I read my fair share of press releases. The good ones catch your eye and show you the story underneath. The bad ones make you think to yourself — yea, I need you to tell me this — in as sarcastic as your inner voice can get. Note: A separate post is required on my theory of PR people in general. As a young journalist I noticed how nice they all are. A senior editor had this response: If you were a pimp selling 80 year-old women, wouldn’t you have to be nice to make-up for your crappy product?” — not a direct quote but something to that tune.
But I digress, this post is about press releases that I place neatly in the “no shit” file.
A perfect example is in this press release about a study that found the incidence of self mutilation is higher in goth youth than teenagers who don’t identify with the goth culture. (I think this press release is public, if not I apologies, but don’t worry — you aren’t missing much).
Sad, funny and true. But do I really need a press release to inform me about it? I guess it’s good to know there is an official study of it, but it isn’t late breaking news.
On the opposite note: Here is the blog of a family that is now car-less because of a teenage fender-bender. Everyone is fine, but the car is totaled. So they are having an experiment to see how long they can go without a car. For someone who wants to write about car related issues this family gives you the characters you need to move the story along.
Often in journalism if you want to tackle serious issues, like pollution, you need characters to keep the story from getting too boring and lecturing. Often finding the characters is harder than anything else. It requires digging and then a careful approach, because if you are dealing with a sensitive issue, abortion, immigration etc, characters might be more hesitant to talk. But that’s where the human aspect of journalism comes in.
This week for class I’m doing an immigration story. Living in Green Point is a bonus for this because it is so densely populated with Polish immigrants. Unfortunately many of them don’t like to talk to young non-polish white people, which they often find threatening (I find).
But I will push forward and hopefully find somebody that relates.