Book chapter
From Studios and Advocates to Brand Practitioners: Tracing the influence of political and commercial interests on digital narrative journalism
The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies, pp.439-449
Routledge Journalism Companions, Routledge, Second edition
2025
DOI: 10.4324/9781003334774-51
Abstract
In the early 2010s, the increasing use of Ad Blockers coincided with the rise in demand for immersive ad-free online content visible in the popularity of works such as the New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning "Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek." The piece broke the record in 2012 for time on page due to its immersive digital design aimed to contain and rivet audience attention rather than scatter it onto the web via hyperlinks. "Snow Fall" marked a milestone in digital journalism not only for its multimedia storytelling that combined graphics, interactive maps, and video with text with unprecedented effect but because it suggested a method of promotion-as a loss leader amplifying the brand of its parent company the New York Times-previously not utilized as a marketing strategy. The most impressive technological and narrative innovations in multimedia storytelling of the next decade would become promotional vehicles produced by advocates, brands, and news organizations' sponsored content studios. Once regarded as the exclusive domain of journalism, digital longform storytelling in multimedia formats has increasingly taken on promotional functions. Sponsored content produced by legacy media, typically labeled "Paid Post," widely circulates online promoting corporate brands from Verizon to Netflix in addition to public sector entities such as The New York City Mayor's Office and advocate NGOs like Greenpeace. This chapter examines how three non-traditional producers (advocates, brands, and news organization-run content marketing studios) operate according to a digital age neoliberal logic undermining the principle of an independent press. News organizations now willingly sell their journalistic prestige-paradoxically built on independent reporting-to brands, who alternately craft and publish their own sophisticated longform narratives with their own staff, which often include veteran legacy media reporters. Critical analysis of selected cases demonstrates the impact of political and commercial interests on the evolutionary trajectory of digital narrative journalism toward richer production standards through increasingly compelling technological forms at the expense of independent monitorial journalism.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- From Studios and Advocates to Brand Practitioners: Tracing the influence of political and commercial interests on digital narrative journalism
- Creators
- David O. Dowling
- Contributors
- Scott A. Eldridge (Editor)David Cheruiyot (Editor)Sandra Banjac (Editor)Joëlle Swart (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies, pp.439-449
- Edition
- Second edition
- Publisher
- Routledge; New York, NY
- Series
- Routledge Journalism Companions
- DOI
- 10.4324/9781003334774-51
- Alternative title
- David O. Dowling
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2025
- Academic Unit
- School of Journalism and Mass Communication
- Record Identifier
- 9984745355202771
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