Chapter 11: the Business of Producing Journalism

Chapter 11: The Business of Producing Journalism

The Los Angeles Times in Transition

Lori Robertson and Rachel Smolkin, “John Carroll bows out in L.A.,” American Journalism Review, August/September 2005.

James Rainey, “A media match plagued by a clash of cultures,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 10, 2006. Discusses problems at LA Times after its purchase by Tribune Co.

Sridhar Pappu, “Reckless disregard: Dean Baquet on the gutting of the Los Angeles Times,” MotherJones.com, March 1, 2007.

Thomas S. Mulligan and Dawn Chmielewski, “Times editor to leave paper,” Jan. 21, 2008.

Emily Steele, “Why Los Angeles Times can’t keep an editor,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 22, 2008.

Michael Hiltzik, “Publisher of Times resigns amid cuts,” Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2008. Hiller’s 21-month tenure was marked by plans for the sharpest staff and production cuts in The Times’ history.

News Media Economics

Philip Meyer, The Vanishing Newspaper (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 10. Meyer attributes the theory of “harvesting marketing position” to Michael E. Porter, Competitive Strategy: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (New York: Free Press, 1998), 311.

Av Westin, Best Practices for Television Journalists (New York: The Freedom Forum’s Free Press/Fair Press Project, 2000). You can download the book here:

Rick Edmonds, “State of the Media 2008: Decoupling blues,” March 19, 2008. Discusses “the broken economic model – the decoupling of advertising and news,” cited in the State of the News Media 2008.

Jennifer Saba, “NAA reveals biggest ad revenue plunge in more than 50 years,” Editor & Publisher, March 28, 2008. The figures were announced by the Newspaper Association of America. (Academic databases)

Deborah Potter, “Later news,” American Journalism Review, February/March 2008.

Bowing to changing lifestyles, stations are launching 7 p.m. newscasts.

Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Financial woes now overshadow all other concerns for journalists,” March 17, 2008.

Richard Pérez-Peña, “Few TV reports on audience flight,” The New York Times, May 11, 2009. Reports on a University of Pennsylvania study showing that while the news media report extensively on the economic problems of newspapers, there is relatively little coverage of television’s similar problems.

Sam Schechner, “Cuts at TV-News Divisions signal leaner approach,” The Wall Street Journal,Feb. 26, 2010. Reports on staff cuts at ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Paul Farhi, “Speak no evil,” American Journalism Review, October/November 2011. “While news organizations demand full disclosure from everyone else, they often resort to euphemisms and sugarcoating when they report on their own downsizing.” Farhi writes that staff reductions often go unreported at all, and when they do, the reductions may be characterized as part of a strategy that will result in better news coverage.

Questionable Practices

John Morton, “Too steep a price: Newspapers must protect their integrity as they struggle to find new revenue streams,” American Journalism Review, August/September 2009.

In-text advertising:

David Kesmodel and Julia Angwin,“Is it news…or is it an ad?”, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 27, 2006.

Tim McGuire, “Let’s count to 100 and then decide we hate ads in news copy,” McGuire on Media, Nov. 7, 2007.

Erik Sass, “Los Angeles Times dabbles in e-commerce,” MediaDailyNews, April 28, 2010. Links will be placed in the text of articles with lifestyle-related content, including Health, Image, Food, Travel, Books, Entertainment and Sports.

Advertising in nontraditional formats:

Society of Professional Journalists, “SPJ calls on news media to maintain clear separation of news and advertising,” Nov. 10, 2003.

Andrew Clevenger, “DNR pays for control of outdoor TV segment,” The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, March 28, 2008.

Natalie Pompilio, “A porous wall,” American Journalism Review, June/July 2009. Discusses questionable practices in newspaper advertising.

James Rainey, “On the Media: KCBS ads masquerade as news,” Los Angeles Times, April 21, 2010. On-air interviews appear to be news, but they are “added value” ads.

Lucia Moses, “USA Today puts itself under wraps with ad,” Mediaweek, July 12, 2010. The national newspaper wrapped its news section with an ad.

Content provided by outside sources:

Neil Henry, American Carnival: Journalism Under Siege in an Age of New Media (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 149-165. Discusses the controversy over VNRs.

Robert Pear, “U.S. videos, for TV news, come under scrutiny,” The New York Times, March 15, 2004.

