Roll Call goes native: starts running Boeing-sponsored "blog"
a blogomercial?
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/roll_call_blogs_native_adverti.php
Roll Call goes native
With Boeing-backed defense blog, Beltway outlet makes a foray into sponsored content
By Christopher Massie
For the past year, Roll Call, a newspaper and website that focuses on Capitol Hill politics, has been in a state of flux. Last July, CQ Roll Call, the publication’s parent company, laid off 30 employees. In mid-November, the site stopped charging for digital subscriptions. And as Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple reported in January, Roll Call’s ongoing struggle to compete with rival news outlets such as Politico has forced it to adjust its editorial strategy. During the 2012 campaign, for example, Roll Call did more direct reporting on the presidential election, moving away from its traditional emphasis on congressional races.
The most recent change came on June 30, when RollCall.com joined BuzzFeed, Quartz, and TheAtlantic.com (among others) on the list of news sites that run so-called “native advertisements”—ads that resemble their journalism alongside their journalism. Roll Call.com’s “sponsored content” appears on a new blog called “Topic A: Defense,” which covers military and defense news. The blog’s sponsor is Boeing, the second biggest defense contractor in the world as of 2011.
Topic A will eventually expand to other policy areas. Beth Bronder, the senior vice president and publisher of CQ Roll Call, mentioned energy, health care, and transportation as “obvious choices” for other subjects. Each policy area will have its own sponsor and, like Boeing, the other sponsors will be associated with the subject at hand. (Both Boeing and CQ Roll Call declined to comment on the value of the company’s sponsorship.)
Some minds might recoil at the thought of an energy blog sponsored by, and featuring content from, say, ExxonMobil, but Bronder sees it as a way to “enhance the reader experience.” She explained: “What you want to do is have content that [the sponsor] would be providing that would be relevant to the content that you have in your own arsenal.” She envisions the reader scrolling down the page and, instead of being distracted by garish advertisements, thinking, “news story, news story, news story, news story.”