A former regional daily editor has repeated his claim that the ‘artificial divide’ between editorial and advertising is partly to blame for the industry’s decline.
Marc Reeves, who left the Bimingham Post chair last year and is now editing TheBusinessDesk.com West Midlands, said separating journalists from advertising staff was the “biggest mistake” the industry ever made.
Marc was speaking yesterday at a conference in Hamburg organised by the international press organisation WAN-IFRA.
His comments echo similar remarks made at a News:Rewired conference in June organised by journalism.co.uk
Said Marc: “From my side, the inhabitants of the advertising department seemed strange and bestial, whereas I and my colleagues viewed ourselves as passionate and heroic. Heaven only knows what a bunch of pompous prigs we must have seemed to the commercial teams.
“To all of you who are saying “Sorry I’m just a journalist, I don’t sell advertising or organise events…” I say: tough: that’s just the way it will be from now on. We tried it the other way and it broke.
“That artificial divide we created when we put the noisy people in a room marked ‘advertising’ and the studious types in another labelled ‘editorial’ was the biggest mistake newspapers and other media ever made. It allowed journalists to insulate themselves from the business they were in to the point of revelling in their detachment.
“I’ve worked with generations of hacks to whom the very idea of passing on a sales lead was regarded as a murderous betrayal of the memory of CP Scott. No wonder so many didn’t see the meltdown coming.”
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Bizarre conclusion to draw from the fact that journalists need to concentrate on the job in hand and not get side-tracked by advertising concerns. There has always been tribalism between editorial and advertising departments but in my experience it has usually been friendly and co-operative. Perhaps Marc’s thesis rings true when talking about running your own business but ordering journalists under pressure to focus on advertising as well is just jeopardizing their professionalism further at a time when it is already under fire from so many different quarters.
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So reporters – sorry, ‘content providers’ – now have to write things up, take snaps AND handle advertising? And journalists revel in their detachment? Well, maybe they would if they weren’t already overloaded up to the nines with work after staff cutbacks. I wonder what colour the sky is in Marc Reeves’ world.
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Marc’s absolutely right. I left journalism for corporate life six years ago and was shocked at how insulated I had been from the commercial realities of running a business. And I still get journalists accusing my company of being interested in profits above all else. No we are not, but we cannot afford to run an unprofitable business, and neither can the newspaper industry. If a few more of them had taken more of an interest in the commercial realities of newspapers the industry might be in better health now.
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What utter rubbish. Here, in part, is why editorial standards are on the slide. I have never read such drivel.
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The relationship between business reporters and business/advertisers has always been a grey area of journalism. It’s a twilight zone between straight reporting and advertorial, since most business reporting is consensual. There’s a small number of business reporters who are lucky enough to be in the publish and be damned zone – the rest, well, take a look at the business pages/websites of your local titles…. There is, however, a world of difference between passing on a sales lead and cheerleading for advertisers under the guise of editorial or suppressing an unflattering story about an advertiser. Any journalist leafing through just the planning list should be able to find half a dozen leads to pass to the commercial department and, furthermore, should regard it as their duty as an employee. That does not compromise your journalism. Marc, however, is barking up the wrong tree.
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Fully agree with Victor2’s post. I’d be more than happy to pass on sales leads, I’d even welcome a bit of training/advice on how to spot them. But should I be spending my time at work churning out advertorial when I’m meant to be finding and writing proper news? Of course not. That’s not what I’m employed to do.
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That’s interesting. I used to work in a noisy and busy town centre-based editorial office noted by the commercial side for its welcome and shared coffee and biscuits. Ad reps often called there, swapping tips with the reporters. Unlike Marc I never found my advertising colleagues ‘strange and bestial’. But then I’d worked in a hairdressers and shops before becoming a journalist. In management speak the dept was lauded for its approach to customer service. We ran promotional stalls manned by reporters at fetes and the like, and organised local campaign meetings and awards. Ad features were treated with the same attention to detail given to news coverage and overseen by the editor or deputy. There was no divide when it came to caring about the products and customers. Even so, once the regional job cuts started two years back we were soon on a path to a much quieter office… and then no office at all, courtesy of the corporate business plan. Apparently this was ‘to secure the future development needs of the business unit’. So I left regional press and its watered down print and online offerings, wondering if I should have stuck with a retail career. My apologies to any former advertising pals (including those who also lost their jobs) if you ever found us to be a snotty lot.
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While I would never advocate animosity between departments, journalists tended to steer clear of ad reps in the old days because they feared the taint of commercialism on their work. When newspapers were in the business of writing contentious stories, as they used to be, it was an advantage not to have to answer the bleating of the ad dept passing on the complaints of disgruntled advertisers. There has always been tension between the two disciplines, as there ought to be. Journalists are in the business of telling the truth, which is often extremely unpalatable. Ad reps are in the business of saying nice things about people who aren’t always nice. On my first paper, we were expressly forbidden to talk to the ad staff because it was feared the paper’s editorial integrity would be compromised by any involvement with the commercial side of the business.I believe that was the right stance to adopt. Marc Reeves’ views merely reflect the changing nature of regional newspapers. They are no longer combative purveyors of news and views, but advertising vehicles in which editorial material merely fills the holes between the ads. This being so, it is inevitable that a certain ‘synergy’ – bloody awful word – will develop between reporters and ad reps. Reporters are encouraged to no longer see themselves as fearless pursuers of the truth, whatever the commercial consequences to the paper, but harmless extensions of the revenue-earning process. It’s all part of the sad decline of the great profession of journalism. There is, of course, one disagreeable consequence of this mix-and-match strategy. No-one wants to read the paper anymore. Even thickos in management must recognise that the mass desertion of the readership is bad news for all. Readers are not stupid – they can sniff advertorial junk from a mile away. When I started out, reporters would not be seen dead in the ad dept. But that’s when newspapers were newspapers. And it all seems a very long time ago.
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