Categories: OLD Media Moves

Business Insider blurs line between editorial and advertising

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.

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.