Shocking: Brands Foster Content

Another presentism newsflash: "Journalists take refuge in the world of branded content."

News rooms are laying off staff.  The old journalism model is collapsing. Death.  Destruction.  The end of days is upon us.

Gosh.  We've never been here before.

Video has never killed the Radio Star.

And radio never crushed the immediacy of the evening news and the extra edition.

Both modes of communication got their footholds with what today we euphemistically call "branded journalism" because we don't want to face straight up the reality.

Sponsors pay for content creation.

Whether you are Michelangelo or Michael Moore, you need people to pay for your work.  Medieval lords bankrolled art.  The filthy lucre that paid for newspapers?  Yeah, advertisers.

Anyone remember Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom?  The Texaco Star Theater? 

Eventually, media forms mature and they begin to capture multiple sponsors and become less beholden to a single supporter.  Until then, we will move through this time.

Does it mean the content is less "honest"?  Maybe, certainly CBS didn't help this with their CNET debacle over the CES Award for Dish Network's Hopper.

So should we trust CBS, who's naked suppression of an editorial choice was on display, or a brand that clearly states it is sponsoring content that we can either believe or not?