One sign of the times is seeing more and more experienced journalism professionals move over to PR and corporate public affairs. It’s the best way for them to make real money, alas. Increasingly, “journalism” is a freelancer’s game that rewards churning out lots of short copy with less insight and reporting than opinion.
Take Daniel Frankel. He worked on various beats at Variety from 2001 until he was laid off (along with me and many others) during the recession of 2009. Sharon Waxman brought him in as news editor and senior writer for TheWrap, where he endured until the end of 2011, leaving to become West Coast senior editor for PaidContent, where he covered the entertainment media/tech beat. It seemed a perfect fit–until PaidContent was taken over by Gigaom, which had its own set of writers.
Countless journalists have ditched journalism for PR/public affairs gigs, including Joe Schlosser, Alan Mayer, Ross Johnson, Chris Petrikin, Jonathan Taylor, Dade Hayes, Michael Speier and Jonathan Bing.
Now we can add Frankel to the list. Paul Pflug of Principal Communications Group has him snapped up to be VP of the editorial department at Principal Communications Group.
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