In that respect, “brand” and “reputation” are interchangeable.

If any product, whether it be a newspaper, bank, political party or airline fails to keep its promise, for example should it gain a reputation for unreliability or fail to deliver on its claims, the money spent on “commercial propaganda” will be wasted.

Advertising and PR may be able to do many things, but making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear they will not.

Describing a news media company as a brand does nothing to detract from the arguments presented.

More pertinently, simply doing a good job of reporting the news has never, in itself, been sufficient to ensure the health of any news media company. Getting that news to an audience or organisation prepared to pay for it is also an inescapable necessity. And the better the “reputation” or the stronger the “brand” of the news media company, the higher the price it has historically been able to command.

Unfortunately, as the Monday Note continually makes clear, the internet has replaced the old revenue models with new. Even, it seems, a newspaper with as strong a reputation for editorial independence and integrity as The Observer faces an uncertain future.

In the circumstances, splitting semantic hairs over whether “brand” or “reputation” is the more appropriate somehow seems of less concern than concentrating on how to remain economically viable.

For a news media company, which by definition should be committed to the factual reporting of events rather than to convincing consumers that its type of detergent washes whiter than that of the other guy, the notion of a “brand” should not even exist.

A less slippery word, which has the advantage of being more immediately understandable to most people, would be “reputation”.

A news media company either does a good job of reporting events within its field, and of conveying those reports to an audience whose members are willing to pay for them, or it does not.

If it does not, its reputation will automatically suffer among the people who matter - its paying clients.

If the company acts to correct such problems - and the best way to do that is by being completely transparent about correcting its mistakes - it should be able to stay in business.

If over a period of time it fails to act in that way, it may very well end up going out of business, in which case a competitor is likely to step in.

In other words, news media companies should simply concentrate on turning out a quality product rather than worrying about slippery, and expensive, PR concepts such as “brands”.

Note that it is also perfectly possible to have a successful media company which remains practically unknown to the general public. This is the case, for example, with most news agencies.

As long as such companies do a good job, and avoid getting drawn into activities which take them far away from their core markets, they have no need to worry about trendy notions such as “brands”.

Conversely, when such companies start being run by people who think in terms of “brand management” rather than about simply doing a good job of reporting the news, it is generally a sign that they are in serious trouble.

David Sharp (news agency journalist, Paris, France)