Digital Journal launches new newsroom – for brands

Since its inception in 2006, Digital Journal has expanded to entail 42,000 contributors in over 200 countries and now, Ira Basen explains, the Canadian citizen journalism start-up is moving into brand journalism. Basen spoke with founder Chris Hogg about what this means for Digital Journal’s journalists and how this project fits into the larger picture of branded content.

Since its inception in 2006, Digital Journal has expanded to entail 42,000 contributors in over 200 countries and now, Ira Basen explains, the Canadian citizen journalism start-up is moving into brand journalism. Basen spoke with founder Chris Hogg about what this means for Digital Journal’s journalists and how this project fits into the larger picture of branded content.

These may be the best of times and the worst of times for two innovative Canadian “citizen journalism” sites.

On the down side, OpenFile, the “community-powered” news site that operates in six Canadian cities “suspended operations” at the end of September. The site was founded in 2010 by former CNN correspondent and J-Source Canadian Newsperson of the Year Wilf Dinnick.

“We will undergo a pretty big change over the next few weeks,” Dinnick wrote on the OpenFile website on September 28, but there’s been no word since then on what the new version of the site might look like, or when it might appear.

But the future is looking brighter for another Toronto-based site, Digital Journal. On October 1, Digital Journal CEO Chris Hogg announced that the company would be creating a newsroom devoted to telling the stories of brands.   

It’s known as “brand journalism,” and it is based on the idea that today, every company, no matter what business they’re in, is also a publishing company. Advertising and other traditional marketing techniques are no longer enough to grab and hold the interest of consumers. Companies need to be creating a constant supply of fresh compelling content to attract the attention of customers and search engines.

And Digital Journal seems well suited to meet that need. The company has run a successful citizen journalism site since 2006. It now boasts 42,000 contributors in 200 countries, and nearly four million monthly unique visitors.

Those contributors will now have an opportunity to supplement their incomes, not by writing news stories, but by writing content for brands.  

“This is not a pure marketing play where a journalist is being asked to convey a message around a brand,” Chris Hogg explained in a recent interview. “They’re not being specifically asked to promote or tout something, but instead covering what a brand is doing the way a journalist would cover an event for example.”

Hogg, a graduate of the Ryerson School of Journalism, concedes that there are many journalists who will always be uncomfortable with the idea of brand journalism, but he argues there are many more who are defining themselves as “content creators,” rather than journalists, and don’t really care who that content is created for.     

“There are a lot of content creators who may be journalistically trained, and for them the opportunity to be published by anyone becomes important.” Hogg argues. “In the future when we look at how a portfolio would be put together I think it’s very reasonable for someone who may be journalistically trained to say that, ‘I have worked for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Pepsi, Starbucks,’ and when you have a wider portfolio I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing as long as it’s managed in an ethical and responsible way.”

For Digital Journal contributors not bothered by the optics of writing for Pepsi or Starbucks, the brand newsroom could mean significantly more money in their pockets. Unlike most citizen journalism sites, Digital Journal pays writers for their content. The company pools its ad revenue in a “money pot” and distributes it to contributors based on the number of “likes” an article gets and the number of pageviews it generates.

Digital Journal’s new /newsroom will connect its writers to brands looking for story tellers, and those companies will undoubtedly be offering more than whatever can be earned from grabbing a share of the money pot.    

Hogg believes his new venture has the potential to provide a significant new revenue stream for the company as well. And it will position Digital Journal for wherever media is heading over the next few years.  

“We think that citizen journalism and user generated content is a significant component. We think that branded content and working with brands is another significant component. We recognize that social is going to be a big, big driver of the future of media, so, really what we’re doing is filling up the buckets that we think are going to be necessary to build a modern media company. So, for us it’s just extending and growing to the next check box.”

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The future of journalism is…branded