The Ethics of Boosterism

Forbes , February 06, 2000

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES RECENTLY RAN A 14-PAGE, ad-free "special report" investigating itself. The charge: that the newspaper breached journalistic ethics when it agreed to split advertising income from a special issue of its Sunday magazine with the issue's subject, the new downtown sports palace called the Staples Center. The verdict: guilty by reason of ignorance, incompetence and excessive devotion to financial goals.

A sidebar told readers that "[j]ournalism is a very different business—here's why." Explained investigative reporter David Shaw, "In a typical business, everyone is expected to work together toward the common goal of improving the financial performance," but newspaper reporters and editors "feel they owe their primary loyalty not to the bottom line nor even to the company—the newspaper—but to the basic tenets of journalism."

I personally prefer devotion to the readers, or to the truth, rather than to mysterious guild tenets. But the point is entirely irrelevant to the Staples controversy.

The Times didn't get into trouble because its executives tried to maximize profits. (Splitting ad profits means less money, not more.) It got in trouble because its executives let downtown boosterism warp their business judgment. If the Staples Center were in Inglewood or Pacoima, you wouldn't be reading about a scandal at the Los Angeles Times.

The ad split fulfilled an obligation the Times undertook when it agreed to become a corporate underwriter, or "founding partner," of the $400 million Staples Center, which received $12 million in public subsidies. The partnership called for the newspaper to pay $800,000 a year in cash, donate $500,000 in ad space and work with the center on a joint project, which turned out to be the magazine issue, to raise another $300,000.

The Times got some goodies in exchange—signs, a luxury skybox, vending rights—just as public television supporters get mugs or T shirts for contributions. But, as Timothy Noah noted in Slate, the value of the package was well under $1 million. The deal wasn't a profitable business exchange. It was cheerleading for a public showcase. Shaw notes that other big newspapers would consider such a partnership unethical, "but Los Angeles Times executives thought Staples Center could be a major contributor to the revitalization of downtown Los Angeles."

In other words, downtown is special, a higher cause. The Staples Center deal simply expressed the downtown bias that infects many metropolitan dailies, especially monopoly papers, regardless of how much they separate editorial and business operations.

Rare is the newspaper that doesn't condemn suburban "sprawl," support heavily subsidized rail transit (to and from downtown), boost tax-funded convention centers and sports arenas (located downtown) and emphasize downtown politicians, downtown cultural attractions and downtown problems. "Standing up for the home town and standing up for the downtown are seen as one and the same," says Peter Gordon, urban planning professor at the University of Southern California.

Because they own downtown real estate, newspapers often have a financial interest in boosterism. More important, reporters and editors work downtown. So they hear its stories and sympathize with its redevelopment schemes. They can easily come to see their work neighborhood as the center and symbol of the city as a whole.

But contemporary cities have many different centers. A recent Brookings Institution survey of 23 cities found only 5 where the proportion of residents living downtown is projected to top 5% in 2010, even though downtowns are growing. On average, the downtown population is estimated to jump from an infinitesimal 1.6% in 1998 to a still-minuscule 2.3% in 2010.

Newspaper writers, however, "still operate under the old 'monocentric' city paradigm where the city center is the economic, social, cultural and political engine for the regional economy," notes Samuel R. Staley, director of the Urban Futures Program of the Reason Public Policy Institute. And businesspeople can be equally blind. Corporate bosses, says Staley, "still talk about downtown revitalization as if it is citywide revitalization."

Hence the Staples Center deal—bad for business, bad for journalism, but boosterism as usual. No wonder metropolitan dailies are losing readers.