Reporters and editors are increasingly making the switch from established media -- especially newspapers -- over to public relations.
Partly, this is because of upheaval in the old media world. Some estimates say more than 15,000 journalists have been laid off by newspapers, while public relations is a growing field.
But that's not the entire reason.
Making the switch is common, and has been common, for a long time.
Journalism doesn't pay that much. You do it for love. You do it because it's a calling. Sometimes, you get married, start having kids and can't afford to keep making a reporter's salary the rest of your life.
Here are some tips for making the switch.
1) From Specialist to Jack of All Trades
Reporters and editors tend to specialize in a single beat. You don't just work in the news section, sports, features or photo. You work the county politics beat for the news section, you cover prep football and baseball, you edit copy -- the jobs tend to be specialized.
When you make the switch, you go from specialist to jack of all trades.
Instead of writing stories about one beat, you'll be writing a lot of different products and doing things reporters never need to do, like think up a media plan or social media campaign.
Instead of having a photographer shooting your stories, or a cameraman doing your video while you stand up, in public relations you'll probably need to learn to shoot your own shots and video, at least for the web.
2) From One Boss to Many
In the newsroom, you know the chain of command. There's a clear line between the city editor, the managing editor, the editor in chief and the publisher. It's also clear in TV and radio stations. You know who your boss is, and who his or her boss is, all the way up the line.
Public relations is a switch. There could be a dozen clients on your list, all of them of different sizes and needs and org charts.
3) From Getting Published to Getting Play
Even if you're at a giant daily newspaper where there's a lot of competition to get on the front page, journalists write their stories expecting they'll get published.
Maybe it won't be on the top of page 1, and maybe the editors won't give them glorious full-color photos and graphics, but you should see your byline in print somewhere, sometime.
The opposite is true with public relations. Even if you're successful in every oped and press release you ever write, your byline is invisible.
And the success rate isn't 100 percent. The opposite expectation is true: you're hoping what you send gets play, and celebrate when it does, because there's a ton of competition out there, all trying to get the media to cover their stories.
4) From Informing to Persuading
This is the toughest switch.
Writing press releases comes naturally for journalists. It's just like writing a straight news story. The old inverted pyramid. Piece of cake.
Writing to persuade is hard for a lot of journalists. Unless you spend serious time writing for the Opinion page, speeches, talking points and opeds won't come naturally to you.
The inverted pyramid put the most important things first and less important details lower and lower in the story, until the last grafs and lines could be cut by the editors if they run out of newshole.
When you're writing to persuade, the most important words are in those last grafs and lines.
In fact, the structure is the opposite of the inverted pyramid. Writing to persuade is all about setups and payoffs, and it's much tougher than writing straight news stories.