Journos Not Quite Getting Digital Media

What’s the Latest Development?

Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism says in a report  today on the state of digital media that journalists must rethink their relationships—and their audiences’ relationships—with advertisers. A recurring theme in the report is reflected in this quote from Interactive Advertising Bureau head and former NYT reporter Randall Rothenberg: “Here’s the problem: Journalists just don’t understand their business.”

What’s the Big Idea?

One of the chief problems the report diagnoses is that advertising on the Web tends to have less value for consumers than it does in other formats. “If you ever watch somebody reading a copy of Vanity Fair, they spend as much time looking at the ads as they spend looking at the content, because the ads are actually useful for readers.” Ads having value on their own, is “something that we as journalists have a hard time getting our heads around.” And check out the case study on the Web site that’s like “a sales and distribution company that decided we’re going to fund journalism.”