The 527 Media Has Totally Abandoned Business Sense

This post could be a mile long, and I’ve promised myself I’m going to cut back on the long ones.

So let me simply say this: When I started blogging, I expected the repeated failures by the business press to objectively and accurately describe what is happening in the economy and the government to give me plenty of material to work with. And it has.

What I did not expect, and what continues to amaze me, is the total lack of business sense in the newsrooms of America.

Fundamentally, in a business transaction, each party operates expecting to be treated fairly by the other. Of course, fairness is in the eye of the beholder, but so is the perception that the other party is trying to be fair.

It has become painfully obvious that all too often the press doesn’t even try to be fair with its viewers and readers, doesn’t even try to be balanced and objective, and simply doesn’t care if we don’t like it. That would be fine if there weren’t alternatives, but there are plenty, and The 527 Media companies are paying the steep price of lost readership and viewership that can’t be explained away by whining, “Oh, it’s the Internet.”

The people in charge of The 527 Media companies either can’t or won’t get their newsrooms to acknowledge that their conduct is hurting their businesses, and has the potential in many instances to deal blows that will put them out of business, or at least leave them as shells of their former selves.

Five examples of press coverage that is not only dumb but also costly to the businesses themselves will suffice (I could probably come up with 50 and barely break a sweat), and then my brief-post pledge will shut me up:

• Plamegate — It should have been obvious to anyone that only the most dedicated of partisans would even try to follow the ins and outs of this story, and that continuing to beat on it would alienate readers. Beyond that, now that the leaker has been identified and the press found to be at least complicit in perpetuating a story that those covering it almost certainly knew wasn’t going anywhere, the wrath of readers and viewers who DID invest their time in following these stories will be strong. Relevant NewsBusters posts on Plamegate are here, here, and here. Jeff Babbin at American Spectator has the definitive take (”A Special Place in Hell”; HT e-mailer Larwyn) on the Plamegate fallout.

• The White House Press Corps’ Conduct — Their boorishness is on display for all to see within minutes of when it occurs. How many viewers are going to make it a point to avoid watching yet another prolonged game of “gotcha”?

• The ID Games — Newspapers and broadcasts stubbornly refuse to identify the origin of who has committed a crime (illegal immigrant, race, ethnicity, Muslim terrorist, etc.), even when that person is at large and the public could be of help in nabbing the perp. People are not going to buy newspapers or view TV shows if they feel that the media outlets involved won’t even carry out their minimal civic duties.

• No Political Coverage of Legitimate Challengers — This one partcularly frosts me, as those who have read this post and others know, from the standpoint of basic fairness. But from a business perspective, failing to cover challengers is dumb too. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that The Cincinnati Enquirer would have sold more than a few additional papers if it had reported that Mike DeWine was losing party endorsement contests to his challenger, including one in Clermont County? An upset by a local sports team sells papers; the four upsets DeWine suffered at the hands of local resident Bill Pierce should have been covered for that reason alone.

• The AP Photographer/Terrorist in Iraq — The latest from Michelle Malkin (HT Sister Toldjah) is that:
  

  “Bilal Hussein had strong insurgent ties.”

  The underlying story has the Pentagon saying that:

  “In three separate “independent objective reviews, it was determined that Hussein was a security threat and recommended his continued detention.”

  Is the AP so tone-deaf that it doesn’t realize that having a terrorist on its payroll might affect readers’ attitudes towards the wire service, and the papers that carry its stories?

Like I said, that’s a quick five, and I could get to 50 without any trouble (let’s see, there’s Reuters Fauxtography, the fake dead guy, the fake press vehicle bombing, the Red Cross ambulance hoax, Green Helmet Guy, hammering the “no Iraq-Al Qaeda ties” when they reported the opposite in 1999 (HT Gateway Pundit via Wizbang; Update — also noticed today by Porkopolis, who has another link about the link) ….. (stop, fingers, stop!).

One wonders what it will take for the people who own and run The 527 Media businesses to tire of watching their newsrooms destroy business value, resist their pleas that the newspeople know best because they are (all bow, please) “journalists,” and return some sanity to the situation.

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UPDATE: In an e-mail earlier today, Porkopolis pointed me to an item by Jeff Jarvis about a successful German totally-online newspaper effort. Notably, it was a ground-up effort, not some kind of brand extension.