In the service of that ambition, many editors are surrendering part of their birthright to marketers and advertising directors, and making news judgments based on criteria that would have been anathema only a few years ago.
Higher profits mean a higher stock price and a bigger payoff when they cash in their holdings.
Bonuses tied to profits tempt both editorial and business-side executives to trim costs, often to the detriment of news processing. Those financial institutions are graded weekly, monthly, quarterly on their own performance. They in turn pressure their editors and publishers to raise their stock price by whatever means necessary. As we sweat out the end of the ever-increasing quarterly earnings, as we necessarily attend to the needs and wishes of our shareholders and our advertisers, are we worrying enough about . . . We fret over declining readership and then cut our news holes . . .