Deborah Potter, “Virtual news reports,” American Journalism Review, June/July 2004.

CNN and local TV stations were guilty accomplices in allowing a government-produced VNR on the air.

Video available online: Examples of VNRs, provided by a watchdog group:

Trudy Lieberman, “The epidemic,” Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 2007.

John Sullivan, “PR industry fills vacuum left by shrinking newsrooms,” ProPublica (co-published with Columbia Journalism Review), May 2, 2011. Sullivan writes that, as the number of journalists has declined, the number of public-relations professionals has grown. “The dangers are clear. As PR becomes ascendant, private and government interests become more able to generate, filter, distort, and dominate the debate, and do so without the public knowing it.”

Paul Farhi, “A local TV trend: And now, the identical news,” The Washington Post, Nov. 27, 2012. At least a dozen stations around the country carried “the same lightweight story about restaurants cooking up candidate-inspired drinks and dishes.” Farhi’s research found that the story was produced by an “affiliate service,” CNN Newsource: “Stations not only get prepackaged footage from such services, but a script that introduces the footage, as well. Stations then ‘localize’ the canned package by having one of their anchors read the one-size-fits-all copy.”

Targeted demographics:

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 57.

Product placement:

Abigail Goodman, “Eye-opener with a pitch: TV news program tries product placement as a revenue source,” Las VegasSun, July 21, 2008. TV news program tries product placement as revenuesource.

The Seattle Times, “Gov. Gregoire approves tax cut for Washington state newspapers,” May 13, 2009.

Commentary: Alan D. Mutter, “Washington papers paid dearly for tax cut,” Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, May 13, 2009.

Sam Wardle, “Carrboro Citizen receives $50K loan from town,” Independent Weekly, May 21, 2009.

Christopher Weaver, “Is it OK for Pfizer to pay for reporters to learn about cancer?”, health blog for National Public Radio, Aug. 24, 2010. The drug company paid all expenses for 15 reporters to attend a four-day cancer seminar in Washington, D.C.

Television Station WBBH, “News-Press lays off 14 employees,” June 21, 2011; updated June 22, 2011. Includes video. The government Lee County, Fla., gave Gannett $105,000 in incentives to locate 35 jobs in the county. The following year, Gannett’s Fort Meyers News-Press laid off 14 employees. County officials said they still thought the investment was a good one, because the new jobs are in a different Gannett division.

Relationship with a news source:

Video clip: Sports agent Drew Rosenhaus does a television commercial for ESPN, which frequently covers him.

Rem Rieder, “An ethical stumble in Philadelphia,” American Journalism Review, May 31, 2013. The website philly.com, which is owned by the same company that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, made a deal with Gov. Tom Corbett to write a regular column. The newspapers, whose articles appear on the website, cover Corbett, who is running for reelection.

Internal reporting relationships:

Richard Pérez-Peña, “Some Dallas editors will report to Ad Sales,” The New York Times, Dec. 4, 2009. Senior news editors in various sports and entertainment sections at The Dallas Morning News began reporting directly to general managers responsible for advertising sales in their sections, “while retaining a strong reporting relationship to the editor and managing editor,” an internal memo said.

Robert Wilonsky, “At The Dallas News, a new ‘bold strategy’: Section editors reporting to sales managers,” Dallas Observer. This blog contains the Morning News memo.

Outsourcing news coverage:

Edmund Lee, “More publishers trying outsourced information,” Advertising Age, April 28, 2010. “Established news shops [are] running articles from pool of freelancers for as little as $5 a story.”

Nicholas Spangler, “In demand: A week inside the future of journalism,” Columbia Journalism Review, November/December 2010. Spangler (joined by other journalists, in the appended comments) tells about his experience producing “commercial content.”

Using online metrics to influence news decision-making:

Michael Schudson and Katherine Fink, “The algorithm method: Making news decisions in a clickocracy,” Columbia Journalism Review, January/February 2012. “If algorithms come to dictate news decisions, how does that change what we read, and what sort of democracy we might have or want to have?”

Daily newspapers that are no longer daily:

Christine Haughney, “Newspapers cut days from publishing week,” The New York Times, June 3, 2012. Pegged to the decision to make The New Orleans Times-Picayune a three-day-a-week newspaper, the article also notes similar moves by papers elsewhere. “By cutting back on print publishing, newspaper executives are betting they can wean loyal customers and advertisers from their daily print newspaper habit, while at the same time driving them to their own web site.”

