The rest is advertising

Confessions of a sponsored content writer. Jacob Silverman is a freelance writer who took on the task of producing some sponsored content for IBM and Twitter. In this piece, he describes his ethical struggle and laments the future of journalism in a world where advertisers sit at the same table as editors. "The problem, as I learned all too quickly when I wrote my sponsored story for The Atlantic (paid for by a prominent tech multinational), is that the line between what’s sponsored and what isn’t—between advertising and journalism—has already been rubbed away. Whether it can be redrawn will depend less on the hand-wringing of professional idealists and more on the wavering resolve of an industry that, hearing chronic news of the apocalypse, has begun to quake and ask, Is it too late to convert?"