#when mbas rule the newsroom

[aint-love-heavy]

Nowhere were the principles of marketplace newspapering carried out with more enthusiasm--and met with more unhappiness--than at the [London, Ontario] Free Press, where editors, armed with surveys of their readership, virtually overnight revamped the newspaper into a local version of USA Today that follows "a McPaper formula, processing bite-sized chunks of easily digestible news that sell well," as Mark Richardson put it in the Ryerson Review of Journalism. In a protest piece, [former Free Press city editor Don] Gibb wrote in Content magazine that the newspaper had fallen under the "formula pap" of "MBA journalism" where "profit is the driving force over quality journalism." He said surveys dictate what stories the newspaper will run, graphics and new formats are developed by consultants, and reporters are told by editors what their stories should say before they write them. "Today, there is a feeling of despair in the [Free Press] newsroom," Gibb wrote. "It has been sapped of enthusiasm, initiative and creativity because the reporters feel they have little or no control over what they do." Editor Philip McLeod said that, despite similarities, the redesigned newspaper isn't an imitation of USA Today, but he admitted that its emphasis is on readability rather than on the writing in the newspaper. "Good writing often gets in the way of other things you're trying to do," McLeod said. Critics of MBA-style journalism say they see a clear pattern when the marketers gain control of a newspaper. Not only does the substance of the newspaper become secondary to the planning, prettyfying, and promoting of the newspaper, but newspaper executives often must institute tough newsroom management systems in order to bring along newsworkers reluctant to buy into the philosophy of market-oriented journalism. Many of those journalists speak with great passion--and much disillusionment--about what is happening to the newspaper business. "If ten, fifteen years ago, you told someone in a newsroom, 'This is our product,' they would have looked at you like you were nuts," says a former Hartford Courant reporter quoted in Andrew Kerig's Spiked. "Products were shoes. But now newspapers are thought of as products, marketed as products. It's a different philosophy. And when you change the shape of an industry like that, you're going to have terrible discontent--legitimate discontent--among the people who have been in it."

When MBAs Rule the Newsroom by Doug Underwood, first published in 1993, apropos of nothing in particular in 2024 (emphasis mine)

[aint-love-heavy]

It's probably no surprise that in an era of mass media conglomerates, big chain expansion, and multimillion dollar newspaper buy-outs, the editors of daily newspapers have begun to behave more and more like the managers of any other corporate entity. And it's understandable, too, that after more than a decade of Ronald Reagan and George Bush's laissez-faire leadership and an anything-goes ethic in the boardroom, the executives of today's daily newspapers have decided to treat their readership as a market and the news as a product to appeal to that market.

Doug Underwood, When MBAs Rule the Newsroom (1993)

[aint-love-heavy]

It's really weird (and annoying) to always be walking this line of genuinely respecting and wanting to protect journalists but being constantly infuriated by the state of contemporary algorithm/clickbait-driven reporting. I'm the daughter of two dyed-in-the-wool reporters, both of whom worked for a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning paper back in the heyday of print journalism. I have a profound respect for what journalism can reveal and protect us from when performed with integrity and courage. Living through an era where the president and his followers literally penned up and surrounded and harassed the press at rallies and wore shirts that said “Rope, Tree, Journalist -- Some Assembly Required” was horrifying. But witnessing the ways social media snark and TV ratings and click throughs and keywords have changed how news is delivered -- and the way everything is now some degree of infotainment -- is also horrifying to be honest. (And of course news organizations have always been somewhat beholden to advertisers and sponsors, but the Conglomerate Media and Twitter News era has reshaped things entirely.) I think it's pretty much impossible to overstate the importance of a free press. But it's for that very reason that the antics coming from mainstream journalists working at big-name papers and networks is so frustrating. Your job is crucial, do it right!