Science bloggers, Forbes, and E.B. White
For those who have followed my discussions here about industry-produced blog posts at ScienceBlogs and at Forbes, you might be interested to know that this is not a new phenomenon. Long before “blog” entered our lexicon, E.B. White, the eminent prose stylist–who, to my knowledge, was not especially known as a defender of journalistic mores–railed against a similar situation in Esquire magazine–in 1976!
David Cay Johnston reminds us of the episode, in a post on Romenesko:
In 1976 a company with an impeccable reputation, Xerox, paid $40,000 plus $15,000 in expenses to Harrison E. Salisbury, a journalist of impeccable reputation, to write a 23-page essay about our nation for Esquire magazine. Xerox had no role in editing the piece, it just book ended Salisbury’s eloquent words with its ads in what Time Magazine reported was planned as “the first Xerox special in print.”
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Here’s what E.B. White had to say, in part:
“Whatever money changes hands, something goes along with it–an intangible something that varies with the circumstances. It would be hard to resist the suspicion that Esquire feels indebted to Xerox, that Mr. Salisbury feels indebted to both, and that the ownership or sovereignty of Esquire has been nibbled all around the edges…A funded article is a tempting morsel for any publication–particularly for one that is having a hard time making ends meet. A funded assignment is a tempting dish for a writer, who may pocket a much larger fee than he is accustomed to getting.”
The entire post is worth reading; it’s not too long. I urge you to take a look. Also, note the details concerning the founding of The New Yorker.
- Paul Raeburn
October 9th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
In David Foster Wallace’s brilliant essay “A Supposedly Funny Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” he tells about a review included in Celebrity Cruises’s PR pamphlet by the writer Frank Conroy.
Foster writes “In other words, Celebrity Cruises is presenting Conroy’s review of his 7NC Cruise as an essay and not a commercial. This is extremely bad.” Foster contends that “an essay’s fundamental obligations are supposed to be to the reader.” He continues that an advertisement’s primary obligation, on the other hand, is to serve the financial interests of its sponsor.
Conroy’s response to Foster’s question to him: “I prostituted myself.”
This issue, of course, goes well beyond “essays” written for PR pamphlets and well beyond blogging and even science journalism to journalism as a whole.
October 10th, 2010 at 11:30 am
Paul it would be interesting to speculate on White’s take on community supported journalism where members of the public directly fund journalism, incl some of mine.
Given the collapse of commercial media what other options are available?
October 10th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Stephen & Stephen (!)–
I certainly don’t claim to have the answers; I’m pointing out the problems, to help us all think about what the answers might be. Journalists owe their allegiance to their readers; if their readers pay them, that doesn’t seem to be a conflict. If someone else pays them, that does.
And, as I think I’ve pointed out before, journalists have always been hamstrung by their publishers. That’s why you didn’t see many investigative stories on local used-car dealers–because they took out multiple pages in the classifieds.