The Modern Journalist

Editors and Publishers Get Together on Making Money

I’m about to commit heresy. I’m going to be accused of breaking down the Church-State wall that has “existed” in journalism since the dawn of time. I’m going to anger old-school journalists (which is funny, since most people think I’m old school in terms of my reporting — and attitude).

The job of a media company is to make money.

That’s it. End of story. There is no other reason for a company to exist other than to make money. I know this because I live in America, where everything costs money. Nothing is given for free. And we’re all expected to have a job where we can earn said money so we can buy things made by other corporations.

If we can all agree on that, we’ll be in a better place.

That doesn’t mean that we don’t love our jobs. I loved being a reporter far more than I loved being a manager. I loved chasing stories. Finding information. Breaking news. Getting people who deserved to be gotten. Fighting battles I thought needed to be fought.

But I recognized that if I wrote stories that nobody cared about, I wasn’t doing a very good job. I also realized that if I wasn’t learning new skills, building new types of stories and interactive with the world around me, I was going to find myself irrelevant in a modern world.

Now, editors and publishers are starting to get that message as well. It’s not enough to write what’s important. You have to write what’s important, provide data and information to readers when they want it, develop easy-to-use tools for them to find and publish their own information, create niche communities, devise ways to sell wares that you make (content) and create a sustainable business plan.

In other words, newspapers and magazines need to examine what they do best, which is provide data and information (these are two radically different things) to readers. It’s easy to bring down the separation of church and state when you’re providing data. Hell, you should. Create products that people will BUY. Where you don’t break it down is with information.

Here’s a good example from a Forbes article:

During a recent meeting at the Des Moines Register to discuss ways of revamping the paper’s online local business directory, an editorial staffer asked why the newsroom was involved in a project that was so clearly aimed at generating more advertising, Register Editor Carolyn Washburn says. Washburn’s response?

“This isn’t a news story, but it’s content and we know how to organize it better than anyone,” she recalled saying.

During my talks, I encourage editors to remove the calendar function from the editorial department. It should rest solely in the hands of the marketing or sales department. It’s not original content. It’s data. You can package that in a number of ways, then re-sell it multiple times.

It’s the perfect content to build revenues, which in turn allows reporters to do what they do: report the news.