There's a meaningful difference between journalists and advertisers. I know it's fashionable to bash "the media" but I wouldn't want to live in a world without journalism. Advertising I could take or leave.
That's pretty obviously not true. I didn't see advertisers covering the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Harvey Weinstein or tax reform, to pick just three things from the last year.
I am not saying "journalists only cover what advertisers will cover".
I am saying "journalist's standards are increasingly coming second to the generation of advertising revenue".
Once-reptutable media empires embed Outbrain widgets and generate fad-focused, celebrity-focused clickbait garbage because it makes them money. They are not doing this for Journalism's sake. They are doing it for revenue from advertisers. I understand that this is an ancient phenomenon (PG's "suits back in style" essay comes to mind), but I have observed the scale and shallowness of the phenomenon worsening as the coffers get lighter at the news orgs.
For that reason, I am arguing that the "meaningfulness" of the difference between advertisers and journalists appears to be waning.
We’ve lived in a world without “journalism” for, I would guess, decades? The internet is slowly giving us the option of journalism back, but it’s going to take time to reanimate that corpse.
In the dictionary, sure. In reality, for as long as advertisers are how journalists get paid, that difference is whittling towards nil.