out of 4 cats ate Whiskas when they were offered it. (Very often, the editors show a regrettable lack of basic statistical know how or scientific method; that last claim might mean '75% of cats prefer Whiskas', but could also mean the PR company's senior partner has four cats and three of them ate what they were given this morning. Don't we need to know the sample size and any controls used?)

However, this story (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/may/12/facebook-pr-firm-google) shows that you don't need journalists to write a story any more. Chaps from the PR company will write your column, and won't label it 'advertorial'.

I hope the editors didn't bite. But it's worrying. I can see a few cynics in the industry saying "Why not just let the PR companies write the papers, you might argue, given that Trafigura injunctions will soon not allow you to print anything worth reading, anyway?" I just hope they don't go down the PR puff route.

These are the chaps who want you to believe that blogs are crap, and Wikipedia is crap, because they're free. Well, I beg to differ. At least this blog is written by a bloody-minded ex-techie curmudgeon who bothers to try to get a few facts before writing. And I won't be outsourcing it any time soon.

Meanwhile, PRs are welcome, as always, to have their input into the editorial process - but it stops before my fingers hit the keyboard.

Financial journalism gets it wrong

Financial journalism covers what exactly? Looking at the pages of most of the national papers it seems to be focused on two main columns; the market round-up - that is, the UK equity market, bonds and commodities not being mentioned at all (nor are ETFs) - and the stock pick (whether it's called Tempus, Questor, or whatever).

And it's completely wrong.

What is the key to portfolio returns? It's not stockpicking. It's not trading. It's asset allocation - and this is something hardly anyone reports on at all in the consumer press. Look at websites and you'll find again the emphasis on stockpicking and individual equities (an honourable mention has to go to Motley Fool here for having more discussion of strategic issues, even though I don't think Motley Fool UK is a patch on the US service).

Of course proper asset allocation treads on a lot of people's toes, because residential property and cash savings are part of the portfolio, as well as equity and bond instruments. The newspapers and 90% of the finance sites divide these up - 'investment' and 'savings' for instance are two separate things.

But it seems sad that there's no top-down, integrated view. And since there are no discussions of the overall subject of portfolio management in the press, people are left with the dumb idea that the route to success is picking a handful of 'tenbaggers'. Which is, admittedly, much more exciting than finding the right balance between different geographies and asset classes - but much less likely, too.