USC Director: Journalism business model distorted social mission

The collapse of journalism's conventional economic model is due in part to large profit margins that turned the industry from its social mission to a vast business, said a director at the University of Southern California's business school.

But newspapers can create a new model that is mission-driven and is still profitable, said Adlai Wertman, a director at USC's Marshall School of Business.

Wertman's comments appeared in a Knight Digital Media Center column by Geneva Overholser, the director of the School of Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Wertman strongly stated that he believed the country's politics and social issues relfect journalism, and told the journalism school at one point that "I think it's all your fault."

"Take the mission away from journalism and think more about journalism as a tool: We care about poverty, and how could we use journalism as a tool to make a difference," said Wertman.

Saving journalism in its current state, Overholser said, is the wrong idea.

"You persuade your donors (and consumers) that a full, fair balenced and propotional picture of the issue is the best way to get people insterested and informed, and thus to bring about action," she wrote.

Read the rest of her column here.

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