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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

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lchic - 01:21am Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3880 of 3888)

Journalism under threat from PR

au: Martin Chulov

As well as offering vocational journalism training, all now offer courses in public relations, professional writing and communications. Where once the strands of PR and journalism were deemed to be in conflict, there now seems to be room at the ground-floor level to look for synergies. "We all deal in information," says one senior broadcast journalist who has worked on both sides of the fence. "So what does it really matter?"

Fundamental changes in the way companies communicate with customers, shareholders and the wider public have seen big cuts to traditional advertising budgets, and a boost in resources for lobbying, public relations and general spin-doctoring. That is creating hundreds of job opportunities in PR at the same time that cuts in brand advertising are deepening the cost-cutting drives and hiring freezes at traditional media companies.

University lecturer in public relations, claimed last year that 60 per cent of news stories in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Courier-Mail were sourced from public relations or corporate communications professionals. In the papers' business sections, she claimed up to 80 per cent of the copy was generated by PR flacks.

local U's school of J changes to 'School of Journalism and Communication'

But not everyone was sold.

"I was depicted as if I was swimming against the tide," says Professor John Henningham, who left UQ and set up his own straight journalism school, the J-School, in disgust. "Our industry advisers were of the view that we were better as we were, our students protested outside the academic board . . . but there was this push [for amalgamation]."

Henningham says that in the last year of his tenure at UQ, there was far less money flowing into journalism training than into other faculties, with the upshot being that his school was "hundreds of thousands of dollars" out of pocket.

.... "Part of the problem in having PR people in the program is that they are in a sense validated by being in the company of journalists," he says.

No matter the school, or news organisation, there is a consensus that the growing sophistication of the global PR business and the evolution of communication strategies has given PR an increasing hand in shaping the content of newspapers, news broadcasts and current affairs.

Fuelling the expanding influence has been a convergence of separate circumstances: a global economic slowdown that has meant fewer brand ads in newspapers – and therefore constraints on editorial resources; and also a fundamental change in how reporters source information.

On the revenue side, both News Limited and Fairfax have seen drops in display ad revenues of between 20 and 30 per cent. The drop has come largely from the corporate end of the market, much of which has fallen away not so much because of financial pressures, but because executives figure on getting more bang for their buck through paying PR companies to try to communicate their message through generating editorial coverage

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4937038%5E7582,00.html

bbbuck - 01:28am Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3881 of 3888)
'Make sure he doesn't get any donuts'...

Though I must add, they don't seem to have a damn thing to do with missile defense.

lchic - 01:36am Aug 22, 2002 EST (# 3882 of 3888)

BBB - if you actually followed this board then there has been discussion wrt 'TRUTH'

Invesgative Journalism verses PR SPIN

The 'thinkTank' that Washington looks to when developing foreign policy is actually only neo-conservative PR

It does not look to the expertise of the UNIVERSITIES ... a nazi tactic

(Note: how the NYT didn't look to both sides wrt ME - might suit the readership but annoyed the EU's following copy.)

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