Writing a research paper on ethics for entrepreneurial journalists

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Comment by Laura Lorek on March 5, 2010 at 6:20pm

Great idea. I'll tell you I haven't seen as many conflicts yet as I do with citizen journalists who haven't been trained in conflicts of interest. I've been a professional journalist for more than two decades so I know that if something doesn't seem right, it isn't. I haven't yet started accepting sponsorships or advertising for my new tech site, but when I do I expect I will be dealing with some ethical issues. But really it isn't any different from a traditional paper. Dailies take money from advertisers. (But then again I have seen a chilling effect against some of the largest advertisers - I mean, really, how many car dealer investigations do you see in daily newspapers?)

Comment by Tracy Record on March 3, 2010 at 2:41am

Just one note re: us - we're not a one-person operation. I'm the main content person, and my husband is the main business (advertising) person. This is fulltime work for both of us - and no other sources of income - we are blessed to have developed enough ad revenue for that. He does some newsgathering work, primarily going out to breaking-news scenes to gather info/visuals to feed back to me "on the desk" and taking notes at community-group meetings on nights when there are two - but I don't do any ad sales. I cannot imagine what it's like for the one-person bands, not because of any ethical or other conflicts, but because the workload would be crushing! (And I say that as someone who works 18 hours a day just doing my part of the site!)

Comment by Suzanne Yada on March 3, 2010 at 1:18am

Thanks Tracy. I hope this question didn't come across like an insult. Like I mentioned, I've been involved in nine media startups, and only one is still going strong. Eight failed because content producers simply do not know how to deal with advertising -- the act of obtaining and keeping it, the ethics of it, the service it provides and the downsides. That's why I'm very interested in this topic, and I want to inform those content producers out there what it's really like.

I too have worked in traditional media at a daily paper, and I've seen ethical breaches with my own eyes. But I've also seen some ethics breached at some of the other startups I've been involved with. The dilemmas are always there, but the results vary depending on 1) how the people at the helm handle them and 2) the culture of the organization.

My goal with this paper is to shed light on the kind of ethical dilemmas a one-man/woman show would face and compare those issues with that of traditional media. Your response fits that to a tee, so again I thank you.

I can only imagine the question gets annoying after the thousandth time. :)

Comment by Tracy Record on March 2, 2010 at 11:27pm

Having worked in traditional media and entrepreneurial journalism, I would suggest that pursuing an inquiry on this is kind of like having to answer the old joke line, "So how long have you been beating your spouse?" I have seen far more transparency in this line of work than in the big media. Do you see big media identifying their sponsors when writing about them? Do you see big media explaining where their story tips come from, including whether a sponsor happened to contribute the tip or some other component? I saw far more ethical questionability in corporate news media - "we're doing this series because we found a sponsor for it" - than I have faced doing this.

We took a stand from the very first day we added ads, saying that any time we mentioned a sponsor, we would identify them as such, even if it was something innocuous like an events-calendar entry, and we keep to that scrupulously. But a question I have fielded before - "what if one of your sponsors were arrested/caught doing something embarrassing/(got in some other trouble)? would you write about it?" -- seems almost like an insult to be asked. Of course we would! I'd suggest that there is less at risk if you are a small operation that might lose an ad worth a few hundred dollars if someone gets ticked off at what you write, than if you are a big operation at risk of losing a contract worth tens or hundreds of thousands.

Last but not least - if you really want to write about the relationship between entrepreneurial journalists and businesspeople/advertisers, I'd say the really interesting issue is learning - especially if you've come from the theoretically walled world - to embrace them and what they contribute to your community. They are involved in the community, in local schools, in local organizations, and often are great sources of bonafide story ideas that have nothing to do with their businesses. I never realized that, till working in my own neighborhood doing community news, after fleeing the big-city newsrooms downtown.