As best as I can piece the data together, the three largest news release distribution services (PR Newswire, BusinessWire and Marketwire) sent out roughly 642,000 news releases in 2013.
If you’re keeping score, that’s about 1,759 news releases per day.
Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. You can quote me on that. Put a half gallon of rocky road ice cream in front of Fat Albert, and even he’ll turn away before he hits bottom.
Exacerbating this dynamic, the ranks of journalists continue to decline. The number of reporters toiling in newsrooms is actually less today than in 1978 according to the Pew Research Center.
The upshot – more news releases raining down on fewer journalists.
But explaining the commoditization of the news release as a form of supply-demand economics misses the root cause.
When distribution of the news release reached only the domain of the media, journalists enjoyed a free lunch. With little effort, they could write stories based on a news release, and those stories appeared fresh to their readers because they couldn’t find them elsewhere. This advantage disappeared around 1996 when news release distribution services started flinging out news releases to the masses via the Internet.
Stepping back in time for a moment, the timeline below offers the 10,000-foot view of how news release distribution has evolved.
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<div align="center"><a href=" http://www.ishmaelscorner.com/2014/02/26/the-commoditization-of-news-releases-ends-the-free-lunch-for-journalists” title=" The Commoditization of News Releases Ends the Free Lunch for Journalists"><img src="http://hawebpage.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/01_23_timeline_newsdist_500pixelswide_zpsc46ad8b2-2.jpg?utm_source=infographic&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=infographic" alt=" Infographic- the history of distributing news releases” style="border:none;" /></a><br /> <small>The Hoffman Agency is a public relations firm that emphasizes storytelling in <a href="http://www.hoffman.com">business communication</a></small>.</div>
Journalists had a 90-year run of leveraging the news release as non-public information. When the gravy train ended in 1996, it changed everything, though it took some time to erode the status quo. Muscle memory doesn’t change so easily in the world of journalism.
Now, roughly 18 years since earmarking news releases for the public domain, it seems fair to say the commoditization of the news release is complete.
Given that journalists rarely write from news releases these days, why does the massive effort behind news releases – figure around 10 man hours per news release at $175 per hour translating into $3,078,082 of cost last year – continue?
That’s a good question.
Disclosure requirements explain only a small percent of the total pool. Plus, I’m sure this $3,078,082 number doubles or even triples taking into the account the news releases not earmarked for paid distribution.
Perhaps the PR industry has its own challenge with muscle memory.
Update: I rejoiced when I completed geometry in high school and my math education came to an end. So I wasn’t completely surprised when Chris Hogg pointed out that my math went astray in calculating how much money goes into the production of a news release. The correct number is $3,078,082 per day, not year.