[WikiEN-l] BBC blog on WSJ study

[Bod Notbod]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:

>> It actually takes quite a bit of work to read an entire article and
>> process it in your mind then put out a purely self-made version. And,
>> let's take the *most* optimistic view of editors: you're still
>> reporting a report. Some guy went out there, said what he saw, got
>> money for it, funded by advertising.
>
> Not always, no. Perhaps not even usually. The money often comes from
> subscriptions, classical example is the BBC. If anything,
> subscriptions are more reliable; there's less commercial pressure to
> bend the truth on things. And a lot of the organisations that use
> advertising pay companies like Reuters for their news, there's only
> very indirect funding by advertising.

I think the BBC comparison is quite a good one. Rupert Murdoch would
like to kill the BBC. Yet the BBC does pay journalists to report
stories. We only really report reports.

Again, as a reader, I found Wikipedia amazing with its article on the
flood in New Orleans. I found our article better than any news story.
But we are rightly perceived as a threat and I'm not sure we can hold
the moral high ground. I'm happy that we compete with Britannica. I'm
not sure we should compete with newspapers.