Aaron Crowe

I’ve thought this for a long time, but it really struck me today in two separate events: Every business should hire a journalist if it wants to be successful.

What would a journalist do for a company? Many things, which I’ll get to in a bit, but up high on that list is checking for errors that would upset customers.

Again, two things brought this to mind today. The first was a call I got at 8 this morning from a PR person telling me that their company had changed its mind on charging poor or low-income people double what it does other users of its product.

The second was reading a PoynterOnline column by Jill Geisler on 10 reasons to hire a journalist. I’ll get to Geisler’s column soon, and will expand on it a bit, but first to the issue of a company calling me minutes after waking up to change a program that I had questioned a week earlier in a story I did for WalletPop.

The company, Assurance Wireless, a division of Sprint and Virgin Mobile, was giving free cellphones to poor people. The phones included 200 free minutes of talk time, and users could buy more airtime in a prepaid plan at 20 cents a minute.

Boost Mobile, which Virgin Mobile owns, sells a prepaid phone plan at 10 cents a minute.  Why, I asked a marketing guy, does the service for low income people charge double? His answer was that the company is evaluating that.

So I wrote the story and less than a week later, ta-da, Assurance Wireless drops the cost to 10 cents a minute.  I wrote an updated story today.

This isn’t world-changing journalism, although I’m glad it does help the people who were to pay the higher cost as the program is rolled out across the country.  What might have saved Assurance Wireless, and thus Virgin Mobile and Sprint, all of the headache of this was to first have a journalist check their press release for holes. If they did, they could have gone to the lower rate much earlier and saved themselves some embarassment.

As it is, I pointed out in today’s story that the company’s move still leaves its text message fees at 15 cents a minute, which puts it in the odd place of having text messages, instant messages and e-mails costing more than making a domestic phone call. Most phone plans charge less for text messages; mine charges a nickel. Maybe they’ll change that in a week and give me another early morning call.

I’m sure the cellphone company’s public relations staff proofread the press release, but logic somehow didn’t make it all the way to the final review. A journalist would have caught the price difference. It was the first thing that stood out to me and one of my most significant questions to the marketing person when we talked on the phone.

And I only looked at that press release for two minutes or less. It’s these types of critical thinking, fast-thinking skills that journalists have that all businesses need.

Geisler points out a lot of these in her column. They include clear writing, working well on deadline, multitasking, being quick studies who process information fast and with clarity, can do research fast, know how to use the Web, a great work ethic and loyalty.

They all are excellent qualities that every business could find if it hired a journalist.