Categories: OLD Media Moves

A marketer who promoted clients in Inc., Entrepreneur and Forbes articles

Jon Christian writes for BuzzFeed about how marketer Jayson DeMers wrote hundreds of articles for business news publications such as Inc., Entrepreneur and Forbes that promoted his clients.

Christian writes, “But DeMers has built a business, at least in part, by flouting those rules and ethical norms — and taking advantage of the hunger for free or low-paid guest contributor content at prominent news and business publications.

“BuzzFeed News presented Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. magazine with examples of articles where DeMers and one former and one present-day AudienceBloom employee cited and linked to clients without any disclosure. As a result, Entrepreneur removed the offending articles. Forbes removed eight and left others online while declining to explain its rationale. Inc. removed the links to AudienceBloom clients from some articles, but left one authored by DeMers online without modification.

“Forbes and Entrepreneur both said they would stop working with DeMers.

“‘We have terminated our relationship with Jayson DeMers,’ said a Forbes spokesperson in a statement. ‘In the course of our investigation, which is ongoing, we have discovered that a number of his articles do not meet our high journalistic standards. As a result, we have taken down several of his posts. We are in the process of examining all of his articles and will take additional action as appropriate.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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