The primary reason for the wall, as you know, is because ad people try to get news people to do sleazy puff stories that will satisfy ad buyers. (A lot of that goes on in spite of the alleged wall, but that’s another story.)

If the two sides make peace, what are the terms? What is won or lost on either side? And then, apart from reduced friction, where are the gains?

…and of course with this I will not disagree because you are right.

I tee-totally agree there’s a “how dare you pierce the journalism holiest-of-holies” ivory tower mentality, but there’s also a silo-ed mentality across the board.

Readers/advertisers won’t “get” online? — online people think “gooberville is behind the times”

Client turns down the big advertising pitch and decides to spend money elsewhere? — advertising people think “they’re making a big mistake, guess they don’t know how much they need us”.

Results from advertising might please people, but salespeople don’t please people. They convince people to part with money in exchange for a service.

Making media buys for a client several years ago, I was spending 10s of thousands of dollars a year with a newspaper. I physically saw my salesperson twice over the span of 5+ years — once by accident at another business’s event and once when they asked me to come into the newspaper office to sell me a promotion that I didn’t need. Meanwhile, I faxed (in those days!) press releases to the same newspaper and got decent coverage with reporters showing up to do a full story several times. Which one was more connected to my community?

But the whole community argument is secondary — the big point I was trying to make in the post was about communication between both sides of the wall. It’s hard to win an external war when you’re fighting a civil war.

The trouble is the whole procedure is a manufacturing process instead of a resourceful roll-with-the punches practice. Manufacture news >> which manufactures readers >> whose eyeballs are sold to advertisers. One department makes their part of the widget, then delivers only what is absolutely necessary to the next department, and down the line until a final product is produced every 24 hours. After years and years and years of doing it that way, it freaks out and angers every department when a new variable is added to the mix.

The media has proven that it can adopt new technologies pretty quickly, but it’s going to be near impossible to change the culture / attitudes on both sides of that wall.

Sales and circulation are more connected because of the nature of their jobs and personalities. These people have to please other people to be successful. A reporter often has to really hack people off to be successful: they show up at crime scenes and fires and accidents.

On the “manufacturing” side, these people are not instilled with the “ivory tower mentality” that reporters are taught.

Reporters are taught a “profession” but are treated as craftsman/trades when it comes to pay. Their own union argues in favor of them being classified as a trade so that overtime is mandatory. Newspapers have dodged this by devising a convoluted “employment agreement” that is specious.