Sponsored content is not journalism: CAJ

“Ev’rybody’s doin’ it. Doin’ it, doin’ it,” went the 1911 Irving Berlin song, “Everybody’s Doin’ It Now,” about the big craze of the day, dancing.
Over a hundred years later, there’s a new craze. And everyone, or almost everyone, who is anyone, is “doin’ it”: The New York Times, the Guardian, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and Postmedia. The craze goes by different names: sponsored content, custom content or native advertising.
But the different terms refer to the same activity.  As described by the Pew Center, it’s “a publisher placing paid advertising content, written either in collaboration with the advertiser or directly by the advertiser, on its site in such a way that it mimics editorial content.”
Like many crazes, sponsored content came on suddenly, but unlike most, it doesn’t appear to be a short-lived phenomenon. Market research conducted by a subsidiary of Business Insider is estimating that almost US$8 billion will be spent on sponsored content this year in the United States, and that figure will come close to tripling in the next three years.  You can trace the rapid progression and absorption of sponsored content through our discussions of the topic on the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Ethics Advisory Committee.
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