February 1, 2019

Merchants of Truth

My ESSAY in The National Post on Jill Abramson’s new book, Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts, which looks at the state of journalism today.  

In the pre-internet world, journalism and advertising were strictly separated. (The term “church and state” was often invoked). Digital sites, however, grew rich through the use of “native” advertising — paid ads that were indistinguishable from the rest of the content. Abramson does a fine job of detailing how messy things became for both BuzzFeed and Vice as they tried to claim journalistic integrity while, behind the scenes, they killed legitimate stories that might offend advertisers…

Jill Abramson