"Risen to the surface like scum on a cup of calciferous tea"? A desperate metaphor, even by journalistic standards. Quite lost the thread of what you were saying...

Actually that's a simile... Perhaps you work in PR.

OK, a desperate simile. Sheeesh

PRs may have proliferated, but "risen to the top"? Of what?

Anyhow, don't forget the film with Tony Curtis - Sweet Smell of Success - from 1957. That's at least 50 years that agents/PRs have been trying to control stuff.

Have to say though that I (even I?) don't share your view. PRs have a function. And the growing number of outlets for information of all sorts makes their job more, not less, difficult. Which should be a benefit for journalists - except they're being chewed away at by quite different things (what someone calls "the industralisation of journalism"). PRs can't take credit or blame for the latter.

Charles, thanks for popping by again, and for also taking a pop at my "desperate simile". My intended meaning was that PRs are also much more visible and proactive than they have traditionally been - look at the rise and rise of government spin as an example.

Of course the journalism v PR battle has raged for many years. And yes, good point, the internet has made life much harder for the PRs to control information flow. The flipside of that, of course, is much more PR fluff is being propagated unchallenged by blogs and 'news' sites under pressure to churn out more stories, more rapidly.

As a technology reviewer, I imagine you must receive the occasional piece of free kit from time to time?

And tell me about the 'industrialisation of journalism' - sounds interesting.

To me, the industrialisation of journalism (Google doesn't seem to have indexed this page, it doesn't pop up in the search for the phrase; only with the American spelling, with a 'z') is sort of like what's described at http://analystrelations.blogspot.com/2006/02/pr-opportunities-obstacles-and.html

Except that that suggests it's all PR-driven, whereas I was thinking more of the way in which you have fewer people on newspapers, who somehow have to generate more copy than ever before. It can't be done by originating that copy, so the journalists - hired for their ability (you hope) to ferret original stuff out - become glorified wire-rewriters, who add a sprinkling of experience on top. There's little time for checking or debunking. Ironically, I think that's why debunking columns like the Gdn's "Bad Science" are so popular: they don't believe what appears.

Blame David Montgomery for kicking off this process. You see its apotheosis, or perhaps nadir, in the Daily Express and the Daily Star. Though those are both more like cottage industries, churning out strange stuff nobody else will.

BTW have you undergone parthenogenesis? The byline at the top is now plural. Since when?

Yes, I am now we - see kittens post 9 May.

Now I know what you mean by industrialisation, I have to agree with your original point. It's not just wire-rewriting but press release re-working too (sometimes not even re-worked). Which, of course, makes journalists even more vulnerable to PR manipulation.

Bad Science is an excellent column.