Sir Martin’s Midas Touch Dulling or Media Laziness?
By Denis Campbell • May 5th, 2008 • Category: Business
Which is the real headline?
TNS rejected WPP’s £1 billion pound buyout offer. What’s astounding is if one Googles TNS and WPP, there are 11-story links from: Reuters, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, MSN, E-Financial news, Yahoo! and Tiscali on the first search page.
All of them say the exact same thing regurgitating from the exact same wire feed. One columnist, The Independent’s Sean Farrell, actually has a by-line for this verbatim reproduction of a news release!
What’s clear is Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP Group is trying to buy UK-based Taylor Nelson Sofres a huge market research group whose acquisition will compliment its other media and advertising holdings. The TNS board rejected the offer choosing to pursue a German partnership.
Aside from vexing WPP Chairman, Sir Martin Sorrell, something one should do with great care, the lack of analysis and simply regurgitating a press release or feed shows the media in a sorry state.
This e-magazine requires 6-8 hours per day (4 on Sunday because we only produce the one lead story) to produce and thus far comments have been supportive of the effort. I used to contribute to the national newspaper of Wales’ business pages until their formula journalism drove me crazy as their former stringer editor ripped press releases, dropped in a quote or two and re-packaged it as news. When given a limit of 700 words, I would actually work harder to crop, craft and fit, to then see 100-150 words randomly disappear to fit a graphic. This instance makes them look good as the other news agencies even forgot to pick up the phone for a couple of quotes, choosing to use the same ones in the release as their own?
The budget squeeze continues with more and more publications outsourcing news to the lowest bidder to save costs. Now cuts in news divisions everywhere and squeezing of freelance journalists means even less of an emphasis on getting it right or relying on others to get it for you.
No wonder we get grief. If we don’t take the time to get it right, who will? And then in the end what separates us from PR Spin? There was a time when journalism meant digging and having pride in getting it right.
Guess I figured out the headline. Good luck Sir Martin. For the rest of us, say a prayer.
Denis Campbell is a journalist, author and businessman.
From a farmhouse in South Wales overlooking the Irish Sea, he and his wife run Target Point Ltd, an EU-wide strategy firm working with global businesses across a dozen industries on clarifying and executing strategy and changing their culture and focus. As a businessman living in the EU for 10-years, writing was a passionate hobby. He began blogging in 2006 with a number of pieces examining the corrupt climate of deception in the billion dollar spiritual self-help industry and re-published collected business, political and lifestyle features published across the EU since 2001. It has since grown into The Vadimus Post, from the Latin Quo Vadimus – where are we headed? (…and do we know why?), a daily e-magazine for those wanting to dig deeper, learn more together and dialogue on the key issues of the day.
Thanks for visiting and feel free to let me know your thoughts and opinions.
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