Question 1

What is churnalism?

Accepted Answer

Journalism produced by **recycling press releases and wire copy with little or no independent checking** — a term popularised by Nick Davies in *Flat Earth News*, describing what happens when the volume of output required exceeds the time available to report.

**What the research found.** Davies commissioned academic analysis of UK national newspaper coverage, which found a very large proportion of stories contained material drawn wholly or mainly from **press releases and wire agency copy**, and that only a small minority showed evidence of the central facts having been independently checked.

**Why it happens — and it is structural, not individual failure:**

**Falling revenue and staff numbers**, while the volume of required output rose with rolling news and digital publishing.

**Stories per reporter per day** increased sharply, leaving less time per story than checking would require.

**The growth of public relations.** The PR industry expanded while journalism contracted, so the ratio of people producing material to people scrutinising it inverted. Well-resourced organisations supply ready-made stories, complete with quotations, statistics and images.

**Analytics pressure** toward volume and speed.

**How to recognise it:**

**Multiple outlets running near-identical wording**, which indicates a common source rather than independent reporting.

**Quotations that sound written rather than spoken**, because they were.

**A single source**, with no contrary voice.

**Statistics with no methodology**, frequently from a survey commissioned by a company with an interest in the result.

**No named reporter**, or a generic desk byline.

**Why it matters.** It is not simply lazy — it means the agenda is set by whoever can afford PR. Claims enter public discussion having passed through no verification, and **corporate and government messages appear as journalism**, which is precisely what they were designed to do.

**The particularly common form** is the commissioned survey producing a statistic that is reported as a finding, which is why so many stories cite research nobody can locate.

**What counters it:** naming sources of information, linking to underlying documents, and outlets that state when a story originated from a release.

Question 2

What does a press officer do, and how much of the news do they shape?

Accepted Answer

Manages an organisation's relationship with the media — and the honest answer on influence is that a substantial proportion of published news originates in material supplied by press offices, which

Question 3

How do journalists actually find stories?

Accepted Answer

Far less through dramatic tip-offs than the popular image suggests. Most stories come from routine, systematic sources — and the ones that do not are what distinguishes original journalism from the

Question 4

How does the news cycle actually work?

Accepted Answer

The news cycle is the rhythm by which stories emerge, peak and fade. Understanding it explains a great deal about why coverage looks the way it does. The traditional cycle was set by production

Question 5

Why does media ownership concentration matter?

Accepted Answer

Because the number of outlets visible to a reader is not the same as the number of independent editorial decisions being made, and ownership determines the second. What concentration means in

Question 6

How do newsrooms use audience data?

Accepted Answer

Constantly, and more carefully than critics assume — the useful distinction is between using data to decide what to cover and using it to decide how to present and distribute what has been judged

Question 7

What does a local democracy reporter do?

Accepted Answer

Covers councils, local authorities and other public bodies as a dedicated beat — attending meetings, reading papers and reporting decisions — under a funded scheme created specifically because

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