Instead, we set up little white-picket-fenced districts of phony sanctity. People criticize newspapers for selling op-ed space to groups and corporations, but those paid soapboxes are among their most honest offerings. We know who's paying for them. We know why. Just as readers often don't know, say, an editorial board member's social contacts or a "real" op-ed writer's lecture fees from an industry or interest group he or she defends. Sell anything! Sell everything! Just tell me who's paying. As it is there are enough petty, hidden influences behind journalism that we'll never see disclosed. This column was made possible by James Poniewozik's craven need to ingratiate himself to readers. This fawning band profile was made possible by the author's need to make his monthly car payment, in cooperation with his vague sexual attraction to the bass player and the magazine's need to get the group on the cover.

It's a sad irony; newspapers are an endangered medium, yet to reap praise, they need to reject advertising. Take the New York Times' decision to forgo tobacco ads, which was principled but, at this juncture in the tobacco wars, a bit like joining the French Resistance in 1946 (though most major newspapers haven't even done that). And for the protection of whom, exactly? The children? I'm sorry, but any minor who's going to take up smoking from seeing ads in the New York Times Magazine has probably already been seduced to the evil weed by his or her extensive collection of Serge Gainsbourg records. ("I couldn't help it! I was 13 years old! And those damn Marlboro ads were right next to Molly O'Neill's warm yet practical cooking column week after week!")

USA Today may or may not spend its money well, but at least it may have found new revenue for papers that would. Whether or not they teach it in J-school, money is editorial ammo. I'd want my local newspaper to run ads for whorehouses above the nameplate if it meant hiring one more staff writer or photographer, rather than relying on yet more wire-service filler, which has made even the down-homiest broadsheets into far greater McPapers than USA Today ever was.

Are newspapers like national parks and churches? Perhaps more than we know. They shouldn't aspire to be tightly fenced game preserves, curiosities doomed never to expand and lucky if they don't shrink further. And if they are churches, better that they find honest ways to thrive with clearly identified money-changers than to become exquisite ruins, patrolled by kindly docents, fronted with pristine and beautifully preserved façades.
salon.com | May 13, 1999

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