David Churbuck on Corporate Journalism

A contender for word (or pahrase) of the week, although David's post is from June 2006:

[Corporate Journalism at Churbuck.com]

[...] In conversations with another McKinsey colleague, Tom Hayes, a former NYT reporter, we came up with the term “corporate journalism” to describe what we were doing inside of the Firm: applying classic reporting techniques inside of an organization to determine what, if anything, was “interesting” and deserved attention. That filter, “interesting” is subjective. Through McKinsey’s lens it meant information that could enrich the firm through more client engagements and increase the effectiveness of its consultants.

I like it. If more corporate types -- and PR flacks -- gave up on "marketing communications" and "PR" and aspired to corporate journalism, things would be much better. And I don't just mean to spin better story-telling, or to get down to 'facts': I mean that the discipline of journalism, despite all its troubles, is a better bedrock to build corporate communications on than the mishmash of powerpoints and press releases that we generally see.

Comments

[Bob Warfield]

I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of corporate journalism. Moreover, if companies want to see their PR appear someplace besides the usual press release reprint venues, they'd better pay attention as well.

Unfortunately, the typical PR admonition to "stay on message" seems to fly in the face of good corporate journalism. It belies the notion that the message has to fit what the world is actually interested in hearing and instead leaves us (as Seth Godin calls it) doing Shouting Marketing. Shouting Marketing is much like the Ugly American way of communicating where one simply speaks louder and more slowly if the message isn't being accepted.

More on Shouting on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/10/twitter-makes-10-most-asinine-trends-list-the-shouting-will-continue-until-clickthrough-improves/

[Chris]

What is the role of the individual employee in this corporate journalism? I recently rejoined the working world after receiving my MBA, and my 6 month old blog is suffering immensely. ANd it's not because I have no time to write...if anything, my newly acquired Blackberry makes posting easier than ever. The problem is that the interesting topics I'd normally write about are my co-workers and my clients. And I can't write about either.

So where does corporate journalism leave me? I'm relegated to posts on my private life, or occasionally on mundane topics like commuting. I do humor and satire, so sometimes this can be good material. But the truly juicy stuff is off limits.

Perhaps a Dilbert strategy, where I disguise my colleagues as cartoon characters?