By Eric Effron Transaction journalism. That's a phrase I had never even heard until recently, but it's starting to creep into the journals of media executives, marketing gurus, and journalism scholars. If you're concerned about the quality and credibility of the news and information you consume online, it's a phrase you should be thinking about, too. Transactions happen when you're being sold something.
Journalism is the process of ferreting out and disseminating information.
Combining the two may not literally produce an oxymoron, but it sure does raise a lot of interesting and important questions about journalistic standards and, more fundamentally, about journalism's purpose. Transaction journalism can be thought of as the direct linking of information to sales. Because it's the Times, we can be fairly sure that reviews aren't skewed to help sales. But it has to be noted that the Times now has a financial interest in that book being reviewed that it didn't have before. Links between products being reviewed and products being sold are popping up all over the place, and they are only one manifestation of this new kind of transaction journalism.