Re: Ad support on UC sites

Ah, but I don't think that's a correct assumption he's making.
Journalism itself is NOT ad-funded in the "real world," it's the medium
of dissemination that is ad-funded. Publications such as the Times,
Post, Chronicle all have very large, independently structured dedicated
advertising departments that are separate from the reporting and
content-generation function, and there is tremendous effort to avoid
overlap between the two. And even with this effort, there are always
accusations and confusion. I think it goes a bit too far to assume that
the public understands the separation of marketing from editorial,
frankly.

But, you've got the electronic communications in policy in hand, so
this is all now more of an intellectual exercise than anything else.
There's also a policy prohibiting use of advertising in any "Official
publications of the University whether of an informational or
administrative nature " that might perhaps also come into play, as a
lot of organizations consider a web site a "publication," but both that
consideration and the designation "official" are nebulous at best. But
it's here if you want to see it:

http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/policy/4-12-79.html

Good luck,
Marie

E. Marie Robertson
Web Project Manager
LSCR
510-508-5331

On Dec 6, 2005, at 4:26 PM, Scot Hacker wrote:

>
> 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

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Received on Tue Dec 6 16:52:48 2005