At the DMN, Sales Folk Rule the Roost Ctd., Ctd.
The consensus around the InterWeb seems to be that the Dallas Morning News has breached a sacred institution with its reorganization. It’s extreme to say that the move is a sign that the paper will become a “glorified Greensheet,” as the Huffington Post claims. The most interesting commentary came from Jim Barnett at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, who writes, “as I thought about it a little more, it occurred to me that this is really just another case of the dead-tree news business trying to catch up to what’s going on in the online world.”
At some point in the management structure of all newspapers, an editor reports to someone whose primary concern is generating revenue. That’s usually the publisher, and the publisher more often than not is a former sales manager. All that’s different in what the Morning News is doing is that they’re pushing that publisher-editor relationship down to lower levels of the org chart.
They’re moving away from the idea that The Dallas Morning News is one monolithic newspaper. With a general manager focused on its success, Sports Day essentially becomes its own newspaper. Same thing for other sections affected. I know from my own experience working on niche products of the Morning News that it can be terribly frustrating to work to improve your brand-new section, make it appealing to readers, only to find that there’s no sales manager focused solely on selling your efforts to advertisers.
The hope is that each piece of the conglomerate of smaller products that eventually supplant the pile of paper we’re used to seeing each day exhibits more agility than would the mother-ship continuing to operate entirely as one. I don’t think the good editors and writers of the Morning News are going to stand by and let advertisers buy their way into the news pages. I don’t think the good readers of the Morning News would stand for that. The greater fear should be that the niche products of the paper become so agile that they too quickly bend themselves to the minute-by-minute whims of readers, which is why outfits like the Nieman lab are again pushing the idea of a nonprofit model if “serious journalism” is to survive.
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Jason, you write that editors at some point deal with superiors concerned with revenue, so really, in truth, “All that’s different” — your words — is that the paper is now going to be “pushing that…relationship down to lower levels of the org chart.”
That’s “all that’s different?” That little ‘ol thing? Like the minor “flesh wound” claimed by the knight in “Monty Python’s Holy Grail” after he’d had his arms and legs whacked off?
Enough of that silliness. You then write that you doubt “the good editors and writers of the Morning News are going to stand by and let advertisers buy their way into the news pages.” What makes you think that? The staff at the DMN is already a shadow of its former self; younger, less paid, and much less institutionally invested than in the past. Since reporters and editors were not known to fight for truth, justice and the American way in the best of times, it hardly seems likely they’re doing so today. Last time I checked, rent is still due on the 1st.
You further doubt that “the good readers of the Morning News would stand for that.” How on earth would we even know that a restaurant advertiser dodged a bullet because the critic had to run their negative review past the gang in sales whose very employment depends on that restaurant’s ad revenue continuing to come in with regularity?
Or to cite the HuffPo analogy: a story on price-fixing by local area grocery stores gets watered down over considerations of those weekly advertising inserts from Kroger and Tom Thumb that are so pervasive and that help pay the freight.
An earlier commenter on FrontBurner used this example: Irving-based Exxon-Mobil decides to combat the notion of global warming with weekly, expensive full page ads; cookie change to them, life blood to the paper. What does that do to tailor coverage of the subject in the hard news pages? And again, how..would..a..reader..even..know?
I can tell tales of news coverage getting colored by superiors for all sorts of reasons, from familial to economic. At least a quarter-century ago, we had two legitimate dailies chasing stories, so between the two operations the reader, the citizen, got a fuller sense of the truth. Those days are gone, of course, and we’re worse for it.
Now comes the final indignity: Having section editors report to sales people — sales people! — is all but certain to lessen the quality of the journalism. To think otherwise is naïve to a degree unchecked.
Amen, Jackson. I couldn’t have put it better myself. As a former DMN’er, I mourn such a decision that will destroy their credibility.
