QOTD

ondelette:

...That mentality is rampant in a much larger domain than the traditional press. It appears as a natural follow on to treating any domain more like a business than its original nature. The press has always had an earning a living side, but it wasn't the main reason for its existence. A decent living was also the goal of many businesses without being their primary purpose for existing. Academia has non-business goals, non-entrepreneurial goals. When the mentality of business management gets in where it doesn't really belong, it reduces the organization to one where business is the primary goal, where maintaining power or gathering wealth are primary and the original purpose is a sideshow.

Point of fact, 'business principles' are very useful for organizing and presenting some things. But they properly are only the primary purpose of, well, business management. What they were originally invented for. Assigning most of life to the status of a facade, always with the same, dreary ulterior motive, blanches out our social organizations and makes them unable to function according to their true purpose. A news organization needs to be passionate about news, not power or money or security. If someone wants an organization that is passionate about business, or money, or power, one should find such organizations, and not corrupt one whose purpose is different.