When most people think of news, they picture black-and-white journalism in a major newspaper or the nightly news on television. However, news doesn’t have to apply to a city, state or even country; it can also be information about a company or its employees. Sharing business news can be beneficial from a marketing and team-building viewpoint.
A big challenge for corporate journalists is not to bury news in opinion. Opinion undermines a news story’s credibility, which is why many press releases and employee communications contain too much of the latter. Instead, public relations professionals and internal communicators should follow the inverted pyramid format, which organizes information so that the most important details appear first.
Another challenge for corporate media is that its ownership structure may influence its perspective on issues. The organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has documented how corporately owned news outlets promote a viewpoint that is supportive of U.S. wars and corporate interests due to their consolidated corporate ownership, for-profit business model, and reliance on government and corporate sources for news (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 1988).
Some attempts are being made to combat this issue. Non-profit cooperative journalism, philanthropic endeavors to support local news and investigative reporting, and union organizing efforts in the journalism industry are all encouraging developments. But it is ultimately up to consumers of news to reject the corporate greed that has dominated media and support worker-driven, independent, community-serving journalism.
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