Re: Ad support on UC sites

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?

I think the issue is more around appropriate use of resources, rather than
whether advertising compromises the integrity of the publication.

(Aside: I would argue that the fact that the major news media are all major
conglomerates supported by other major conglomerates has indeed compromised
their integrity; for example, try to find a news story about any corporate
merger involving a media company that even mentions the idea that many people
think that media consolidation reduces the value of the media to the public.)

You don't have to get into that philosophical debate; the real point is that
taxpayer funds are paying for our Internet connection, our campus network, and
the space to house the server, and it's not an appropriate use of those funds
to sell advertising and pocket the money. Even dailycal.org uses a commercial
ISP.

I think overall there are some murky areas; if you've ever been to a Cal
football game and seen the 100-foot-high Toyota and SBC banners, you might
have some questions about how that usage differs from posting the same banner
on the Campanile. Maybe we could have gotten the whole Evans Hall retrofit
paid for if we'd let Nike wrap the building with an enormous swoosh.

-- 
Tom Holub (tom_holub@LS.Berkeley.EDU, 510-642-9069)
Director of Computing, College of Letters & Science
249 Campbell Hall
<http://LS.berkeley.edu/lscr/>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The following was automatically added to this message by the list server:
Webnet information is available at http://webnet.berkeley.edu. Email sent to this list is archived at http://ls.berkeley.edu/mail/webnet/ . This archive is open to the general public and browsable by search engine spiders, email-address harvesting robots, your bosses, etc.