PressEthic

Is there an irreconciliable difference of interest between the corporate face and the journalistic face of a newspaper?

That is the overarching theme of a thought-provoking article by Ken Auletta in the October 10th issue of The New Yorker. The story starts with Los Angeles Times editor John S. Carroll's resignation from the paper and then goes on to explain his decision by describing the history of conflict between Carroll and the "suits," the Tribune Company (who bought the Times Mirror Company in 2000, giving them ownership of the Times among other publications).

The unofficial reason for Carroll's departure from the Times, according to Auletta, is because he tired of the Tribune Company's obsession with the bottom line. Carroll believed that cost-cutting undermined the very objective the corporate wing of the publication was trying to achieve -- higher profits.

He believed that, on the contrary, investing in the newspaper would eventually produce higher profits, which was what the company eagerly sought, and that cutting costs, while it would temporarily improve the bottom line, would erode the paper and might someday destroy it.

But the Company felt otherwise -- or didn't care enough about the quality of the paper. Their primary goal was to keep Wall Street's faith in them intact and to maintain profit margins at a (seemingly random) acceptable percentage. And if that meant laying off staff and cutting back on resources, so be it.

The priorities of the editor and the Company were at complete odds with each other. But which makes more sense? As someone who is entering the field of print journalism, I would like to believe, like Carroll, that throwing all your resources into producing a first-rate newspaper will pay off in readership in the long run. But is that really true? In the last month, other companies that own first-rate newspapers have cut back -- including the New York Times Company, owners of the newspaper of record.

Perhaps the "suits" are right -- great journalism alone cannot sustain the industry. But it is disheartening to think that the quality of journalism can be controlled by the bottom line -- and that it's an either/or situation. Great profits or great journalism. Carroll certainly saw it that way:

"...it is a test case No. 1 of whether a newspaper chain can produce a first-rate newspaper." Carol added, "It may be that it is simply structurally impossible."