PressEthic

When I started writing for my college paper, The Daily Athenaeum at West Virginia University, I thought I had a great idea. I’d do a food column - a mix of cooking tips and recipes, advice for eating on a budget and restaurant reviews.

It turns out reviews can be a problem if an advertiser gets a bad one.

Fair enough. I would have rather worked pretending that my newspaper operated solely on journalistic fervor, but I guess it did need cash too. And I had enough story ideas involving the many things students can do with Ramen noodles. Thus, no reviews.

I haven’t thought of that for a while until today. I moved up at the paper, and by the time I became editor I thought most about advertising when it was taking up too much of my news space.

Then today I read this. The San Francisco Examiner had a different spin on restaurant reviews; they used an ad salesman to write them.

Inconsequential, right? There are enough serious issues facing journalism to worry about fluff pieces. But while we talk about reporters fabricating stories and making up sources, The Examiner isn’t too far removed. It just found a new way to lie to its readers. Or maybe,

Young reporters and journalism students try to be idealistic about the future of the profession they’re entering. But at the same time, newspapers are getting gobbled up by huge corporations that care more about profit than accuracy (The Examiner's parent company is called, ironically, The Independent Newspaper Group).

When that greed demotes journalism to an ads circular, it’s hard to stay so optimistic.