In an e-mail, a reader writes the following (I'm redacting the station name until I get further confirmation):
In recent months I've noticed several odd news stories on Gannett's TV station in [XXXXX]. News stories (not in a business segment) about retail stores opening a third location with reporting that says things like, "now you can enjoy H&M at three locations instead of two." I am curious if Gannett could actually be offering news coverage as part of an advertising package. I'm no longer in a competing market but it just seems crazy how often this is happening. The station sent a reporter to a Jimmy Johns sandwich location to show how long the line was because the shop was offering some kind of special. Could it have really gotten this bad?
As always, other views are welcome. Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.
As always, other views are welcome. Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.
You would not believe how they are pimping out USA today travel stories to cater to advertisers. Verticals are entirely driven to solicit advertisers.
ReplyDeleteThis would not surprise me at all. The edict from HQ is that news and advertising W I L L and M U S T work together. It's the new G A N N E T T way. And those who don't aren't going to be around long.
ReplyDeleteIs that such a bad thing? When it comes to news, it obviously is. But doing a travel feature on Fiji instead of, say, the Cayman Islands because of an ad partnership doesn't seem to be a threat to our journalistic integrity. As long as the content is serving the interest of our audience - and I'd argue a callout to a new H&M is serving our audience in many markets.
ReplyDeleteI understand there's a fine line, but as long as your keeping your audience in mind, how does that really hurt us? The church/state dynamic is old school and contributed to the demise in our business.
The local small weekly here pimps news coverage for advertising all the time.Hospital,nursing homes fair board,town events,etc,etc,are
ReplyDeletepromised coverage ONLY if they pay for pre-event and or post event advertising.No longer is there a separation of news and advertising departments.Freeken money whores
with no moral guidelines.
The problem is not announcing the openning or long lines. The problem shows up when it turns out if a certain sandwhich shop employee is adding his own special sauce or have a shady business practice and the station looks the other way because of pressure from the sales side. Even if they don't look the other way it could appear that they did because of the relatiobnship.
ReplyDeleteI was trying to think of a word that best describes what Gannett's actions are turning into... and there it is, right at the top the first post says it all, "Pimping."
ReplyDeleteDon't see how this could hurt Gannett.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to news reporting, they already have zero credibility.
Come on Jim...They have been doing this for the past 5 years and it has gotten worse over the past 3 months. At the beginning of the year, Gracia Martore told Hunke and Dickey to start getting their "publishers in line" with the revenue plan. She also said that "editors need to learn about business". She was referring to the fact that newspapers will go under if editors don't start working closer with the ad sales departments.
ReplyDeleteWow. A story about a deputy getting lkilled yesterday and Florida Today was all over it. The print had a good edition and back stories and all there was at press time. Good pictures too, although the city cops caught the perps, not the deputies as captioned under the front page pic. Actually reminded you of the old days when good reporting was the norm.
ReplyDeleteSide note...people were waiting for the carriers to enter the store to pick up their copies. Didn't hear of one person standing around reading it on their tablet, phone, etc.
Just goes to reinforce what's been said over and over. Give the people good, real reporting and people will still buy print.
This sort of thing pretty much became standard policy the moment Gannett took over our established daily back in the 1990s. The arrival of a big department store chain in the area, complete with a week's worth of full pages and double truck ads in the front news section, was also accompanied by daily front page stories hyping the store. If any readers or editorial people still harbored notions that there'd continue to be something resembling journalistic independence, they got croaked in the cradle right there...
ReplyDeleteThis is unconscionable. Is this really occurring? I thought newspapers did things to firewall advertising from journalism and disclose or disclaim advertising that looked or appeared to be an article? Is this really occurring? Are there any ethical codes in journalism? Can anyone show a link proving this is occurring?
ReplyDeleteTrust me, this is only the tip of the dirty iceberg.
ReplyDeleteTrust me, this is only the tip of the dirty iceberg.
ReplyDeleteThis tryst between journalism and advertising really isn't new in Gannett or anywhere else. This is many years back at another paper, mind you, but I wrote a feature about compulsive gambling.
ReplyDeleteNo casinos were specifically mentioned; the story was about locals with serious gambling problems, not casinos and certainly not any particular one. As far as I was concerned they were apples and oranges.
