Allen Wastler, the managing editor of CNBC.com, writes Tuesday about an AP story on banks that refused to let the PR professionals at the banks have their way.
“When a spokesman makes that play it puts the reporter in an awkward position; especially a beat reporter who probably deals with the company fairly often. The PR folk can make your life pretty easy … giving you an early heads up on company announcements, arranging interviews, saving you time with statistics gathering. But if a reporter burns them, even in the course of good journalism, those conveniences can disappear.
“Hey, a lot of reporting is about relationships. And you try to keep relationships good. So a reporter may be inclined to cut a spokesperson a little slack from time to time.
“Another trick PR folks try is getting reporters to go off the record to discuss an issue, so they can try to schmooze and spin and win a reporter over to their point of view … without worrying about their words making it into print. One spokeswoman in that AP story tried that as well.”
Read more here.
The Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management announced the appointment of Alan Murray, departing chief…
The Advocate is looking for a savvy reporter to cover the Baton Rouge business scene…
MLex, a LexisNexis company, is an independent news organization for breaking news and forward-looking analysis…
The Austin Business Journal seeks a staff writer to cover economic development in one of…
A Russian court on Saturday placed Sergei Mingazov, a journalist for the Russian edition of…
Justin Nielsen of Investor's Business Daily writes about the newspaper's 40th anniversary. Nielsen writes, "When the…