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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Other Matters: The Importance Of Separation

November 28, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

“…on Jazz And Other Matters,” it says up there on the masthead, or whatever a masthead is called in blogese. You may have noticed that the other matters occasionally include journalism. News is where I came from, and my conviction is as strong as ever that a free flow of information through the news is essential to the survival of the democracy. The flow can be impeded as easily—perhaps more easily—from inside news organizations than from outside.
Increasing fiscal pressures on newspapers and traditional broadcast journalism companies are forcing them to look for ways to increase revenue in order to survive. Deep staff cuts are a cost-cutting method at nearly all major newspapers, including the Boston Globe, the Knight-Ridder papers, the papers of the Tribune Company and at The New York Times, which is about to make a big reduction in manpower.
Another way to increase revenue and profitability to stockholders is to make the newspaper more attractive to advertisers. It must be tempting, if you own a newspaper, to break down the traditional separation between the news side of the paper and the advertising department. There are plenty of advertisers eager for credibility they think will come from a more direct connection with news content, and there are plenty of good reasons why a breakdown of separation is a bad idea for a news organization.
In a recent column, Byron Calame of The New York Times wrote about why it’s a bad idea. Calame retired after years as the number-two man on the news side at The Wall Street Journal and contracted with The Times to be its ombudsman—the paper’s independent in-house monitor and critic of news practice. Here is some of what he wrote:

Why is the line between news and advertising so important? I hold to the traditional view, that readers trust a paper more when there’s a clear separation. Advertisers are attracted to readers who trust what’s in the news columns. And the resulting revenue enables the newspaper to keep providing high-quality journalism.

Advertising, of course, is the major source of revenue for newspapers. Although The Times doesn’t break out the numbers, advertising appears to account for about twice as much revenue as circulation does.

The sky isn’t falling at The Times. But I see a few worrisome indications that advertisers are being allowed to tap into the credibility of the news columns in ways that slip over the line.

To read Barney Calame’s entire column, click here. His warning is important for The New York Times and for the print and broadcast news business at large. It is important for all citizens, regardless of whether they are disenchanted with the performance of news organizations. If you have thoughts about it one way or the other, please share them with your fellow Rifftides readers. You will find the e-mail address in the right-hand column.
If you wonder why a jazz guy is addressing an issue like this one, see “About Rifftides” at the top of the right column.

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Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
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