The Rest Is Advertising

Also called native advertising, sponsored content borrows the look, the name recognition, and even the staff of its host publication to push brand messages on unsuspecting viewers... the line between what’s sponsored and what isn’t—between advertising and journalism—has already been rubbed away.

who would bother pitching a story to The Atlantic for $100 when you could pitch yourself as a copywriter and make twenty times as much? And why would a Fortune 500 executive respond to a journalist’s questions when he could just hire The Atlantic to produce a glittering, 1,200-word advertorial instead and then buy some promoted tweets to ensure it racks up shares?

The notion that a publication could sell access to its editorial style without also changing the terms of journalistic access itself is laughable... journalism, in this late decadent phase, has come to mistake its biggest rivals for its dearest sponsors.



Condé Nast ... promised marketers “access to our unparalleled editorial assets.” Even the venerable Guardian traffics in two tiers of payola—“supported by” and “paid content/paid for by”—with each reflecting a different level of editorial independence, advertiser participation, and other possible outside funding... Vice... has reportedly spiked news stories for fear of offending its brand sponsors. The same goes for BuzzFeed, whose staffers pass effortlessly from its advertising division to its editorial division.

Newsfeeds and timelines become constant streams of media—a mutating mass of useless lists, videos, GIFs, viral schlock, service journalism, catchy charts, and other modular material that travels easily on social networks—all of it shorn of context. Who paid for this article, why am I seeing it, am I supposed to be entertained or convinced to buy something? The answers to these questions are all cordoned off behind the algorithmic curtain.

(so this cost $2000? http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/ibm-transformation-of-business/the-race-to-probe-the-twittersphere/280/)