The day before this piece was to run, a major casino, the biggest boy on the block, called and said just by sheer circumstance they were cancelling their advertising. Major account.
Guess what. My story didn't run. What ran in its place? An ad for that casino, advertising mysteriously not cancelled after all. How poetic... and obvious.
We have to tag our political stories differently now for the Web, due to new "sponsors." Not really sure what that means but it doesn't sound good.
ReplyDeletereally people waiting for the carriers to drop off the paper. Must have been a big coupon day.
ReplyDeleteCan we please stop all this hand-wringing and piety over news and ads? Newspapers still exist because they are a low-cost way to deliver advertising to a large audience.
ReplyDeleteAs for the supposed purity of print, go back a hundred or two hundred years. Papers were created to push political points of view or destroy opponents. When did "objectivity" become a selling point? Not that long ago. A few years ago Pew or Annenberg did a study of news stories and editorials in the same papers. Wonder of wonders, nearly 80% of the stories carried the same slant as the paper's editorials. Some firewall there.
Ads are not evil - they're your paycheck.
One thing I have noticed in 30 years of observing media from the inside . . . reporters tend to go to people and businesses they know. How many times do you see the same realtor on a TV news story? How many times does a reporter go the same store to show shopping or business? How many print and TV people become mouthpieces for the agencies or politicians they cover? You know the answer.
There ain't NOBODY pure as the wind-driven snow. I'm all for doing stories about local business AS LONG AS ANY RELATIONSHIPS ARE DISCLOSED. Newspapers are supposed to be about . . . disclosure.
Nothing new here. USAT has been doing it for years. Craig Moon and Jackie Kelley did this quite unabashedly.
ReplyDeleteMyself, I take 5:35's well-stated point. Still, advertising should not control content. Yet, it's fairly common.
ReplyDeleteIn my day (and back to Day 1 generations before), people read the news which was why advertising hopped on board. It was a great deal for all involved: journalists, advertisers and readers.
But some time around the 80's, that long-standing dynamic began to be tossed as "old hat" by the industry's latest crop of leaders, few of whom were the least interested in journalism, disclosed or not.
And look where the industry is today as a result, print or online.
Once again the ONLY folks who care are the narrow focused, never actually had to run a business or meet a payroll, journalism teachers and archaic news room folks. The Titanic is sinking and they are whinning that they are running low on champaign. They don't get it. They don't want to get it
ReplyDeleteNewsroom-wide staff meetings in Cincinnati routinely discuss what advertisers want/respond to, especially for online.
ReplyDeleteIf you think there is a wall around the newsroom, consider these examples in New Jersey:
ReplyDelete-- No editorials allowed supporting a statewide do-not-call list a few years back because it would hurt Gannett's ability to sell papers on the phone.
-- Stories on a major car dealership being investigated for fraud were buried because they were a big advertiser.
Great work serving your readers!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteI understand the business pressures. But it seems that the industry is rapidly stripping away all of the "taboos" (front-page ads, advertiser-driven content).
ReplyDeleteOnce you've sold-out, your "price" only goes down, not up.
2:18, exactly! All one has to do is look -- look! -- at some editions over the years. The difference is not only in black-and-white, but later in color: front page, no ads, hard news.
ReplyDeleteToday I can count on banners, sticky notes, spadeas, and lifestyle features about what to wear in winter.
And digital? No difference if one takes into consideration the zero control sites have over their "own" Web sites.
National and world news is several scrolls down. What always precedes such matters? Sports.
Great, I like sports -- but sport is entertainment, while a story about current, serious issues (i.e., not who won what game), they're worse than an afterthought.
They wonder why I get my real news elsewhere. I can't wait till they start charging for the site.
All the comments about not being in the real world of business seem almost dogmatic. Basically, we have product that more and more people are not willing to pay for because the quality has declined. Pay walls have not increased circulation; which you would expect if the product was of value to customer. Perhaps we need to accept the reality the product has declined and that is in part causing some of the problems in the business, if not most of them. The internet is not the reason the content is of poor quality.
ReplyDeleteIn the business, what do they call the free papers and how do you differentiate the writing when you discuss it? I always assumed the free papers had biased or compromised articles; basically no credibility. I used to put "newspapers" in the world of journalism. How would you properly refer to the distinction between the two types of writing, if there is any anymore?
ReplyDelete