Re: Ad support on UC sites

On Dec 6, 2005, at 4:09 PM, E. Marie Robertson wrote:

> Given that it IS "treated as a product of the UC Berkeley Graduate
> School of Journalism," I'd want to think very carefully about the
> possibility of any appearance of endorsement or conflict of
> interest that can come as a byproduct of hosting commercial
> advertising,

That was my initial hypothetical objection, but I was not able to
come up with almost any examples of respected publications that
*don't* have advertising. The public (in theory) understands the
strict separation of marketing from editorial, and that advertising
should therefore not be influencing editorial. So if NY Times and
Washington Post and SF Chronicle can do it without perceived conflict
of interest, why can't we?

Or does the fact that we're a university change the game somehow?

> but that's just my 12-year-long journalism career raising its
hackles.

The professor in question is also a career journalist. He doesn't
have a problem with it, because journalism is ad-funded in "the real
world." He wants to know why the rules (if there are rules) should
be any different here at UC.

Thanks,
Scot

>
> On Dec 6, 2005, at 3:52 PM, Scot Hacker wrote:
>
>> One of our professors runs a site (with a custom domain) on our
>> server. Even though it's on a non-berkeley.edu domain, it's still
>> treated as a product of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of
>> Journalism. The site has become quite popular and the professor is
>> interested in raising some additional funds by running Google
>> AdSense ads on the site.
>>
>

--
Scot Hacker, Webmaster
UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism
http://journalism.berkeley.edu
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