> Maybe BuzzFeed has cracked the code for online "journalism" being profitable Cue a torrent of branded content and native advertising apologists. Native adve

> Maybe BuzzFeed has cracked the code for online "journalism" being profitable Cue a torrent of branded content and native advertising apologists. Native advertising is to journalism what virtual casinos are to video games. I used to be an apologist for a virtual slot machine—I even wrote some code for one. But once you get out of the system, it's so obvious: virtual casinos are unequivocally bad for the gaming ecosystem. Indeed, anything that makes its money primarily by exploiting people at the expensive of competitive creativity—like casinos or native advertising—is bad for the ecosystem. I think many people in journalism will have to discover organically that native advertising is unequivocally bad for the non-fiction ecosystem. It will make tons of money, sure, but their integrity is worth far more.