By Ryan G. Murphy, Digital Media Editor

Is your soul worth $10 million?

Metaphysics and religion aside, it’s a question that we're constantly asking in our newsrooms as cost cuts and the digital reformation revolutionize our approach to putting out a product and doing business.

Recently, Starbucks struck a deal with MSNBC that will pay the network $10 million to sponsor its morning news show, “Morning Joe.” From an advertising perspective, it’s a great situation. Coffee? Morning Joe? It’s seemingly a “natural fit,” as MSNBC President Phil Griffin called the sponsorship…but where’s journalism left in the mix? And how much of its soul did MSNBC sell to an organization virtually synonymous with corporate branding?

Not surprisingly, journalism purists are enraged. I’ve heard and read words like: “disgusting,” “embarrassment,” and “abrogation of journalistic standards,” to describe the sponsorship.

Realists, in part, see the value that $10 million could have for a news organization. It is, of course, $10 million and in such a horrible economy it’s not difficult to rationalize taking the money. Just image what $10 million could do for your news organization. Imagine, even what $500,000 could do.

I come from the school of thought that you should never jeopardize the product – never place ads above the fold, never sell out. It’s a sentiment I’ll always embrace, yet as I’m exposed more and more to the financial realities that news organizations face, I’ve increasingly come to realize that journalism does not operate in a vacuum.

News organizations across the world are hemorrhaging money. I was told not too long ago that journalism skipped the recession and entered right into a depression. Many editorial teams are being asked to make decisions with revenue as the primary focus and in journalism, where the product is often so personal and tied to its creator, it lends to some potential dilemmas.

Say, for example, my former organization decided to sell an advertising skin that wrapped the homepage – something I would have been vehemently against – but the sponsorship money alone would have saved my job. Would I have been so against jeopardizing the product then? It’s an issue I’ve thought about numerous times and, regrettably, I’ve never been able to give myself a definitive answer. It’s easy to preach about journalistic integrity and ethics when the rent isn’t on the line.

I’m sure the Starbucks sponsorship makes many people reading this uneasy but it’s important to recognize the discussion it starts and see how it forces each of us to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what our threshold is. How much of our journalistic soul are we each willing to sell to keep our news organizations alive? When the money is laid out on the table and your back is to the wall, how much of your products are you willing to sacrifice?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Email me anytime at ryanm@rtnda.org.

Ryan Murphy is the new Digital Media Editor for RTNDA. He brings along several years of newsroom experience and holds an M.S. in Journalism from Boston University.

 

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Starbuck and MSNBC

As long as there is a strict and disciplined line drawn between editorial
and advertising, this should not be a problem. I fought this in my days on
the air and continue to fight it today from the other side, as a PR hack.
Occasionally my company wants to pull ads from a news outlet when they run
a story we don't like. So far I have convinced management to back off.
After 30 years in this business they (fortunately) respect my opinion.

But yes, this could be a problem if a negative news story about Starbucks
is run on MSNBC and Starbucks says, "pull it...or...we pull our money
out..." Let's hope management and news are on the same page.

- Sam Knipp

Starbucks and MSNBC II

Does anyone remember the "Camel News Caravan" with John Cameron Swayze? That's one example from television's roots of sponsors and the news.

Fast-forward to 2009. Profits are shrinking, budgets are cut, and executives are looking for creative ways to improve the bottom-line. While I can't blame them for trying, MSNBC is walking down a rocky path.

Having said that, there needs to be safeguards in place such a thorough understanding that Starbucks is buying time and NOT content.

Also if Starbucks doesn't like the content of a particular story and threatens to pull out, then that's a news story in itself. I believe that a blatant attempt to manipulate or alter content through the use of financial force would hurt the sponsor more than help.

And of course, the air talent should limit any mention of the sponsor to a simple liner like, "this is Morning Joe on MSNBC presented by Starbucks." The sponsor logo in the background should do the trick. Talent should avoid plugs such as how great the product is as they gag it down.

That's my two-cents....."good to the last drop."

Stealth advertising

Advertising that is obvious and open is not the problem. The bigger and more dangerous issue is "stealth advertising" -- that is to say, advertising content disguised as news content, where the commercial, promotional or PR nature of the material is concealed from the public. The most common forms of this in television are deals where a station signs a contract to "cover" medical stories at a particular hospital, for which the hospital pays the station handsomely. (Trudy Lieberman wrote an excellent study about this practice for the Columbia Journalism Review in March, 2007). Every now and then a news director will resign in disgust over such a practice. But even though media critics, the public and sometimes even lawmakers and regulators go nuts over other forms of outside content making it into traditional newscasts (witness the recent critical and regulatory uproar over VNR usage), the practice of stealth advertising goes largely unnoticed and unchallenged. One wonders why. All stealth advertising is deliberately deceptive. By contrast, a Starbucks cup sitting on a news set is open and honest. Yet we get outraged outcries over the latter, and a thundering silence in reaction to the former. It ought to be just the other way around, shouldn't it? Advertising that is obviously that deceives no one, and in fact can support the public interest. Journalism has a longstanding and honorable partnership with advertisers, without whom we would not have the resources to do what we do. But stealth advertising is not honorable, and undermines the public interest. If something is labeled as news, you ought to be able to trust that the content providers have no agenda other than that of providing useful news and information to the public. All too often, that is not the case. Given the importance of honest and independent journalism to our American way of life, the public should have no tolerance for hidden agendas of any kind within content purporting to be news.

Starbucks/MSNBC

Just curious - Did MSNBC report the recent Starbucks overbilling issue? If not, why not? If so, did they handle it any differently (disclaim the relationship, etc.) than other media?