Posts
Remember last week, when I posted about Michael Hicken’s article in The Faster Times “Internet Isn’t Killing Papers, We Are”? Well, it turns out there may be a good reason for his rather inflammatory view.
 |
| Courtesy | Anna Cervova via Public Domain Pictures.net |
In an interview last week with Fishbowl NY, The Faster Times founder Sam Apple explained that his journalists are being paid 75 percent of the ad revenue generated by their respective pages on the site.
That means that if any one of the 19 angry readers who commented on Hicken’s article (so far) or any of the countless other journalists who he’s inflamed or ostracized clicked on even one of the ads accompanying his unsatisfying and un-researched prose, they have helped him. Infuriating!
Now, correct me if I’m wrong here, but a scenario in which people are responsible for ad revenue doesn’t sound like journalism, it sounds like sales. And when journalists are forced to behave like salespeople, it runs against all of their journalistic training.
Who would bide their time covering zoning meetings or bridge commission meetings, or getting bored to tears at a meeting about whether the town should invest in new banners for main street or a new stop sign on a side street, when they knew that covering just one rock band concert with an ad for cheap tickets could net them an awesome 75 percent of sales.
As journalists, we vow to inform the public, to remind them of things going on in their very neighborhoods that they simply might not have the time or patience to track down. Turning journalists into another lapdog to revenue is probably the worst possible scenario for journalism.
Wow. That really sucks. It also makes sense. Hicken may have intended to inflame journalists in the hope of driving more traffic to his story's webpage. Can you really trust what he wrote? Was he just exaggerating for effect?
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the truth is, but I always remember the truth in the saying, "Follow the money."
ReplyDeleteThat's disturbing. But like the Media Proofreader said, it does make sense. It seems there's nothing in America that can't become all about money. Including education, health care, etc.
ReplyDeleteI think that these times are somewhat desperate, but that doesn't excuse this behavior. Trying to collect from angering people just doesn't sit well with me. Even when people put something out there to simply cause controversy, with no monetary gain, I get annoyed. So the fact that he may be profiting from readers clicking on ads that accompany an argument he doesn't even believe is quite unsettling.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me this is just the next phase in the commercialization of news media. Why are the local tv news programs so gory? Gore sells, so does fear. Why do US News & World Report and other national magazines persist in ranking colleges based on frivolous criteria? Ranking sells. And the National Enquirer? Sells. Ad revenue has always come from page hits, regardless of whether the page is newsprint, glossy mag, or in the ether.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it's infuriating. But don't print newspapers have ads, too? I guess it's a little different than the "pay per click" of an online ad. But, to some extent, print ads must pay for part of newspaper journalists' salaries, too, correct?
ReplyDeleteGreat discussion everyone! Sorry I wasn't here to join you right away! Like you all, I find it so disturbing that a journalist would agree to work on a pay-per-click rate.
ReplyDeleteMaybe its naive of me, but I've always felt that as print journalists, I was paid to report and report well. I expected our sales people to sell based on the reputation of our publication and on our subscription base. As a print journalist, the only time sales really ever crossed my mind was when my editor asked me to cover one meeting over another because there was a big subscription drive in that area. The chance of a story coming out of either meeting was six to one, half dozen the other so it really didn't matter.
As an online journalist, I feel that there is so much more room for interplay. Look out for a future post on this topic. It's one that's constantly on my mind.