PERSPECTIVES: Is ‘Sponsored Content” the New Normal in Collegiate Marketing?

In the old days, newspaper staff wrote articles about higher education. That’s still the case, of course. But there’s a contemporary twist. Today, collegiate communications staff write articles, the institution pays newspapers to publish those articles, and newspapers often comply. As an example, see the banner, ‘sponsored content’ in this article. Also, see the fine print at the article’s end. Conclusion? These days, new stories aren’t all the same. Marketing/branding makes it so, along with commercial newspapers’ need to secure new and profitable revenue streams. Sponsored content is a form of what’s called native advertising, that is, it blends content in the style and form of the platform where an article (ad, actually) appears. The approach enables ‘spin’ to look and read just like ‘normal’ content.

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