Jason, without rigorous paywalls, non-profit media will still need to sell huge chunks of ads, even as Microsoft II, aka Google, makes monetization of most online media recede further and further.
Or, per Jackson, to chase those receding ad $$, papers run yet more advertorial stuff, to the point it’s a third of daily “news.” And, the “advertorial” word disclaimer gets run in 6-point agate, and only at the end?
What could instead happen to the Snooze, under your angle, is that why wouldn’t Sports Day decide it wants to be its own paper, in both hardcopy and online versions?
Beyond that, the particulars of this issue seem to indicate another level of management fat being added at Belo Mansion, which should do wonders for reporters’ morale.
Until not just individual online papers, but folks like AP, start putting up paywalls with enough robustness and a high enough price point, news media will continue the slow dying of 1,000 cybercuts.
@Jackson Why do you think that Bob Yates and Lisa Kresl are any less capable of standing up for the integrity of their content than are Bob Mong and George Rodrigue?
In a sense advertising has always “ruled the roost” at the DMN and other newspapers. What keeps sales from running roughshod over the quality of the editorial content are strong supervising editors. Why is it any more difficult to make an ethical stand down on the second and third floors of the DMN building than it is up on the fourth floor?
As for your points about the editors and readers not being able to keep advertisers from being able to influence news content: what about the new management necessarily increases the likelihood of that happening? The hypotheticals you raise — about the grocery stores and Exxon Mobil — couldn’t they occur just as easily under the traditional organizational structure?
It’s going to come down to the quality and strength of character of the new general managers and the section editors charged with working more closely together. That will determine whether any portion of the paper essentially goes advertorial. It’s going to come down to the quality of the people who put together the DMN on a daily basis. The new structure isn’t, in and of itself, reason to damn the institution.
@SocraticGadfly Yes, if Sports Day manages to become self-sustaining (doubtful, since sports coverage is notoriously popular with readers while strangely less appealing to advertisers), and if Sports Day proves to be more profitable on its own (in whatever form) than when teamed with the rest of what we now think of the DMN, why not spin it off into its own product?
Jason, you ask if my hypotheticals — restaurant reviews, grocery stores and Exxon Mobil — could also occur under the traditional organizational structure, and the answer is yes. Desire is always present.
But it seems to me that having editors reporting to ad sales people increases the likelihood of those hypotheticals by a factor of about, oh, a gazillion. I’m never more tempted to do the wrong thing than at a strip club at 1:00 AM after a few drinks. You argue that such a set-up is no biggie, “in and of itself.” I disagree.
The firewall between the editorial and business sides of a newspaper has never been monolithic, and has always been more theoretical than anything else. Still, I’m a believer in the separation of church and state.
Put another way, your argument comes down on the side of total deregulation. You’re Phil Gramm to my Sarbanes-Oxley.
It’s curious that Mr. Wick Allison’s opinion on the DMN’s move has been nada, zip, zilch. I see Jason’s opinions as a trial balloon before Wick pontificates and tsk tsks whomever.
Anyone who has worked for a newspaper has seen what happens when the wall between the ad people and the journalists breaks down. In the old days it was (usually) possible for a principled journalist to successfully resist. David Dillon, the News great architecture critic, once went to the mat against management over orders that he write a piece for an advertising suplement. Dillon ultimately won, but only because he had the principle of separation to back him up. Without that principle, not only would he have lost, but News readers would have lost.
Ethical principles are necessary, first, because they are principles, first, because they are principles, and, second, because they are ethical.
All this glib chatter about changing times and changing media and the rule of the bottom line is convincing only if one views newspapers from a very narrow angle, one that excludes the paper’s obligations to the reader and to the society in which it operates and which guarantees it the right of free press.
@Jackson I never argued for deregulation. I believe in the need for that wall between advertising and editorial interests. Your analogy about Sarbanes-Oxley doesn’t hold.
Here’s a better one: the Morning News is moving from having a strong centralized government to becoming a federation of states.