The battle with the sales and advertising department
You may think that your career in journalism is the key to free speech. Finally, you have the platform to be able to report on and talk about whatever you like. Right?
Wrong.
Because increasingly, journalists have to pander to the requirements of the sales and advertising departments and whether you like it or not, you will often find them dictating to you exactly what you should be reporting on.
This really is an issue for your editor to deal with. It is up to them how far you do pander to the advertisers but you must work out your own way of dealing with this constant battle.
You will often find that you find an interesting business or entrepreneur to report on only to find sales and advertising reps coming up to you and telling you that you should really be mentioning the cheese shop down the road because they’ve just spent £3000 on advertising. Frustrating.
Always check with your editor first, but a good way of dealing with this is to continue with your article as you were and simply add a fact box at the end including the cheese shop somehow. You could even title the fact box ‘with thanks to’ and then list any advertisers that the sales rep has demanded you include.
This way, you don’t feel like you are cheating your readers into investing time in a piece which is essentially an advert in disguise and you still get to write what you want. And hopefully, it will satisfy the sales staff enough to keep them off your back for a while.
Be firm with advertising and sales staff and don’t always pander to their requests. Readers buy your magazine for the informative and interesting editorial; so don’t cheat them out of this with adverts in disguise.
