New Type Of Reporter?

I am not suggesting that reporters should be selling ads, but it would really only be an issue if readers or listeners feel they can't trust the publication's coverage, as a result. As a reporter / ad salesperson, let's say you did sell ads and then reported on someone you sold an ad to. ... you are only crossing an ethical line if you allow the fact that you sold an ad to them to influence your coverage. Otherwise, there is a possible appearance of impropriety, but nothing beyond that. Your coverage is still unbiased, isn't it?

This push-pull between publishers and editors has always been there, long before newspapers struggled the way they are now. Even without a reporter also being an ad salesman (and if this is really widespread now, I can't believe how far the industry has fallen), did newspapers cross an ethical line by selling ads at all to businesses that might be covered in the newspaper? I mean, let's say you have a separate ad sales person, but you are still covering then editorially. Isn't there a possible appearance of impropriety in that they paid for an ad? Should people be suspicious that that will taint your coverage? Or is it different because the newspaper says there is a Chinese wall between ad sales and editorial, and even then, why believe it?

These issues have always been there. And when newspapers and magazines (which I knew a bit more about) were doing better, the good ones did keep those Chinese walls in place, disclosed how they did it, and it paid off in circulation. Today? Keeping readers is an issue regardless of how you run your publication, so this practice, if it is getting widespread, isn't the cause of the industry's decline; it's a symptom.

I appreciate that a lot of journalists seethe at the suggestion of selling ads, and the "ethical line" you posted about is the natural response for a lot of people. But as someone who has been a publisher and an editor in past lives, I always thought that there was often too little regard by some journalists for the fact that with ad-supported publications, the ads are how the business makes money (to state the obvious). That makes it a tricky highwire to walk sometimes when it comes to the editorial, but I found that some editors and writers would act so high-minded about the ethical lines, that it bordered on ridiculous. When I read the OP, I was actually envisioning the man or woman 50 or 60 years ago who decided to start a newspaper in a small community and would be selling ads, writing, reporting, doing paste-up, distributing copies of the paper, etc. There was no high-mindedness about a Chinese wall. It was wanting to produce the newspaper for people and doing whatever he or she had to do to make it happen.