Brand Journalism – yay or nay?

I came across this online article which is relevant to our class discussion on 14 March.

… we have no interest in working with content creators. Journalism is a calling and people are putting trust in you to study something and make a judgement. But if it’s someone who is getting money from a company to write five articles saying how awesome something is. Will anyone read that? No of course not. 

I think that brand journalism will continue to be a communications strategy in the near future. The rise of fake news and proliferation of sites such as States Times Review show that more often than not, people do not question the credibility and reliability of the author. In Singapore, even when branded content on popular sites such as Seth Lui and The Smart Local include a disclaimer at the end of the article that it is a partnership / transaction with the featured client, online users continue to share the article as the uniqueness of the overall story matters more than whether it is exaggerated than what it actually is.