When I was a junior at the University of South Florida in 1968, I remember one specific critique of a fellow student’s work by Professor Arthur M. Sanderson.
The course was Editing I, and this particular student had edited a piece in a style that Prof. Sanderson considered to be inappropriate for a traditional news story.
“There is too much language here that is more appropriate for an ad, not a news story,” Professor Sanderson said, much to the student’s chagrin. I wonder where this fellow student ended up. Did she take that critique to be a signal that she should pursue advertising as a career?
I was thinking about that when I read this piece about how Condé Nast announced it would use its editorial staff to produce content for brands. In fact, journalistic purists are suffering a bit of tachycardia as a result . Involving editorial people in selling ads goes against the traditional separation of the two sides of the business, after all, as my fellow students and I learned from the great and memorable Professor Sanderson.
Here, in a nutshell, the Condé Nast project:
The company plans to unveil “23 Stories by Condé Nast,” a branded content studio named after the 23 floors the company occupies in its new One World Trade Center offices. Condé will have editors from its fleet of magazines work directly with marketers to produce branded content.
It is 2015 and the flame of good storytelling illuminates advertising as well. Native ads are all about good storytelling, the type that journalists are trained to do well. As we have mentioned int his blog several times, publishers have come to the conclusion that having editorial people play a direct role in ad creation is the way to go. After all, they know how to produce high quality copy and know their subject matter—and audience— well.
This is going to be an ongoing debate in 2015 and beyond. There will always be journalists that will not partake of anything to do with writing ad copy. Others, however, will realize that opportunities exist here.
In my view, this is a phenomenon that will take place and my only word of caution is that, while editorial people may be assigned to create innovative ads which are strong on the storytelling, they should devote their full time efforts to that task and not mix editorial and advertising duties.
If that fellow student from the USF of the late 60s is still around, you may have been ahead of your time. I know that the late Professor Sanderson is looking down at us and shaking his finger and reminding us not to mix editorial and advertising.
Related blogs
http://garciamedia.com/blog/branded_journalism_and_recruiting_those_needed_storytellers