Underestimating the power of Jeff Bezos
<p><pre><code>  It was at that awkward moment that Amazon decided that it
  would punish the New Republic. Our ad sales department
  received a note, informing us that Amazon would be yanking
  its advertising for its new political comedy, Alpha House.
  The missive left nothing to the imagination. “In light of
  the cover article about Amazon, Amazon has decided to
  terminate the Alpha House campaign currently running on
  the New Republic. Please confirm receipt of this email and
  that the campaign has been terminated.” It was signed,
  “Team Amazon.”
</code></pre>
This is one of the reasons I really wish there was a decent, widely supported micropayment system for journalism.<p>So long as journalists' jobs depend on the ad money coming in, companies can use that leverage to get negative stories spiked. Amazon is one example in this article; HSBC with The Telegraph (and other newspapers) is another [1].<p>If we want to avoid this disease spreading, we really need some way to pay journalists that doesn't rely on corporate largess.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/17/peter-oborne-telegraph-hsbc-coverage-fraud-readers" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/17/peter-oborne-t...</a>