Michaelle Bond, “For newspapers, a less than daily future,” American Journalism Review, June 7, 2012. “Experts see the reduced publishing schedule for Newhouse papers in New Orleans and Alabama as a precursor of things to come.”
John Morton, “More or less,” American Journalism Review, Sept. 7, 2012. “As Newhouse cuts back the publication schedule of its once-daily papers, newly minted newspaper magnate Warren Buffett is betting that giving readers more is the key to success.”
Ryan Chittum, “The battle of New Orleans: Is Advance Publications securing the future of local news – or sacrificing it?”, Columbia Journalism Review, June 8, 2013. An analysis of the changes at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which has adopted a business and news model focusing on a free website, NOLA.com.

News companies’ investments in businesses that make news:

“Fair Game,” American Journalism Review, October 1999. Things can get quite tricky when a company that owns a news organization invests in a sports franchise in the same town – as The Dallas Morning News quickly learned.

Roy Hartmann, “Notes from St. Louis; Loving the Cardinals as they are,” The New York Times, March 26, 2002.

Linda Loyd, “Tower sparks controversy in Lancaster,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 2, 2008.

Matthew Futterman, “How to cover the team that owns your T.V. network,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 19, 2009. An interview with the president of SportsNet New York, a regional network owned by the New York Mets.

Dan McGrath, “Perception of bias toward the Chicago Cubs will not be missed,” chicagotribune.com, Aug. 23, 2009. McGrath, who had supervised baseball coverage, notes that when The Chicago Tribune owned the Cubs, fans’ misconceptions were a always a concern.

The Chicago Tribune, “Our cousins, the Cubs,” an editorial published Aug. 23, 2009.

Tim McGuire, “Arizona Republic gets an A+ for reporting, B for its editorial and an F for publisher’s conflict,” McGuire on the Media blog, March 30, 2011. The ArizonaState professor assesses the newspaper’s handling of the Fiesta Bowl scandal, including the publisher’s explanation of why he is on the bowl’s executive committee.

The Contrasting Cultures of News and Business

The contrasting cultures are described, from different viewpoints, in:

Philip Meyer, The Vanishing Newspaper, 206-207.

Jack Fuller, News Values (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 197.

Involvement of business executives in matters that affect news/editorial decisions:

Jim Brunner, “Seattle Times Co. launches ad campaigns for McKenna and gay marriage, draws criticism,” The Seattle Times, Oct. 17, 2012. The company invested $75,000 to $80,000 in advertising leading up to the November general election. Some of the ads supported Rob McKenna, the Republican governor candidate; other ads supported the legalization of gay marriage in a referendum. (McKenna lost; gay marriage was approved by the voters.) The advertising decision was made by the corporate side of the newspaper and was “completely separate from the journalism functions of the newspaper,” a business executive said. Brunner’s posting quoted journalism and political experts who said the ad campaigns threatened to damage the credibility of the newspaper’s reporting.

Jim Brunner, “Seattle Times news staffers protest company’s political-ad campaign,” Oct. 18, 2012. More than 100 signed a letter to the publisher in which they said the ad campaign “threatens the two things we value the most, the traits that make The Seattle Times a strong brand: Our independence and credibility.”
David Boardman, “A vow to continue impartial reporting,” The Seattle Times, Oct. 20, 2012. In a column, the paper’s executive editor asked readers to trust the paper’s news staff and reiterated that “no one in the newsroom, including me, had any involvement in this project.”

Jim Romenesko, “Lexington Herald-Leader endorses Obama, publisher endorses Romney,” Oct. 31, 2012. Publisher Rufus Friday wrote a statement laying out his reasons for dissenting in the editorial board’s vote. Editorial page editor Vanessa Gallman said in an e-mail to Romenesko that there are five people on the McClatchy paper’s editorial board and that Friday “was the only supporter of Romney and did try to sway others.” She said, “He did not threaten to veto the edit and did not demand rewrites.”

Jim Romenesko, “Pittsburgh Post-Gazette endorses Obama, its owner backs Romney,” Nov. 4, 2012. “The long letter to the right of the Post-Gazette’s Obama endorsement is written by Allan Block, chairman of the Post-Gazette’s parent company. He argues that Mitt Romney ‘can create a safe, strong, growing economy that benefits all Americans’ and ‘can bring this country back’.” Romenesko noted that Block’s letter also ran in his family’s Toledo Blade, which endorsed Obama.

