by sskennel
Science bloggers, Forbes, and E.B. White
[Via Knight Science Journalism Tracker]
For those who have followed my discussions here about industry-produced blog posts at ScienceBlogs and at Forbes, you might be interested to know that this is not a new phenomenon. Long before “blog” entered our lexicon, E.B. White, the eminent prose stylist–who, to my knowledge, was not especially known as a defender of journalistic mores–railed against a similar situation in Esquire magazine–in 1976!
David Cay Johnston reminds us of the episode, in a post on Romenesko:
In 1976 a company with an impeccable reputation, Xerox, paid $40,000 plus $15,000 in expenses to Harrison E. Salisbury, a journalist of impeccable reputation, to write a 23-page essay about our nation for Esquire magazine. Xerox had no role in editing the piece, it just book ended Salisbury’s eloquent words with its ads in what Time Magazine reported was planned as “the first Xerox special in print.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
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E. B. White had some interesting and worthwhile points about writing a commissioned article like this. One key point:
Whatever money changes hands, something goes along with it–an intangible something that varies with the circumstances.
An ostensibly independently written piece of work loses that independence very easily if the sponsoring organization is too ham-handed. There used to be a wall between editorial content and advertising. Noy much anymore, ay least at some sites.
Take , for example, this recent attempt of US News and world Report:
Why I Won’t Blog for U.S. News and World Report
[Via PLoS Blogs]
Editor’s note: It’s an honor to host the following guest post on the perils of science blogging in the modern media age by my distinguished colleague Mary Knudson. Mary is my co-editor for the book, A Field Guide for Science Writers, worked for 17 years as a medical writer for The Baltimore Sun and currently teaches science and medical writing at Johns Hopkins University. As noted in the post below, she is also author of the highly praised book, Living Well with Heart Failure.
When U.S. News and World Report invited me to write a weekly blog on heart failure and other heart issues at its website, I looked forward to building a following of people with heart failure and their families and other members of the public and perhaps some health professionals interested in this growing health problem. My first blog post and an accompanying sidebar on what the blog would be about were ready to go public at usnews.com at 9 a.m. on September 23.
Shortly before that time, by clicking on the titles of the two posts which I found listed on the right side of the page under “recent posts”, I could see the first third of the blog post and sidebar. Surprised to see a number of highlighted words in the text of both the story and sidebar, I hovered over them and was shocked to see what jumped out. First was the picture of a man’s face and the message with it told me to support him for senator. Next out came an ad for baby lotion for diaper rash. And then springing from a word in my story on heart failure was a direct link to a website that sells genetic tests. Whoa! I’m sending my readers to a company that sells genetic tests? A journalist could write a story warning consumers to beware of genetic tests because of their limitations and shortcomings. These links from my story to commercial products were unacceptable to me. I couldn’t have ads jumping out of the words of my blog post. I consider that U.S. News, a well-known weekly news magazine, has crossed the line that is supposed to separate advertising from news and editorial content. I told the magazine this and said not to publish my blog with ads popping out of it. This separation of advertising and editorial content is a long-held tenet of journalism.
I discovered that I had no control over what words in my blog post would trigger sending readers to other sites or what sites they were sent to. I only had access to the first third of my blog posts that were about to go public, so I don’t know how many other ads may have been imbedded in my story without my permission.
Advertising was attached to specific words without any input from the writer. In fact, many of the links went to medical organizations that the magazine had a ‘partnership’, even of that link was not appropriate. So the website could attach ads that wee totally at odds with what was being written.
Thus making anyone a hack writer, writing purely to connect the advertising side of things rather than educating the public. Ms. Knudson, who had spent many years writing to educating the public, decided that she did not want to simply be a shill for the magazine, a shill with absolutely no say in how her words were advertised.
This is one reason the MSM is dying. Their customers are the advertisers, not the readers. Many writers may think they are writing for the readers but the wall between editorial and advertising is long gone. Anyone who cares about readers has little reason to stay.
As for the readers, why should they stick with a model where their needs are not important and they simply represent opportunities for the advertisers? The MSM no longer provides them what they want. It is becoming more and more a space for hacks to provide eyeballs to the ads, and little more.
Yes, perhaps this has always been true but there were fewer alternatives before. Now there are ways to get lots of news and facts without having to pay for a subscription or click on an ad. That is killing the industry.
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by linh.ngân
