Yahoo News’ possible partnership with the News Corp. could jeopardize its credibility

This column appeared March 12, 2000, in the Online Journalism Review.  Here’s the version on the OJR site.

By J.D. Lasica

Word comes that Yahoo and the News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, are thinking of hopping into bed.

The announcement, revealed in the March 6 New Yorker, was treated by the tech and business press as just another in a series of possible strategic alliances between corporate titans.

Under the proposed broad partnership, News Corp. — now practically invisible in the online space — would get access to the Web’s biggest platform of all. Yahoo, trying to counter America Online’s pending merger with Time-Warner, would get access to News Corp.’s assets, including 20th Century Fox studios (remember a little flick called “Titanic”?), Fox broadcasting, HarperCollins, the Los Angeles Dodgers, newspapers, 15 TV stations and other holdings. Fox’s satellite networks, which deliver Internet services to consumers, would also be part of the mix.

From a business standpoint, the proposal makes a certain amount of sense.

From a journalistic viewpoint, it bodes something else: a marriage made in hell.

Yahoo News, the largest headline news service on the Web, is a class act — and a rare act in cyberspace. The ultimate news portal, Yahoo News puts news judgment and reader interests ahead of financial considerations. Second-tier news organizations can’t buy their way into the Yahoo News network of two dozen news providers. And tabloid news reports won’t find a mention in its news, politics or crime sections.

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This column appeared March 6, 2000, in the Online Journalism Review. Here’s the version on the OJR site.

By J.D. Lasica

Slate raised a ruckus early in the primary season by publishing the results of exit polls in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan hours before the ballot boxes closed.

When Slate stopped the practice last week under threat of legal action, the National Review stepped into the breach, publishing exit poll data from Virginia while voters were still casting ballots. They plan to do the same during tomorrow’s Super Tuesday primaries in New York, Ohio and California. So does Matt Drudge.

Good for them.

Once again we have a culture clash between old and new media, with both sides talking past each other and the lawyers now getting into the act. It’s as if the traditions of both mediums have become so entrenched that neither party can understand the needs or prerogatives of the other.

What this really comes down to — and what nobody has said so far — is that online journalism and broadcast journalism serve different masters and are, at bottom, two very different mediums. (More about that in a moment.) While I’ve worked extensively in both old and new media, my sympathies in this case rest with the Net crowd. Let me tell you how I got here.

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