Journalists have long believed their only concern was content.

Business concerns, metrics, marketing, etc aren’t important to those journalists. Business staffers conversely have cared little about the content side of the business and the effects their practices have had on the content side.

The definition of a dysfunctional company is one where content producers don’t care about business, while business staffers don’t care about content. That modus operandi may have worked when journalism companies had monopolies, but it makes little sense in the hyper-competitive online landscape. Now content producers need to make compelling content that can stand the scrutiny that comes with hyper competition.

Business staffers now must consider the impact their practices have on the content side of the business. Is trying to stick too many — often loud — ads on a Web page bad for content? Yes!

Do design and user interfaces matter greatly on the Web? Yes! Do pay walls hurt content and content producers? Yes!

Journalists need to be concerned with making sure they are producing content that matters to users, while business staffers need to make sure their decisions don’t detract, but rather enhance content offerings. This in no way, shape or form means that content producers should be trading coverage for ads or violating any journalistic ethics, but it does mean that people producing content have to care about producing content that people want in the forms they want them in.

Without a monopoly to prop up legacy journalism practices, journalists must find new ways to operate.