Back in the1980s, I was one of hundreds of thousands of college freshmen whochose journalism for a major. It's important to note that back inthose days, Gen X didn't necessarily seek out meaningful careerslike today's millennials. Most of us wanted TransAms and creditcards instead.

Newspaper jobs didn't pay much back then, certainly not enoughfor a new TransAm, but a news career was sexy. The first thing Iever knew about government was Watergate, and The WashingtonPost's Woodward and Bernstein were center stage in thatdrama.

Plus, back in those days journalists got to drink and smoke attheir desks. To an 18-year-old, that seemed pretty cool.

Then, my junior year of college, I switched my primary area ofstudy from print journalism to public relations. By then it was the90s and newspapers were laying off employees, not hiring.

I kept writing for the college paper and still had thoseWoodward and Bernstein dreams, but school I took a job in sales,eventually finding my way to credit union marketing.

My story is not unique.

A recent article published on the left-leaning digital news sitetakepart.com addressed the growing disparity between the number ofpublic relations specialists compared to the number of employedreporters.

Currently, there are 4.6 PR reps for every reporter.

Back in the 80s, the margin was 1.2 to 1.

The current number of working reporters is about half of what itwas in the 80s. Meanwhile, the PR industry has expanded. Accordingto the article, which sourced the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics,PR jobs are expected to grow 22.5% this decade. Not surprisingly,the article also said more than 60% of college students currentlypursuing mass communication degrees are choosing the publicrelations option.

Those figures kind of shatter the myth of the ethically obsessedmillennial.

Consider that anybody can publish a blog, tweet an announcementor produce a video for YouTube. Companies and the government nolonger have to deal with pesky objective news reporters becausethey can reach their audience through other channels whilecontrolling the message. And, they have more money to devote toproduction than most news organizations, which makes them moreappealing.

We're currently finalizing the agenda for our annual all stafftraining and planning day. One topic that has come up again thisyear is how we will compete for our readers' time and attentionagainst websites like Buzzfeed.

If you've been living under a rock, Buzzfeed publishes fun butintellectually vapid articles, many of them written byadvertisers.

I can appreciate Buzzfeed's appeal. When our readers find thetime to break away from sifting through quarterly financial reportsor figuring out where to find enough revenue to keep the lights on,they're intellectually exhausted. They might not want to read ourin-depth feature on the nuts and bolts of the NCUA's latestregulatory proposal. They might instead want click through a photoslide show featuring child actors from the 90s who have letthemselves go.

Buzzfeed recently racked up 2.6 million views in two hours whenit posted a video of President Obama playing with a selfiestick.

The video was a White House PR effort to make the president morelikeable. Obama isn't the first president to do that; PR is notpartisan. But what has changed is that technology has cut out thenews middleman.

Not all PR is nefarious, but when it replaces objective news,reported without fear or favor, Americans will grow increasinglymisinformed and, in turn, be more easily manipulated by those whodo have nefarious agendas.

We received some negative feedback after publishing a story inwhich Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate BankingCommittee, wouldn't state his position on the credit union taxexemption. Don't make Shelby look bad right before GAC, somereaders urged, because it doesn't promote the credit unionmovement.

We love credit unions as much as our readers do. We want ourreaders to succeed, and we write in-depth feature articles, producewebinars and develop conference sessions to help make thathappen.

However, advocating for the credit union movement is not ourrole.

We'll do our best to hold your attention with list stories andphoto slide shows, but we will also continue to report credit unionnews, without fear or favor, and do our best to keep our readersfrom being misinformed or manipulated.