seoulbrother:

The problem is that journalists don’t know shit about business. Culturally, they don’t want to. I often hear from journalists who are downright hostile to corporations and even capitalism not because they’re commies but because they believe they’re above it all (there is the root, I believe, of much of their cynicism about Google and other large technology companies). - Jeff Jarvis

I don’t see a problem with making money, either. I do have a problem when journalists try to make money. First, it’s corrupting. Second, as Jarvis says above, journalists are shitty at it. Third and finally, they’re not the ones who should be trying to make money.

I don’t agree with the notion that journalists see business as beneath them. The attitude Jarvis describes has nothing to do with elitism and everything to do with doing their jobs as ombudsmen, scrutineers and good old-fashioned degenerates. You want them to be skeptical.

Many journalists started their careers believing their job is to watchdog government and business and serve the public good. The division of editorial and business departments is supposed to prevent corporate interests from influencing editorial coverage. Once independent newspapers started selling out to media companies, that noble pursuit either took a back seat or had to give equal voice to the corporate bottomline.

As long as executive editors are as concerned with offsetting operating expenses, journalism suffers. First they tried to manage by shrinking the newshole. Then they were asked to add new ad positions to the front page — some even offered up space above the masthead — and, finally, to lay people off and manage through attrition. Beats went dark, longtime sources evaporated when veteran reporters took early buyouts, the paper got thinner and newspaper websites, well, they somehow managed to get shittier.

Sometimes newsroom leaders just rolled over, while other times they fought back. But mostly, they listened to their business partners.

At my own paper, I’ve observed our newsroom absolutely kick ass at covering breaking stories, uncovering ethical breeches and providing depth and context on news that affect us regionally. And I mean seriously kicking ass. Besides circulation, there’s no other department with as clear a mission as the newsroom, and they execute. Daily.

The business unit on the other hand … not so much. In fact, if I were given anonymized, written transcripts of some of the business-side meetings I’ve attended, I would be hard-pressed to figure out which department owned the most naive, ignorant, or just plain phony comments. Spoiler alert: It’s not always the newsroom.

Some of these folks are still gunning for Craigslist. Some still think a medium-sized, regional company can scale to compete in the CPM game. Besides themselves and each other, who the fuck are they fooling?

There’s been a lot of debate and discussion on how to save news (it’s no longer about papers, folks) by current and former journalists, entrepreneurs, ass-hats and, most importantly, by (potential) readers. What’s missing is the voice of the business departments. Maybe someone should show them how to start a Tumblr account before the newsroom wises up and cans their asses.