Let's face it: journalism isn't a particularly enticing career option any more. There are fewer newspapers, fewer magazines - and as far as I can tell, the digital world tries to pay writers as little as possible. When bloggers demonstrated that they were willing to write for free in order to build their brands, Pandora's Box opened.
But there may still be hope for those of us who insist on being paid for crafting sentences. The other day I got a mail from a Canadian journalist who had left her job on a newspaper to launch an agency called Strategic Content Labs. What it does is provide "journalism-quality content for brands." In other words, the kind of well-written but sponsored content that is often referred to as "native advertising." This is not the same as old-fashioned "advertorial." Sometimes the subject has only a tangential relationship with the advertiser - for instance, an article about art collecting sponsored by an insurance company. It has become clear that advertising sales departments are incapable of writing this kind of sophisticated, well-researched copy. They are sales people - full stop. So native advertising requires a three-way collaboration between the ad sales people, the client, and a content provider. In other words, a writer. In the future, brand content may save a lot of journalists from poverty. It may even make a few of them rich.
