The Dallas Morning News--in a circulation free fall after a series of major gaffs, including a circulation scandal and Keven Ann Willey's astonishingly tone deaf decision to name "The Illegal Allien" as "Texan of the Year"--has announced that its news department will report directly to its sales department.
As of yesterday, some section editors at all of the company's papers, including The News, will now report directly to Carr's team of sales managers, now referred to as general managers. In short, those who sell ads for A.H. Belo's products will now dictate content within A.H. Belo's products, which is a radical departure from the way newspapers have been run since, oh, forever.
This is pretty astonishing. Small weekly newspapers frequently become "reporters" for his advertising clients, but large papers try to maintain some distance between sales and reporting. I guess if you are capable of helping sink the paper in Phoenix, you can do it in Dallas, too.
Posted by: North Valley Republican | December 04, 2009 at 12:21 PM
It's the only way papers are going to survive...at least until people realize they're just ads.
Posted by: L | December 06, 2009 at 07:24 PM