The juniorisation of hacks and flaks

The CEO is nervous and calls in his top PR.

He had a mis-adventure in America and the $500m write-off is going to be announced in tomorrow’s results. Buried, but there.

How will I explain it, asks the tense chief executive.

The flak sighs. In the old days, there would be a definite need to get the messaging right on this lost $500m.

Now, he tells his CEO, it will probably get missed.

There’s two guys at The Times who might twig. And there’s one bloke at the FT who will definitely get it. In a column, in a month’s time.

The juniorisation of the business press presents several problems. (It’s an ugly word, but it works.)

If the people looking at company results are younger and younger, then important things will be lost.

This is not the fault of the hacks – they are under often unreasonable amounts of pressure to clatter words out rather than read things.

The PR worries that if the CEO realises this, he may decide he doesn’t need such highly paid flaks.

The juniorisation spreads to the PR world.

This doesn’t apply across the whole of the market — Bloomberg is offering some fabulous salaries that UK papers can’t get anywhere near.

But the trend is clear.

How does this play out? I don’t know, but my guess is this: before long, old-fashioned business reporting – results, AGMs, job cuts – gets done by robots.

The papers spend some of the money they have saved from embracing AI on a small number of investigative hacks and a few entertaining columnists.

As a business plan that might even work.

It would mean far less nuts-and-bolts PR is needed, since the robots on each side can probably sort that out between them.

Being optimistic, this ought to free up the talent in hackery and flakery to write well, to get scoops, to be creative, to make money.

The road to this better future looks highly fraught.

Expect brutal shake-ups and job losses for people who deserve better. 

Please send candidates for press release of the day to:

Simon.english@roxhillmedia.com