This is from an interview on News-Biz.com with James O’Shea, formerly of the Chicago Collective start-up site. In it, he both defends and prepares for the dismantling of the church-state wall in journalism — the rule that keeps advertising and reporting separate.
Batsell: Do you think today’s journalists need to better understand and support the revenue side of journalism? How has your thinking evolved on that?
O’Shea: I was a person who vehemently opposed front-page ads in the Los Angeles Times. I still actually don’t think I was wrong with that, I think I was right. But I think journalists have to begin taking some responsibility for the revenue side of things that pays their salaries … And that involves, you know, trying things, and maybe trying things that you might even be a little uncomfortable with, but get in there and make it right, make sure that it’s done right.
We’ve come to a point in journalism where the business side and the editorial side are much more one than they used to be, and journalists have kind of got to get with it and understand that, and begin practicing that and exercising their judgment in a way that really makes sure that if it’s going to be done, it’s done right and it’s done under sound journalistic principles.
This bothers me on a number of levels. Journalists do need to understand the revenue side, especially as the business changes and print’s decline attains warp speed. But we should not be engaged in the generation of revenue.
That was an issue at Patch. As we looked for ways to create synergy with the business side, we ended up doing more and more nonsense stories — the Top Five Pizza Places, the Best Dentists, etc. — that were focused more on pleasing advertisers than on providing useful information to readers and site users.
Patch, of course, is not the only news organization that engages in this kind of journalism — BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, New Jersey Monthly, a host of sites and publications, substitute list-making and UV-chasing for journalism. This is not to say that they do not provide good journalism. They often do. But the chasing of ad dollars and empty UVs — short-term, often one-time readers — takes its toll. There just is not the time to do the investigative work needed for news sites to be more than stenographers.
Our job is to find and present the truth and to keep the public informed. If we have to begin chasing dollars, it alters our role. If we are asking for money — or thinking about how what we do affects our ability to ask for money — we no longer are about truth. We are about money and that is not the same thing as journalism.
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