What is Churnalism?

Churnalism is a form of journalism which differs from the traditional or original journalism that we all know. In this type of journalism, reporters rely heavily on press releases in order to create news stories and articles in the media at a faster and cheaper rate. In churnalism, journalists and reporters literally ‘churn out news’ they receive from PR representatives.

Churnalism has been heavily frowned upon by many experts in the industry. Many see it as an enemy and killer of real journalism.

One of the major reasons why many news organizations today are practicing Churnalism is because of the fact that they want to cut down on cost. As a result of this they don’t bother making any further research into the prepackaged material that they have received and go ahead to publish it or broadcast it to the public.

Some media organizations also engage in churnalism because of the strong competition out there and constricts of time.

The term churnalism was coined by BBC journalist Waseem Zakir in 2008 after he noticed what was going on in journalism. It just seemed to him that journalists were leaving behind true journalism and engaging in what he saw as ‘churning out news stories’ without any research into the stories they received. According to Zakir, reporters because they want to beat the pressures of time and cost are now turning into ‘churnalists’ instead of journalists.

In his book entitled Flat Earth News, British journalist Nick Davies wrote disparagingly about churnalism and made the term even more famous.

According to Nick Davies, as a result of churnalism, many stories published are not original. He said that journalists these days are no longer gathering and researching into news but are rather engaging in the act of processing stories that they get in the wires hence journalists ‘churn out news’ these days.  As a result of this there has been a massive decline in original journalism, which has also led to a dramatic reduction in the quality and accuracy of news stories that are published by newspapers.

Why do news media organizations engage in churnalism instead of original journalism?

The answer is simple – because of economic reasons and time factor.

• Financial issues have left so many newspapers to indulge in churnalism which has proven to be a cheaper option than original or real journalism which involves a great deal of money being put into research and investigations.  Today, as a result of low advertisement revenues, many newspapers have decided to cut down cost drastically by reducing the number of journalists that they employ. For this reason, newspapers and other media organizations are always looking for cheaper ways to produce news stories. And one of the cheapest ways to do this is by turning to churnalism.
• The need to beat time. Time constraint has also contributed massively to journalists turning to churnalism. The competition among various news media organizations has contributed massively in bringing a decline in the practice of original journalism. Today every newspaper or media organization wants to be the first to report on a story. There is always the need to beat the competition and get the story up as soon as possible. And the easiest way to go about achieving this is by journalists turning into ‘churnalists’.