Columbus TV News Health Segments: Ohio State Pays Stations $250,000 For Stories

COLUMBUS (TDB) -- TV news health stories that feature medical breakthroughs at Ohio State University's hospital have been paid for by the school. The university forks out nearly $250,000 each year for on-the-air coverage by two local stations in Columbus

Some believe the practice is nothing but advertising being disguised as legitimate journalism, or gussied up payola. The OSU-funded health segments appear on Channel 10 and Channel 4 in Columbus, and disclosures about financial ties has started to raise disturbing questions about paid propaganda and deception. The nub: Should anybody trust or believe TV news if broadcasters take money from those who appear as the subjects of newscasts? Such financial arrangements would appear to undercut any claims of journalistic independence and freedom. It looks like somebody is buying, and the other party is selling.

Gary Schmitz, who is at the University of Minnesota's school of journalism, says OSU's arrangement with the Columbus broadcasters is PR because the medical center paid its way onto the newscasts.

"Columbus residents join the long list of television news audiences all over the country who have been spoonfed one-sided PR and advertising messages from medical centers paying their way onto newscasts. The fact is that a supposed 'news' organization would accept these deals is an embarrassment to the TV news industry."

The story about OSU's payments comes from The Other Paper, where reporter Steph Gregor found marketing execs who said the anchor-hosted health segments play off viewer trust in TV reporters. She also says some of the segments have omitted details like the cost of procedures, or facts like mortality rates. Gregor's story made it clear that the line between marketing and news has been blurred.

What's Tops On Ohio.com? Sports Rules Newspaper Website

AKRON (TDB) -- It turns out that traditional news readers aren't the dominant crowd coming to the Akron Beacon Journals's newspaper website Ohio.com. For the past week, the top 10 stories have all been sports reports. It all the kind of stuff -- baseball, football, who might be traded etc -- that is standard sports section fare.

In fact, not a single news story ranks shows up in the 24 items that the newspaper website listed as its 24 "most viewed" articles. Just two of 24 were not sports-related -- the real estate transfers, and comics & games. Suddenly, the stats are proving that the lights have dimmed on what editors and many journalists thought was the heart and soul of their business -- routine government reporting. Sportswriting had passion. City room reporters were supposed to deliver bland presentations without really any heart, or soul. Every newsroom (according to a newspaper biz inside joke) had a "dull-a-tron," a mythical device that all stories were run through to remove anything hinting at passion, heart or soul.

Ohio.com is a valuable Internet nameplate, a piece of cyber real estate that goes far beyond the Akron Beacon Journal's reach as a print publication circulated in and around that Northeast Ohio city. Ohio.com creates a sense of the entire state, a market with more than 11 million people. Still, it's biggest hits come from sports -- Browns, Indians, LeBron, et al. The folks who run Ohio.com are honest and open enough to let their visitors know what is popular. Newspaper sources tell me that what is openly disclosed on Ohio.com is pretty much what is happening on the websites of the dailies in Cincinnati, Columbus, Toledo -- most everywhere. Their top draws are sports stories, not news stories.

What does this foretell for the future of newspapers? The old business model is seriously out of whack. There may not be a mass market any longer for what has passed as local news, which is reporting based on geography. The idea that there are large groups of people who live in one city -- say Akron -- who want to read about some routine event in another -- say Cleveland -- certainly appears to be dead, or dying. At least, it looks that way on the 'net. We saw it this week on Ohio.com -- the 24 most viewed items on a newspaper website, and not one involved news.