Yesterday this image was floating around in news rooms (click to enlarge).
Criticism is easy. Action is hard. Humor is often a great tool for pointing out flaws, inconsistencies, and dangerous imbalances that are hard to communicate without offending people. But in the end, you don’t matter unless you do something about it.
If you think the internet has trashed journalism, go fix it.
If you think there are too many ads on your news pages, go fix it.
If you think the commenters on your articles are f*cktards, engage with them.
If you think social bookmarking tools are killing journalism, go kill them.
If you think Top Ten articles are killing journalism, go look through the TIME magazine archives.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry. 
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Well said, Jason.
Funny, I had a different take-away from the creator’s (I think) … which was this: wow, look how many ads are on a single page and yet the industry remains mired in red ink.
Kathy – Heh, maybe they should try pricing those ads higher
We DID do something about it, in our own little way.
We didn’t run ads till we’d been up for almost two years and had enough of an audience to “sell.”
We have never run AdSense – it’s ugly clutter and it devalues sites in my eyes when I see all that weight loss/colon cleansing/teeth whitening garbage.
We don’t have ads in the content column, in the header, anywhere but in one sidebar and at the top of some inside pages. That may change someday but it will NEVER be allowed to be clutter.
This reminds me of the kerfuffle over comment sewers. If you think they’ve gone bad, do something. We have rules. We enforce them. There is no law that says a website operator has to allow people to post anything they want to.
But I digress. As usual.