My boyfriend interned at a small town newspaper this summer. He called me more than once complaining of how the newspaper allowed their advertisers to dictate the news by doing things like refusing to run a news photo with a business in the background that didn't advertise with the paper. He couldn't believe that journalists, even in a small town, would let the green of advertising revenue shade their views of the news.
It is pounded into our heads from the beginning of our time in the journalism school. The chasm between the news side and business side of any media outlet exists for a reason. There is an ever-present danger of generating revenue at the price of sacrificing the integrity of the news and how it is reported.
When I read through Google's introduction to AdSense the thing that struck me was that with the service there is no need to maintain advertiser relationships. Google acts as a middleman. To me this seems like a gigantic benefit for news media websites. For one thing, you can have customized ads to fit the content of you site and thereby generate more revenue. But more importantly, with Google acting as a buffer between advertisers and news organizations, reporters don't have to deal with pressure to censor or alter the content of their news stories either from those on the outside (advertisers) or from people within their own news organizations whose job it is to maintain those advertising relationships.
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