OPINION:
MERCHANTS OF TRUTH: THE BUSINESS OF NEWS AND THE FIGHT FOR FACTS
By Jill Abramson
Simon & Schuster, $30, 544 pages
Today, the news media faces an existential crisis. With falling advertising revenue, layoffs and eroding public confidence, the future of American journalism is in doubt.
To explore the wild disruptions in the news media, Jill Abramson has written “Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts,” an examination of four of the most influential media outlets: The New York Times (of which Ms. Abramson served as the first female executive editor), The Washington Post, BuzzFeed and Vice. The format of Ms. Abramson’s book was modeled after David Halberstam’s “The Powers that Be,” which chronicled the activities of the top media outlets of that time.
Ms. Abramson dishes extensive behind-the-scenes information from each of the media outlets and their principle players she profiles at a dizzying clip. She details how longtime Washington Post journalist Robert Kaiser attended a conference in the early 1990s at which he was persuaded by the prospect of a future of online news. He wrote a detailed memo to his supervisors on what he had learned and why The Post needed to embrace it and it was shelved for three years.
The Post also missed other key opportunities. Its publisher, Donald Graham, became acquainted with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Ms. Abramson reports that Mr. Graham wanted to invest $6 million for a 10 percent ownership stake in Facebook. Facebook’s board opted to pursue investment from venture capitalists. Had Mr. Graham made that deal, The Washington Post never would have had financial problems.
When one of The Post’s top editors, John Harris, wanted to establish a team to deliver up-to-the minute political coverage, management responded by approving a scaled-back version of the idea he proposed. Mr. Harris and top political reporter Jim VandeHei then left to form the wildly successful Politico.
Ms. Abramson delves deeply into the workings of The New York Times, her former employer. A number of her revelations include The Times’ financial difficulties. Its finances were in such dire straits, The Gray Lady secured a loan from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
However, not all of Ms. Abramson’s observations relate to advertising dollars and the number of clicks an online story received. She recounts the difficulty of telling the family of Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid that he died of an asthma attack aggravated by an allergic reaction while on assignment. She also recalls the emotional toll of laying off seasoned journalists. Ms. Abramson discusses frankly her ouster from The NYT for “being difficult.”
Ms. Abramson’s examination of BuzzFeed as an aggregator of frivolous lists to a rising news organization is a study in the transformation of how quickly an online company can transform itself into a news source. Its founder, Jonah Peretti, was one of the original staffers of the HuffingtonPost. He became an expert on how stories get passed from one person to another. To ensure BuzzFeed stories would appear high in online searches, story headlines were written to the way people wrote Google search terms.
A constant theme of “The Merchants of Truth” is the blurring of lines between the editorial and business sections of the various media outlets profiled. The New York Times’ advertising director allowed representatives of one of its major advertisers to attend one of its “Page One” meetings, where the next day’s front-page stories were decided.
BuzzFeed and Vice were marketers of “native advertising,” content that was nearly indistinguishable from news and paid advertising. After Donald Graham was succeeded as publisher of The Washington Post by his niece, Katharine Weymouth, she organized dinners at her home with Post reporters and lobbyists who paid to attend. This created a public relations debacle for The Post.
Ms. Abramson’s book is quite timely, and the subjects of her book make news, as well as report news. Just before the release of “Merchants of Truth,” BuzzFeed was rocked when its report that President Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen said Mr. Trump ordered him to lie to Congress was denied by special counsel Robert Mueller. Shortly thereafter, BuzzFeed reduced its workforce by 15 percent. Around the same time, Vice trimmed 10 percent of its staff.
Just as traditional and online media have had controversies over plagiarism and careless reporting, Ms. Abramson has acknowledged parts of her book contain work by others that should have been attributed. Given the precarious state of the media in terms of financial viability and lost credibility, this incident confirms modern media’s struggles and serves as a warning to the average news consumer.
“Merchants of Truth” is entertaining while shedding light on the practices and priorities of modern journalism. However, readers may question the book’s title. Are these emerging and long-standing media organizations “merchants of truth?” The answer may not be known for years.
Kevin P. McVicker is vice president of Shirley & Banister Public Affairs in Alexandria, Va.
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