By Alison@Creekside
Hey kids, remember PostMedia’s pitch for their tarsands promotion partnership with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers?:
Postmedia is proud to present its 2013 media partnership with CAPP.
We are a media company national in scope but community-focused. Canadians know our brands, trust our content, and welcome us as a vital member of their communities.
CAPP’s messaging will extend to our massive mobile and tablet network so that vital energy information is never more than a click away. Our print coverage will include weekly energy editorial across our entire newspaper chain*, along with monthly joint ventures and quarterly special reports on subjects CAPP needs to bring to the forefront of Canadian consciousness.”
* National Post, Financial Post, Vancouver Sun and Province, Ottawa Citizen, Calgary Herald, Windsor Star, Edmonton Journal, Regina Leader-Post, Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Montreal Gazette, and canada.com
Here are a few of the recent crop of Postmedia stories that “CAPP needs to bring to the forefront of Canadian consciousness.” If you only scanned the headlines, you might mistake them for actual news:
Production of conventional oil on the rise
All five carry this byline at the bottom:
This story was produced by Postmedia’s advertising department on behalf of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers for commercial purposes.”
Here’s a bonus one from CIBC:
Skilled trades shortage in Alberta a tremendous opportunity for new and growing businesses
This story was produced by Postmedia’s advertising department in collaboration with CIBC to promote awareness of this topic for commercial purposes.”
Then it was the Globe and Mail’s turn. Currently the G&M staff are threatening strike action over this:
Leaked memo confirms Globe and Mail wants journalists to write advertorials
Globe executives want to monetize the integrity and reputations of The Globe and Mail’s journalists – the same award-winning reporters and editors that management proudly (and rightly) claims are vital to the enterprise’s future as a powerful, independent, fearless and profitable news organization.
Under the company proposal, editorial staff would be assigned to write or produce advertiser sponsored ‘branded content’ (i.e. native advertising) that is vetted by the advertiser prior to publication and held out to readers as staff-written content.
That content cannot offend a paying advertiser’s specific opinions and corporate interests or it will be changed.
This proposal was presented to us by editorial management and has been vetted by the Editor-in-Chief.
That would be Editor-in-Chief David Walmsley, recently busted for portraying his own published endorsement of teabaggin’ Tim Hudak for Premier of Ontario as the choice of the G&M editorial board:
The Globe’s editorial board endorses Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives
So . . . where are you getting your news lately?