“The reality is that journalism standards today have hit the deck — and this is especially the case within financial services. The good hacks out there lament this fact more than anyone else: it pains them to see their industry deteriorate as much as it has.

Ctrl C, Ctrl V
Nothing underlines the decline in financial journalism standards more than the way it tends to be done these days. Rather than speak to IFAs, or fund managers, or economists, many journalists simply ask for words to be sent over on email.

These ‘copy and paste merchants’ then stitch it all together, without really understanding the subject matter, or frankly giving a damn. You can sense the total lack of understanding in their narrative. Well we can anyway. They remain frozen in their almost animal-like oblivion.”

This quote was taken from a post “Decline in journalism standards” by Dominic Hiatt, who runs a financial PR agency.
As a former financial journalist turned content marketer, I’m inclined to agree.

To be fair, there are still good journalists gathering stories by talking to people in the industry. They have the latest insider gossip and know who’s looking for a job or who should start prettying up their resume. But this already small group of journalists is a dying breed.

Publishing/research companies are increasingly turning to outsourced content mills with workers bound to desk research. Some content mills do not have an office phone bar one for the team leader to call their masters and report the daily output. It’s no wonder that more and more companies are turning away from advertising in financial or any trade magazine for that matter.

It’s time for companies to own and publish their content instead of relying on financial media to raise their brand profile. In any company, there is already abundant content in-house and it’s not just from your senior executives. Speak to your your investment/strategy team or your sales team/front-liners on what your clients and prospects would love to hear.

And then speak to us on what you can do with all that content you have unearthed.

Link to article: http://bit.ly/1ulq1Xo

P.S. Peter Oborne’s article on ‘Why I have resigned from the Telegraph’ offers a peek at what is going on in many newsrooms. Falling circulation sees cost-cutting with sub-editors first to go, content mills substituting real journalism and over-stretched editors doing a myriad of things other than actual publishing.