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T A B L E__T A L K

Emoticons: Whether you love them :-) or hate them >:-( join the debate in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Fending off big brother
By Andrew Leonard
Cryptography fans take on the surveillance state in "Privacy on the Line"
(03/12/98)

Living by The Book
By Julie Caniglia
Inside the cult of the Franklin Planner
(03/11/98)

PalmPilot reading
By Robert Rossney
Is that little black box just "fashion technology" -- or the future face of computing?
(03/10/98)

Piracy on the Web seas
By Andrew Leonard
Will Slate be able to fend off the Web's password pirates?
(03/09/98)

21st Challenge
Results from Challenge No. 6: Find-and-replace blunders
(03/06/98)

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BROWSE THE
21ST ARCHIVES

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BY TOM McNICHOL | Unlike most interoffice e-mail, the message that crackled across screens at CNET Inc. a few weeks ago demanded immediate attention: It was from the boss. Chief executive Halsey Minor's message noted that the success of CNET's computing-related Web sites had led some employees to "think our mission is to do great editorial."

"It is not," Minor pronounced. "As it turns out, great editorial is not a goal in and of itself. For us, great editorial simply supports a larger mission of helping consumers and corporate buyers find and acquire the right product for their individual needs."

In the CNET cubicles, Minor's e-mail lingered like a bad smell long after it had been dragged to the trash. More than a few CNET journalists had been lured away from other publications with the promise of joining a fast-track new media company that wanted to "do great editorial." Now, it sounded like the journalism was there just to keep the banner ads from bumping into each other.

Minor, who has a reputation for holding strong opinions and expressing them bluntly, now downplays the incident. But the e-mail caused enough uproar that Minor stood up onstage and addressed the issue directly during a companywide meeting. The e-mail, Minor told staffers, had been misunderstood; there was still a "wall" between editorial and advertising at CNET.

"All I was trying to say was that we should ask ourselves, 'What does the consumer want?' and focus on delivering that," says Minor. "We need to become a more user-driven company and not just editorially driven. People have sort of blown this out of proportion ... We absolutely do not cross the line between editorial and business. If I were really saying, 'You know, guys, I really want everyone to start selling your editorial,' I certainly wouldn't put it in a memo to 585 employees."

Minor's top deputies were also quick to soft-pedal the maximum leader's original message, saying CNET's journalistic standards are no less sound than those of any Internet publication.

"That's bullshit -- you at Salon are trying to do a lot of things to make money, are you not?" sputters Jai Singh, who runs the company's News.com site. "That's what [Minor] was trying to say: We've got to make money. There is a clear church and state boundary here. We do not run roughshod over our ethics. And that's all I'm going to comment on."

Indeed, News.com -- the most serious and substantive of CNET's sites -- scrupulously tags every story that mentions Intel with a notation that the chip manufacturer is a CNET investor. The technology trade news site, known for its competitive zeal in breaking stories, won a Webby Award last week.

Still, the denials following Minor's e-mail haven't done much to settle the worries of some CNET scribblers. Every experienced reporter believes in his heart that the unguarded off-the-cuff remark is usually closer to the truth than the calculated damage-control explanation. CNET reporters either have to suspend their natural journalistic skepticism or get comfortable with the notion that they're reporting and writing in support of a gigantic computer catalog on the Web.

The delicate balance between editorial content and advertising is hardly unique to the Net. Many print publishers have the same views about "good editorial" that Halsey Minor does -- they're just not inelegant enough to announce it to their staff.

The Net's tendency to see "content" as playing a "supporting" role to advertising and online transactions recalls the early days of magazine publishing. Minor's e-mail, it turns out, is remarkably similar to the comments made a century ago by Cyrus H.K. Curtis, publisher of the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal in the late 1800s. Curtis once told a group of gathered advertisers, "Do you know why we publish the Ladies Home Journal? The editor thinks it is for the benefit of American women. This is an illusion, but a very proper one for him to have. But I will tell you the real reason, the publisher's reason, is to give you people who manufacture things that American women want and buy a chance to tell them about your products."

Curtis' editorial theory would never be taught at any journalism school, but it was proven conclusively at the newsstand. By the early 1900s, both of his major publishing properties had a circulation of more than 1 million, a tremendous reach for its day.

At its current stage, the Net is just about where magazine publishing was at the turn of the century -- a medium growing faster than its governing ethics. Maintaining a wall between editorial and advertising will be a particular challenge to trade publishers such as CNET, whose media properties routinely write about their advertisers, and whose survival is intimately linked to getting people to buy computers and other high-tech gear. The viability of most online publications depends on delivering readers to advertisers. But there's more than a kilobyte's difference between advertising being attracted by good editorial and advertising steering editorial content. Minor, who had no previous publishing experience before founding CNET, may not fully appreciate the distinction.

N E X T_P A G E .|. How Minor became a major player