Just join the New York Times:
The Times’ job postings on the career website LinkedIn show there are at least seven new positions on the market—ranging from finance editor to social analytics manager—for T Brand Studio, a business-side operation that produces advertiser content in storytelling form. The other new positions up for grabs are business editor, technology editor, associate editor, social media associate and, on the tech side, UX designer. T Brand Studio launched roughly a year ago in conjunction with the Times‘ native advertising platform, Paid Posts.
Asked about the hiring spree, Times spokeswoman Linda Zebian said the studio did more than 40 campaigns, for companies ranging from Netflix to Shell, during its inaugural 2014 run and “we are ramping up our headcount in every way.”
The NYT has gone from dismissing the whole idea as inappropriate for the Times to embracing it full-throttle and hiring “brand journalists” to write ad copy disguised as articles. Freddie worries about the obvious next step: private corporations just buying magazines – and turning them into propaganda sheets for their interests:
Via Gawker, a private equity firm that is massively invested in for-profit colleges has purchased a controlling stake in Inside Higher Ed, a publication that covers colleges and universities. That’s about as direct a conflict of interest as you can get.
1. Inside Higher Ed should not be trusted as a source of legitimate news about for-profit colleges and universities any longer, and perhaps not trusted as a legitimate source of news, period. Treat anything published by it about for-profit colleges like PR or advertising, because that’s essentially what it’ll be.
Read the rest here.
The Dish 