The lines between editorial and marketing departments are more blurred than media organisations would like to acknowledge. This has been well established by documentation of paid news cases. The Cobrapost sting reinforces the fact that media’s business model is advertisement-centric.
Newspapers are sold at a much lower price than the cost of newsprint and news gathering. News channels cannot manage to run operations only on subscription revenue, considering the very low subscription charges in India. Advertisement revenue is supposed to ensure that media organisations not just recover their costs of operations but also make profits.