Case Study No. 9: Sharing Ad Profits, Creating a Crisis

David Shaw, “Crossing the line: A Los Angeles Times profit-sharing arrangement with Staples Center fuels a firestorm of protest in the newsroom – and a debate about journalistic ethics,”Los Angeles Times, Dec. 20, 1999. (News databases)

James Risser, “Lessons from L.A.,” ColumbiaJournalism Review, January/February 2000. (Academic databases)

Terence Smith, “Trouble at the L.A. Times,” PBS’s Online NewsHour, Dec. 16, 1999.

Additional Case Studies

“Native advertising.” That’s a buzz phrase in advertising circles, describing advertising that resembles not just generic editorial content but the specific kind of content “native” to a given website. Also called “sponsored content,” “branded content,” or “brand journalism,” it is an extension of the advertorial concept.

Ira Basen, “Brand journalism,” Center for Journalism Ethics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Oct. 17, 2012. “Brand journalism is bought and paid for by companies in order to meet various business objectives. The stories may be well written and fairly and accurately reported by respected journalists … but the fundamental objective remains a marketing one. Brand journalism is always more about the brand than the journalism.”
Jack Shafer, “When advertorial bites back,” Reuters, Jan. 15, 2013. The writer analyzes a controversy that erupted when The Atlantic magazine’s website ran “sponsored content” promoting the Church of Scientology. (The Atlantic took down the piece and apologized.)
David Dobbs, “The Atlantic, Scientology and the theft of credibility,” Wired, Jan. 16, 2013. More comment on The Atlantic’s experience.
Jeff Sonderman, “How news organizations can sell sponsored content without lowering their standards,” poynteronline, Jan. 18, 2013. The writer interviews Jonah Peretti, cofounder of Buzzfeed, a sponsored-content pioneer.
Andrew Sullivan, “Guess which Buzzfeed piece is an ad,” The Dish, Feb. 21, 2013. This is one in a series of blogs that Sullivan has written about native advertising.
Lewis DVorkin, “Inside Forbes: Journalism requires new models for both editorial and ads,” forbes.com, March 4, 2013. An advocate of “native advertising” explains: “Marketers want a bigger voice. The media business needs revenue. The digital world demands change.”
Tanzina Vega, “Sponsors now pay for online articles, not just ads,” The New York Times, April 7, 2013. “The strategy of having advertisers sponsor or create content that looks like traditional editorial content has become increasingly common as publishers try to create more sources of revenue.”

“The Decision” by LeBron James. The former Cleveland Cavaliers star made a deal with ESPN for an exclusive special program in which James would announce which National Basketball Association team he would sign with as a free agent. ESPN got the story (and the announcement event) exclusively in exchange for allowing James to choose one of his interviewers (former ESPN staff member Jim Gray) and for donating the program’s commercial revenue to a charity. The July 8, 2010, special gave ESPN 13 million viewers, its second-highest rating of the year. In the ensuing controversy, ESPN was criticized for yielding journalistic control to the newsmaker.

Brian Steinberg, “To get LeBron, ESPN cedes control over ads, news,” Advertising Age, July 7, 2010.
Don Ohlmeyer, “The ‘decision’ dilemma,” ESPN.com, July 21, 2010. The ESPN ombudsman analyzes the case at length and writes, “ESPN can brush off concerns raised about ‘The Decision,’ but it does so at its own peril. A major component of ESPN’s appeal … is that the audience trusts what it’s watching.”

Off-the-record salons. David Carr, “A publisher stumbles publicly at the Post,” The New York Times, July 4, 2009. Carr summarizes: “As first reported in Politico, The Washington Post had sent out a brochure offering sponsorships – a fee of $25,000 for one, or $250,000 for an entire series – for an exclusive ‘Washington Post salon’ at [publisher Katharine Weymouth’s] home in which officials from Congress and the administration, lobbyists and, yes, the paper’s own reporters could have a quiet, off-the-record dinner, discussions to be led by Marcus Brauchli, the newspaper’s editor.” Carr comments: “Theoretically, you can’t buy Washington Post reporters, but you can rent them.”