Lock them emails up came the cry from the C suite and the editor asked what he should run instead.

I worked in small and medium sized print media for a few decades. Very loosely around 1998 you’d still see the newest, greenest, most eager-to-please editor be able to tell the owner or C’s to fuck right off if there was an attempt to break the wall between the money and the news. It was just assumed and known really - because while few examples happened, for the most part management or money would never even think of doing it.

By the early 2000s, while print was still king and only just preparing to completely fuck up internet advertising and kill the industry, the wall cracked a bit. “It’s the beginning of the end” many would say while others said they were just ads on the front above the fold. The former was correct.

And now we have a media landscape run by the money, for the money.