Washington Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth yesterday canceled plans for a series of policy dinners at her home after learning that marketing fliers offered corporate underwriters access to Post journalists, Obama administration officials and members of Congress in exchange for payments as high as $250,000.
"Absolutely, I'm disappointed," Weymouth said in an interview. "This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren't vetted. They didn't represent at all what we were attempting to do. We're not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom."
... Another bad idea out of a newspaper marketing department.
To retain its integrity, a newspaper must maintain a firewall between its editorial/news side and its financial/advertising/marketing side. Too often, the public and, unfortunately, the marketing and advertising reps just don't understand why we need that firewall.
The first time I ran into this problem, I was a reporter in Corning, N.Y. The owner of a local scrapyard called up, upset because we had not done any news stories about him recently. "Well," I said. "What would the news story be about?"
He had no answer, but kept insisting that I do a story about his business. Finally, he said, "Look, I'll pay you to write it." (He didn't get his story.)
That's one of the most insulting things you can say to a journalist. To make a suggestion that you are doing it for the money betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what journalism is about. Yes, we get paid, but the pay scale is not what drives so many of us through years of J-school, freelance work, odd hours and working nights, weekends and holidays.
Most of us do it because we have been given a unique opportunity: To tell the truth.
But the public can't trust you to tell the truth if you are being paid by the newsmakers.
Unfortunately, so many of those who work on the business side of the newspaper do not understand this. Ten years ago, when the new publisher of the Los Angeles Times did not understand this concept, it lead to a scandal where the newspaper's magazine did an entire issue on the new Staples Center. The journalists at the Times did a dutiful job reporting on all aspects of the center, without realizing that the marketing and advertising departments had made side deals involving the newspaper in the sponsorship of the facility. "[The newspaper] sold ads with the assistance of the Staples ad staff -- and then planned to split the profits, allowing both parties to benefit from what was supposedly a pure editorial product."
This led to a near open revolt in the newsroom and a major investigative piece about how the scandal happened.
The upside on the Post situation is that they have a publisher who understands the importance of editorial integrity. These dinners were immediately canceled, and the marketing executive, Charles Pelton, immediately admitted his error.
I can't imagine how that meeting between Weymouth, Brauchli and Pelton must have gone. BTW, I find it interesting that Pelton had co-owned a firm that staged conferences before joining The Post two months ago. Someone should have put him through the paces about the firewall and journalistic integrity before he got to work.
But when these errors happen, the question is raised: "How can this happen?"
For newspapers and journalists, these are the times that test reporter's souls.
Newspapers are dying. Those that are not already closed or being sold are fighting for their very lives. The pressure to survive keeps climbing. In the drive to find new ways to generate revenue, newspapers are more often being offered Faustian deals.
One commentator says he was astonished that this plan had gone so far. But if you share a sheet of ice with someone, as that ice melts you are going to have to get closer to your companion on the other side.
And if you are standing on a melting sheet of ice, you are less likely to want a firewall.
As the world of journalism collapses, as newspapers close and more people turn online to get their news, journalism schools are in the midst of a shift: teaching aspiring journalists about the business of journalism, how to keep journalism a paying venture.
I keep hoping for some form of print journalism to survive, but it looks less likely. Let us hope that even if the melting sheet of ice - print journalism - does disappear that journalists will still find solid ground in other media.
But when we reach that distant shore, let's make sure we take the firewall with us.
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