OLD Media Moves

Business Insider blurs line between editorial and advertising

May 7, 2013

Posted by Chris Roush

Ryan Chittum of Columbia Journalism Review disagrees with the philosophy behind Business Insider’s new “Future of Business” section.

Chittum writes, “The problems start with the banner across the top of the page:

“If ‘Within every industry, transformational change is coming. Embrace it’ reads like vacuous ad copy, well, the BI section is sponsored by SAP, and the actual blog posts aren’t much better.

“Take the top story in Future of Business right now, headlined, ‘Hacking Happiness: How Big Data Can Make The World More Joyful.’ Now, there’s a lot of dumb shit on Business Insider, but we don’t normally get suspicious about why it’s dumb, since its business model is essentially churning out mass quantities of clickbait.

“But this post looks less like hamster wheel sensationalism than it does corporate propaganda:

Read more here.

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