News media businesses in the UK are shrinking, with many reporters switching to PR. Amy Fallon reports on how this is impacting the relationship between the two industries. This article is from Communicate magazine's third quarter issue.

When Peter Meikle swapped a career as a journalist in local newspapers and TV news for the ‘dark side’ of the public relations (PR) industry a decade ago, there was not a glut of reporters doing the same.

“I had seen a handful of former colleagues from breakfast TV joining PR agencies, some of whom encouraged me to join the world of comms,” said Meikle. He moved from The Fulham Chronicle in 1992 to senior positions at ITV and others and has been head of news at FleishmanHillard since 2015.  

“I think there was a sense among my journalist fraternity that PR was something you went into when you wanted an easier, less high-octane working life,” Meikle continued. “There was a mistaken belief that PR agencies would be desperate for their services.”

Flash forward from 2014 – the same year that PR Week warned that more hacks than journalists created “a nightmare” for the already overworked industry – to today, and there’s almost 9,000 more PR professionals in the UK than there are journalists. There were 50,000 reporters compared to 63,560 PR professionals, according to the 2021 census for England and Wales conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

There has been an increase in the number of TV reporters contacting Meikle of late. “[They’re] keen to leave the world of news for comms and asking how they get a PR job.”

The wave of journalist layoffs, fuelled by media closures and declining print figures, has seen many migrate to PR. This influx has some wondering if the industry faces a ‘crunch’ with too many PR professionals vying for a limited number of jobs. But experts say don’t worry.

“The trend has continued,” said David Benigson, chief executive at Signal AI, who wrote a PR Week piece in 2014 warning that journalists would have to “step up their game”. He added: “The dynamic, or ratio, between journalists and comms is going to get worse.”

But Benigson said that, in the past decade, there has been a “hugely positive trend and evolution” in the sector, seen in its response to the reputational risks that are forcing PRs to go beyond securing media coverage. The way they have handled this is a sign that they can cope with increasing competition from journalists jumping ship. 

“What PR professionals are doing now, with increasing quality, is help protect, manage, grow and build reputation, as the importance of reputation has grown for corporates, and particularly because many have faced reputational risks and threats in the last decade,” said Benigson.

“Communications leaders have naturally stepped up and become more and more of a strategic advisor to the CEO, more of a trusted counsel to the board and the executive, and much more strategic in their contribution to growing reputation, managing risk feeding into the commercial strategy.”

With the explosion of digital media and social media platforms, PRs have also become more data-savvy in the past decade, but they will need to continue this, as will journalists, said Benigson. “They have become a lot more quantitative in their approach, comfortable using analytics capabilities which have helped make them more quantitative and more strategic and sophisticated.

“The wave of journalist layoffs, fuelled by media closures and declining print figures, has seen many migrate to PR”

“I would say the ratio between journalists and comms professionals needs to be a concern. But comms folks have, certainly in my view, risen to the challenge of needing to do more and contribute more.”

With some journalists moving into PR and then back into reporting and some freelance journalists dabbling in freelance PR work, the actual ratio of journalists to PRs is not clear cut.

Maïa Morgensztern is a London-based journalist-turned-PR who works for UK and French publications, writing mainly about culture. She became an accidental PR after telling brands that press releases need to be improved, but still focuses most on her journalism work. “Journalists are struggling because print is dying and a pandemic made a whole mess and now ChatGPT is trying to do PR,” she says.  

But Morgensztern adds that over the years, PR pitches, of which she receives hundreds a day, now look more like feature stories than just emails as they once did. “Instead of writing very dry bullet points with useless information, they’re like ‘here's an angle’,” said Morgensztern.

In the US, journalist by training Kristi Eaton is continuing to run her public relations and writing agency, ke comms, that she started over a year ago. But Eaton still devotes up to 25% of her time each month to journalism. “I think having been, and still being, involved in journalism helps me better understand the nuances, constraints and complexities that journalists face each and every day,” she said.

The ratio of PRs to journalists in the US is six to one, as highlighted in a recent Newsweek story. “At least 25% of job inquiries at my PR agency are from current journalists looking to switch into public relations from broadcast or print media, and from some heavy hitters, too,” said founder of Crackle PR, Parry Headrick.

As more and more journalists in the US turn to PR, Eaton envisages that things will become competitive. “But I think that there are so many facets to comms and so many organisations needing comms that there will be enough jobs.”

In Australia, Lisa Chant was a journalist for more than 30 years before moving over to media and communications in late 2022. She sees online notifications of more journalists doing the same, every day. Chant now does a combination of both in her work. “I wouldn’t say there’s a feeling journalists will take all the jobs, but I think there’s less of a divide than there used to be,” said Chant.

Back in the UK, Charlie Russell didn’t notice whole teams of ex-journalists doing PR for agencies when he worked at Gorkana (now CisionOne) in 2013. But that’s a trend that Russell, who runs Synapse, has since noticed. “They have these middlemen that still do journalism, but also work for the PR agency and sort of get parachuted in to work on stories,” he said.

Russell says that journalism experience is of enormous value to PR professionals. “If you've only ever done PR and you've never had a window into how the media operates, then you’re a little bit disadvantaged,” he said.

But Jon Gerlis, head of public relations and policy at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR), warns that the journey between the two is often mistakenly perceived as straightforward and easy. “An eye for a story and strong communication skills are valuable, but they are just one part of the PR skillset,” he said.

“PR practitioners also engage in internal communications, stakeholder management, public affairs, influencer relations, research, crisis and issues management, event planning and more.”

“‘Communications leaders have naturally stepped up and become more and more of a strategic advisor to the CEO’”

Similarly to Eaton, Russell stresses that PR is such a varied industry that he can’t see journalists crossing over to the other side taking jobs away from others. “I saw something recently saying that it is really hard to retain grads,” he said. “And there was a story about graduates having six month notice periods. That is a real indicator that there are issues around staff retention.”

PR, like any other industry, is quite cyclical, and marketing budgets have been cut recently, admits Russell. “But if you look at the growth figures and revenue models, generally speaking it grows year on year regardless of what’s happening with staffing,” he said. “Businesses continue to make money, and I would have thought they’ll continue to grow.”