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Eric Meyer wrote:

> I know I'm the only curmudgeon on this score, but it continues
> to strikes me that it is 100% ethically wrong for a journalistic
> organization to directly profit from specific news content.

You are not the only curmudgeon. And I can't imagine I'm the only one
raising their hand and saying, "me too!" It goes against everything any
of us learned in journ school.

> We can continue to deceive ourselves by saying that there is no
> sales input into the editorial content (at least for now), that we
> are only "serving" our readers by making it easier to buy, etc.

Yet are those readers so stupid they can't figure out where else to go
to buy? Or are they being treated that way? It seems like January
Magazine is one of the few sites left that *doesn't* sell books, even
though all of our content is around books. But we're not a bookseller.
We don't aspire to being booksellers. I get a lot of reader mail, but no
one has ever written and asked where to buy the books we write about.
Frankly, I wouldn't tell them if they did.

> But
> the bottom line is, we are tailoring our editorial presentations to
> maximize specific sales in which we have a specific interest. This
> is a quantum slide down the slope from the idea of creating a
> topical section so that we can sell general ads related to
> that topic.

A big slide. A fast track. The sale of jounalistic integrity for a
couple of links. 

> If you can't make money without prostituting your ethics, maybe
> it's time to close up shop.

Somewhere there is a model for generating money with news sites. Clearly
we haven't found it yet. When news agencies become hawkers it's time to
think of another model, 'cause this ain't it.



-- 

A u t h o r  &  J o u r n a l i s t    
Editor, January Magazine    



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