Moving from journalism to PR is often referred to as a ‘move to the dark side’ but my experience has shown this is far from the truth.

I recently joined Pinstone in the newly created role of technical content manager after more than 10 years working as an agricultural journalist at publications including The Press & Journal and Farmers Weekly.

I knew the time had come for a change in my career and while I was excited to join Pinstone, the agri-hack on my shoulder was warning me about this ‘move to the dark side’.

Would I like it? Would I miss journalism and the buzz of seeing my byline in print?

How wrong she was! It’s been anything but dark. I’ve been challenged in so many ways and it was definitely the right move for me.

Here are three reasons why my ‘move to the dark side’ was a smart move.

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Creativity

A role in PR is more creative than you might think.

The challenge of finding a new and innovative way of communicating a client’s services or products means you are constantly having to get creative to develop great content that taps into the news agenda or seasonal calendar. Identifying the right hook for a client is a very creative process that I’d underestimated with my journalistic background.

My role varies hugely from working on an advisory piece or writing a 2,000-word article for a leading crop magazine, to proof-reading LinkedIn posts and interviewing farmers.

In many ways, it’s very similar to my previous jobs as a journalist – I’m still creating great content – but my editor is now the client and while we all want to keep the reader happy, we also now have an objective to hit too.

Teamwork

I’ve been blown away by the level of camaraderie at Pinstone since I joined in September 2022.

Although I work remotely, I feel very much part of the wider team – this is something I missed in my previous role as I worked in a much smaller team.

The structure of a PR agency means there’s more opportunity for collaborative working with colleagues.

Although we all work on different projects for different clients, it’s very much a case of everyone mucking in to get the job done. There’s definitely no ‘I’ in team at Pinstone, as we’ve a team matrix that ensures the sharing of expertise. Teamwork makes the dream work!

Learning

The move from journalism to PR can leave you asking – will I know how to do everything? Will I understand how they do things ‘on the other side’?

In my new role, I’m being challenged to write things in different ways than how I’ve done in the past.
This means I’m learning new things all the time but I’m also able to help my colleagues learn from my experience of working as a journalist.

Learning is a two-way process at Pinstone – we all learn from each other through an extensive programme of in-house and external training to meet our Target 52 goal.

I was pleased to contribute to this recently by delivering a refresher training session on how to write compelling content.
It’s refreshing to see that my new colleagues can hopefully learn as much from my experience of working on the other side, as I’m learning from them.