Re:Why Pierre Omidyar decided to join forces with Glenn Gree...
by malandrew on Thursday October 17, 2013 @12:28AM
(#6563670)
By “support” Omidyar means many things. The first and most
important is really good editors. (Omidyar used the phrase
“high standards of editing” several times during our
talk.)
By high standards of editing, I hope that the editors' only focus is pushing their writers to create better work and that the editors themselves are 100% shielded from economic pressures and the only consumer they listen to are readers.
The biggest problem with news today is that the customer is the advertiser and this customer has the ear of the editors. The news industry needs the journalistic equivalent of the chinese wall in finance. The news arm should not have contact with the advertising arm except with the presence of counsel (i.e. compliance).
At the end of the day, the 5th estate has a serious conflict of interest just as retail banking and i-banking does, and this conflict of interest likes in the gulf between advertisers and writers/editors.
The biggest problem with news today is that the customer is the advertiser and this customer has the ear of the editors. The news industry needs the journalistic equivalent of the chinese wall in finance. The news arm should not have contact with the advertising arm except with the presence of counsel (i.e. compliance).
At the end of the day, the 5th estate has a serious conflict of interest just as retail banking and i-banking does, and this conflict of interest likes in the gulf between advertisers and writers/editors.