Not of market research, kitten:
didn’t go far enough. As for “the distrust of marketing. . . so deeply
ingrained in traditional mainstream newsroom culture,” Gahran asserts,
“I’d dare say that it’s a big reason why news organizations are
struggling for relevance and revenue these days. It’s hard to update
your business model when an important part of your organization is
inherently wary of market research.”
I don’t think most journalists are distrustful of marketing. I think they’re distrustful of the completely crap notion that it’s what’s in the paper that matters more than where the paper is and who knows about it. For years, for fucking decades, we’ve been told that if we covered this and not that, that and not this, it would make all the difference in the world. Now we’re finding out that we’ve been shuffling and reshuffling and working our asses off, and the only thing that really counts is how much debt Sam Zell was willing to take on to buy himself a shiny. So it’s not distrust of marketing.
It’s distrust of bullshit, because reporters did their jobs right for years, only to see executive ass-sucking weasels and starfucking columnists get rich and good work get shot, and somehow there’s always money for a survey or a branding study or a consultancy but never any to do challenging journalism, so really, just shove it, because that’s all I’ve got after a double-scotch-rocks at the end of an absolutely bitching 18-hour day. None of this is fixing the problem. It’s not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, right? It’s like … polishing the doorknob on that one stateroom on level six.
Schmucks.
A.
cafeteria news is not news.