RN’s Media Report interviewed David Higgins, the editor of News.com.au and Trevor Cook, a Sydney-based communications consultant and blogger on the implications of newsrooms like news.com.au encouraging their journalists to maximise the search engine profile of the articles they write.

The development of SEO or Search Engine Optimisation techniques, and the effect they’re having, and are likely to have, on journalism is a hot topic that could be considered by students looking at the implications of new media technologies or by students looking at Australian media organisations more generally.

For Higgins, “it’s no longer good enough for journalists just to come up with a great story and to file it to the editor and then move on to the next story, they need to start thinking about ways that they can promote it.”

But this shifting role of the journalist raises complex and important ethical issues..

Higgins continues ” if I interview Trevor for a story on News.com, I know Trevor’s got a good website and chances are if he links back to me that’s going to help me out with a little bit of traffic and some SEO. What’s my reason then for going and talking to Trevor in the first place? And I think as with so many things like this in journalism, it’s not what you do, but it’s what you don’t do. How do you defend against allegations that the reason that I’ve spoken to Trevor Cook is simply because he’s got a really good website and the traffic from his link back to me was not the reason why I interviewed him in the first place.”

Cook is even bleaker …. “[Its] going to be a brave editor in future who’ll stick with a slow-burning story which is going to burn a lot of resources, not draw much interest to start with, thinking that down the track in a few weeks we might have a Watergate, but in the meantime I’d do a lot better if I stuck with Beth Morgan and Heath Ledger and people like that, you know. That’s where I think some of the pressure’s going to be, I mean editors are really going to not be able to just say, Oh yes, we’ve got to do a whole range of stories for a newspaper, that’s what a newspaper does, we’re a paper of record, we do everything, who’s now going to have to answer sort of ‘Why are we running with this sort of arcane, esoteric stuff when we could just get a lot better by having Beth Morgan on the front page every day?”

Turning to why SEO has become an issue for journalists, and how to respond ethically, Higgins continues ..

“The future of journalism outside of government-funded and family-controlled businesses, depends on a good revenue stream and a good business to support continued investment in journalism. So that is a reality, full-stop.he future of journalism outside of government-funded and family-controlled businesses, depends on a good revenue stream and a good business to support continued investment in journalism. So that is a reality, full-stop. But what journalists and editors I think need to do is to be proactive in dealing with the sales and the commercial guys rather than waiting for something bad to happen. It’s go forward and talk to the sales guys, in case you hear the sorts of things that are coming up, and here are the ground rules, ‘Well you can do this, and you can’t do that.’ “

Students of Australian Media Organisations might like to think about writing a “newsroom policy” for journalists who are working online.

Students of New Media Technologies  might like to examine how and why the business of making money out of journalism is under threat and what new modelsare being canvassed to keep it alive and viable.

The transcript and podcast of the media report can be found here