Don't bite the hand that feeds you...

…out of work news journalists turn to public relations positions---why news that we should hear and/or read is slanted, has omissions, or goes unreported:

"Newspapers are suffering in the era of new media. Several papers have folded in the past few years, and even those that have survived have done so with a much smaller stable of reporters. This doesn't mean newspapers are dead -- just that they no longer generate huge profits on the backs of advertisers. If the American people collectively will suffer when independent journalism disappears, should Federal money be spent to save it? JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation magazine and media critic ROBERT MCCHESNEY lay out their plan to resuscitate the American press in their new book "The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again."
Interesting Discussion on Journalism…Listen here:
http://www.bobedwards.info/ftopic984.html&sid=da51d034328804f9bd920d0413...

In their research of 1960 employment data, the authors found for every one public relations position, there was one journalism position (1:1). In 1980, the ratio slightly increased to 1.2:1. Today, the ratio is 4:1. Last year, 140 newspapers went out of business and contributed to the 30,000 industry jobs lost in the last two years. With continued job loss anticipated, journalists will likely fill public relations positions available and increase the ratio to 6:1 in 2012 and 8:1 in 2014.

Why is the public relations field opening up? Well, a study, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, “examined all the outlets that produced local news in Baltimore, Md., for one week, surveyed their output and then did a closer examination of six major narratives during the week, finds that much of the “news” people receive contains no original reporting. Fully eight out of ten stories studied simply repeated or repackaged previously published information.” According to Nichols and McChesney, 86% of the news was generated by press releases or press events held by power sources (government, corporations, etc.) without critical review or fact checking.
Study found here:
http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/how_news_happens

No news is good news for incumbents holding elected offices as was also brought up by Nichols and McChesney during the program. They referred to the study that follows:

“The Cincinnati Post published its last edition on New Year's Eve 2007, leaving the Cincinnati Enquirer as the only daily newspaper in the market. The next year, fewer candidates ran for municipal office in the suburbs most reliant on the Post, incumbents became more likely to win re-election, and voter turnout and campaign spending fell. We exploit a difference-in-differences strategy and the fact that the Post's closing date was fixed 30 years in advance to rule out some non-causal explanations for these results. We show that local politics changed even though the Enquirer increased its coverage of the Post's former strongholds. Although our findings are statistically imprecise, they demonstrate that newspapers — even underdogs such as the Post, which had a circulation of just 27,000 when it closed — can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life.”
Read the study findings:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13360606/Do-Newspapers-Matter
and
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14817.pdf