Last month we shared our first impressions of "brand journalism," a would-be trend in marketing and journalism. (Note especially Mark Ragan's thorough and thoughtful contribution, in the comments section.)
Meanwhile, the fine folks at my publisher McMurry.com have posted my snarling, devastating mockery of the idea as "more silly than sinister."
We all remember where we were when we first heard the term “brand journalism.”
No we don’t, because the first time we heard those words, they beaded on our brains like so many other foolish notions that caffeine-crazed or boozy marketing people think up in manic desperation to justify to their clients or to their God what they’re trying this time.
And then, right next to it at McMurry.com, they ran my passionate defense of the brand journalism, as "the simultaneous solution to marketing problems and stubborn social ills":
Brand journalism will reward so many good things that business so often runs from: plain talk, human vulnerability, public listening …. And if a transparent, humanistic, journalistic ethic becomes the norm in marketing, companies that practice it will gain ground on or even kill competitors less generous of spirit and big-minded.
And speaking of big-minded: I do feel like giving props to McMurry for making room for such opposing opinions on the corporate website, which many organizations feel compelled to make into airless sanctums of corporate wisdom.
My little dueling editorials aren't quite brand journalism, I reckon.
But they'll have to do have to do until brand journalism gets here.
If we call things what they’re not, they’ll suddenly become those things?
I’m a big fan of, “plain talk, human vulnerability, public listening…” and a, “transparent, humanistic, journalistic ethic become[ing] the norm in marketing.” All of us communicators should definitely DO THAT, and by the way, should have been doing that all along.
But that’s not journalism. Fairness. Balance. That’s journalism and you cannot inherently have that in communication designed to promote and sell.
Of course, I can’t disagree with you, Amy. What’s scary and also somewhat persuasive are the arguments that fairness and balance are not things people associate any longer with journalism. So what the hell? Might as well get our news from Goodyear Tire & Rubber. Where have you gone, Walter Kronkite?
It’s just too dystopian to consider a world without an unbiased journalistic view. But I can understand why people think fairness and balance in journalism have gone the way of the hoopskirt, because of “news” organizations like Fox News and CBN. Their bias is so incredibly out of control. They don’t see their mission as to inform, but to brainwash.
As for “brand journalism,” have you read “Jennifer Government” by Max Barry? It’s a flawed book, but the premise is fascinating: What happens when corporations take over the world. Maybe it’s time we thought about that might look like in hard terms.