The Wall Street Journal Editor Says Native Advertising Is a Deal with the Devil

We never pegged The Wall Street Journal managing editor Gerard Baker as a theater major, but he went all Shakespearean on the New York University journalism school crowd last night when he described native advertising as a “Faustian bargain” between brands and publishers.

He’s one of the holdouts who thinks that publications must maintain a strict wall between promotional and editorial, and he believes that the WSJ and the brands that want to use it as a promo forum will both lose out if the paper goes native:

An advertiser wants to advertise in The Wall Street Journal to be seen and to be associated with a brand like The Wall Street Journal, or The Financial Times or Bloomberg, because those news organizations are respected.

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