The Media Industry's Cash Crunch Makes Pay-to-Play Look Much More Tempting

By Rory O'Connor, RoryOConnor.org. Posted July 14, 2009.

Moreover, it turns out that special interest and 'pay-for-play' salons are pretty much business as usual these days in most media circles. Atlantic Media publisher David Bradley -- owner of the Atlantic and the National Journal -- defended his company's six-year old practice of sponsored salons, noting 2,000 guests, including "journalists from virtually all major networks, national magazines and newspapers", have attended them.

In fact the Post was late to the sponsored salon party. In addition to Atlantic Media, a number of other leading entities -- including The Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker and The Economist -- have long seen such corporation-sponsored salons and conference as a lucrative source of income, one that David Bradley calls necessary and justified at a time when "the economic foundation beneath journalism is falling away."

Even Politico, which broke the story of the Post salons, is sneaking revenue-enhancers into its editorial coverage. What "reader benefit" was there for me when I clicked on a link to the word 'business' in their post about the Post's business - only to learn, after the fact, that it was a paid link to a Blackberry ad embedded in the piece castigating the Post?

As Politico's Michael Calderone recently noted, most news organizations have been forced to look for alternative streams of revenue such as conferences and events that attendees have to pay to take part in. "It's understandable that the Post or other news organizations would want to do this," Calderone said. "The key difference, at least according to some media watchers and professors that I spoke to in the last couple days, is whether there is any benefit to the news organization and then in turn any benefit to readers. And the issue with the Washington Post salons, at least according to this flyer, was that they were going to be off the record. So there really is no ostensible benefit to readers."

A fair point - but it implies the sin was one of omission rather than commission, does it not? If there is some sort of reader benefit, are such salons really so bad? Even if they are, is there any way to turn back the clock to a Twentieth Century Media Dream that may never really have been all that real in the first place?

As Zachary Roth noted recently on the Talking Points Memo web site:

"Clearly, there are degrees of egregiousness here. A corporate-sponsored event that's off the record and closed to the media and the public seems more objectionable than one that's open and on the record. Equally, an event that's focused on a public-policy issue that's of particular interest to the event's corporate sponsor seems more objectionable than, say, having a clothing company or an airline put up money for a festival that treats everything from the global economy to indie rock, as in the case of The New Yorker. An event whose advertising seeks to lure corporate lobbyists by promising the ability to directly influence elected officials or journalists seems, perhaps, more objectionable than one where the potential for influence-peddling is at least less explicit. It's also worth noting that when a daily newspaper risks compromising its coverage of a key policy issue, it probably does more damage than when a monthly ideas magazine appears to do the same.

See more stories tagged with: media, journalism, corruption, pay to play, washington post, salons

Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor is the author of "Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio" (AlterNet Books, 2008). O'Connor also writes the Media Is A Plural blog.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Media and Technology! Sign up now »