And The Edit/Ad Wall Comes Down as Section Editors Now Report To Sales Managers At The Dallas Morning News: Now What?
The Dallas Morning News (and A.H. Belo’s other papers) is restructuring.
The wall between editorial and advertising is tumbling down.
As of yesterday, certain section heads at the company’s papers will report to sales managers.
The Dallas Observer writes: “In short, those who sell ads for A.H. Belo’s products will now dictate content within A.H. Belo’s products, which is a radical departure from the way newspapers have been run since, oh, forever.”
True, A.H. Belo has been struggling financially recently, but what print media company isn’t? Is this the best way to inject some cash into a dying company?
Editor Bob Mong called Unfair Park, the Dallas Observer’s blog, to discuss the restructuring, and had this to say:
There’s no journalist in our organization who will allow a business person to cross the line. It just won’t happen. I’m not going to allow it to happen…
It’s important we figure out better ways to generate revenue and create new products and bring in new revenue to the company. That’s best done through teamwork and collaboration. So I am very confident … [Pause] We started talking about this more than a year ago, and in hiring the general manager, the publisher [Jim Moroney] has gotten involved in talking about where the line is drawn. He’s been very active in that. So have I, so have the journalists involved.
I understand the perception, but time will prove we can do this.
Gene Weingarten, humor columnist for the Washington Post but who is also insightful in things non-humor related, called this announcement, in all seriousness (as far as we can tell): “the worst thing to happen in the history of the printed page.”
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