The dark side becoming respectable?

Starting on a new book this morning, "Damnation Falls" by Edward Wright, I was struck by an early line of this tale of a discredited journalist who returns to his rural Tennessean home town to write a hagiography of his oldest friend, a former governor of the State.

The journalist, Randall Wilkes, is wondering what his former colleagues would think of his turning to "Flackerie". "Writing for hire. Public relations. Image-shaping. All those things held in scorn by real journalists. The kind I used to be."

When I left the newspaper industry in early 2006, I expected to take a fair amount of flack from my soon-to-former colleagues at the FT. Some of my colleagues who had left had been given a fairly hard time by their peers. I did not. I got the same old tired jokes about "taking the PR shilling" and "moving to the dark side", but mostly my friends and colleagues were supportive and understanding, some even admitting they had been considering similar moves.

Since I moved I have watched the wires carefully, and seen a flood of hacks crossing the line. Of course journalism has always been a rich source of personnel for the PR industry, but it had always seemed to me to be a steady trickle rather than a rush.

But not so anymore, at least in my branch of PR (financial) where pretty much every newspaper has lost someone in the last 18 months, and many more than one.

There are a number of factors influencing this, money probably being the most important, even if you can't find that many people willing to admit it. The future of newspapers in the world of the internet and the freesheet is doubtless another. Fewer hacks seem to be working harder and for longer than ever.

But my experience is also that the stigma that has been attached to PR by many in the world of journalism is certainly beginning to fade, and that the industry itself is regarded as influential and respectable; a good place for a second career.