The Relationship Between Ad Revenue and Journalism

This article is from November 2016, but it has stuck out to me. We have discussed the relationships between journalists and advertisers relatively extensively in the media world, and this piece highlights a true flaw in the system. In this instance, people are creating “news” or “stories” for the blatant desire to get clicks, and thus advertising revenue, with little regard for facts or journalistic principles.

This is what happens when you have no oversight over qualities of journalism — it can go from being a tool of information for the people to simply a way to make money in the easiest way possible. Some advertisers/adword services simply do not supervise or care about where their ads are getting placed, so long as they are drawing in eyeballs.

Here’s a snippet about the dynamic between journalism an ad revenue, and where the line gets blurred for profit: 

Wade knew he needed a picture to sell the story to readers. He searched online for an image of a human experiment that, as he describes it, would make people think, “What is that? I got to click.” He found what he recalls was a “totally misleading” photograph of a fleshy mass and made it the featured image. He wrote the headline, “[PROOF] N. Korea Experiments on Humans,” published the story and made $120 off 10 minutes of work. It was, he says, a revelation: “You have to trick people into reading the news."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/for-the-new-yellow-journalists-opportunity-comes-in-clicks-and-bucks/2016/11/20

-Joe