By Nikita Geldenhuys

Those we spoke to confirmed that they are seeing more journalists working for marketing, PR, and advertising agencies.

These are their observations of this gradual migration of creatives from news media to the world of content marketing:

Journalists are not finding permanent positions in content marketing - yet

Last year, Robyn Daly, content director at Narrative, told media update that “content marketing needs storytellers – journalists, photojournalists, and editors.” While the industry professionals we asked have observed an influx of reporters working for agencies, their roles have not yet been cemented.

Melissa Attree, director of content at Ogilvy & Mather Cape Town, has found that agencies are integrating journalists into their teams bit by bit as they work on developing new structures for these individuals within their organisation.

She notes journalists are being roped in to contribute content, but often not as permanent employees. “It’s about going where the content is and a lot of journalists have obviously found the last year quite hard in terms of how they continue to survive within a construct that is changing so rapidly.”

Despite the slow progress, journalists as content marketers is a good thing, according to Wendy Shepherd, copywriting lecturer at Red & Yellow, a communications, advertising and marketing school. “The industry, the world, needs better copywriters, and a lot more of them to boot.”

She adds that editors, bloggers, and journalists often attend the school’s copywriting classes. These students have a headstart according to Shepherd, “I say it often: I can't teach anyone how to write. If you can't write, you can't write … Journalists are trained writers. They already come on board with those abilities.”

Reporters need a skills update

Daly is finding that journalists are gravitating towards content marketing simply because it is where the jobs are. And there’s no sign of this trend abating, with the announcement this week that five Media 24 consumer magazine titles will be closing.

It is, however, not as simple as leaving your job and walking into a new position at an agency. “We’re finding that the best editorial talent, having generally grown up in print, needs a lot of updating, coaching, and training on digital.”

Shepherd explains why an updated skill set is necessary for journalists looking to make the shift, “Digital content and editorial demand completely different approaches. When your intuitive process is editorial, adapting to the unique space of digital requires a paradigm shift in style, tone, and technique.”

She notes that people who usually write long copy for any media, print, or digital, are not required to foster the same cognisance of attention dynamics and user needs' demanded by digital content creation.

Daly agrees, “Brands have an insatiable appetite for being trendy, in-the-moment, and leading the content experience. Their expectations of content marketing agencies have grown. Marketers are no longer excited to just have a brand magazine – they want innovation and immediacy across all their touch points.”

“So the editorial talent needs to step up to storytelling in a multi-dimensional, fast-moving, technological and trends-driven environment. As the beast mutates, the editor must evolve.”

Publishers will need content marketing skills

It’s not only the journalists moving out of the media space that need to up their skills. Reporters at news publications are being asked to write sponsored content for newspapers and magazines more and more – and here too do they need to understand the principles of content marketing.

“You’ll find that news networks are starting to publish content for brands,” Attree explains. “It has shifted the role of the journalist quite a lot in terms of not just reporting on news but also packaging news and information on behalf of brands. This has expanded their role within the industry.”

The verdict

To move into content marketing or write sponsored content for news publications, reporters and editors need a complex set of capabilities. Gaining these skills does not require mountains of work – especially if you are a good writer – but starts with journalists realising the media has fundamentally changed.

Think digital-only publications, mobile-first sites and advertorials. These are the formats journalists have to get comfortable with, whether they plan to stay in the media industry or make the shift into PR and marketing.

Want to know where content marketing is headed in South Africa? Here’s what Attree and Daly think of the future of this industry.