Book Cover

The shortcut I worry most about today falls under the rubric of “business pressures.” I worry about the owners of journalistic properties making business decisions that can harm journalism.

# Review

This is a collection of articles written by Ken Auletta for The New Yorker (except one article) along with some short paragraphs to comment on the stories. The central theme of these articles is the relationship between business and journalism, especially for print media. Auletta does acknowledge the benefits of increased profit motive for journalism, such as being able to reinvest the increasing profits in new technologies and more expensive stories, as well as being less susceptible to outside financial pressures. The bulk of his writing, however, is focused on how business and journalism conflict, namely on the conflicting incentives and the ensuing decline in journalism ensuing from said conflict in incentives.

Auletta’s writing touches on several main themes, the primary of which is the ensuing decline in journalism due to the increasing pressure to run news organizations more like businesses. Auletta names many symptoms of said conflict, such as the centralization of local news and the decline in objectiveness of news due to the increase in involvement with the communities that the news is reporting on. Auletta names both negative and positive examples of increasing business involvement in news. Negative examples include Mark H. Willes at Los Angeles Times who broke down the barrier between business and journalism within the organization and received pushback from the journalists. Successful examples include the Chicago Tribune Company, whose chase of synergies allowed for a multimedia approach to news and the admiration from Wall Street.

One interesting aspect about the stories Auletta tells is the impact of technology for traditional news. The move towards more personalized content is evident within his stories (which mostly take place in the late 90s and early 2000s). Technology also impacted news cycles, causing them to be faster and causing traditional news to move more towards opinions rather than the traditional objective news. Many of the stories, however, had very little to do with business within news and felt like filler stories, such as the biography of Howell Raines' tenure at The New York Times and the coverage of the Clinton versus Dole campaign in 1996. There were some interesting stories, though. Such as the rise of Roger Ailes’ Fox News and the failure of Inside.com. Auletta also gives some quick analysis on his view on the future of journalism, as well as some insights on the education of journalists.

# Conclusion

Some articles were interesting while others were not.

# Overall rating: 7.2

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