Journalists will relate to Jacob Silverman’s “confession” in The Baffler about being a writer of sponsored content: The Rest is Advertising.
“In case you haven’t heard, journalism is now in perpetual crisis, and conditions are increasingly surreal” he writes. “The fate of the controversialists at Gawker rests on a delayed jury trial over a Hulk Hogan sex tape. Newspapers publish directly to Facebook, and Snapchat hires journalists away from CNN. Last year, the Pulitzer Prizes doubled as the irony awards; one winner in the local reporting category, it emerged, had left his newspaper job months earlier for a better paying gig in PR. “Is there a future in journalism and writing and the Internet?†Choire Sicha, cofounder of The Awl, wrote last January. “Haha, FUCK no, not really.†Even those who have kept their jobs in journalism, he explained, can’t say what they might be doing, or where, in a few years’ time. Disruption clouds the future even as it holds it up for worship.
“But for every crisis in every industry, a potential savior emerges. And in journalism, the latest candidate is sponsored content.”
Silverman’s assessment of the state of journalism today is well worth the read.
