In the news: How brand newsrooms are reinventing the concept of journalism.

A brand newsroom, as defined by the Digital Marketing Glossary, is "a brand newsroom is a place and team where marketing and advertising decisions are taken and implemented in real-time during important events." This blurring of the lines between journalism and branding has been intensifying in recent years. This month, Michael Winkleman of Foliomag.com discussed the rise of brand newsrooms in the content marketing world.

Winkleman sums up the controversy thusly: "While the discipline's champions see this approach-housed in increasingly popular 'brand newsrooms' -- as a solid way to apply the rigors of journalism to reporting on issues in which a brand has both interest and expertise, detractors look at it more cynically, doubting that brands could provide informative, insightful, and, especially, objective coverage that consumers can trust." He homes in on the GE Reports website, which has employed the brand newsroom model to great success. Read his complete analysis here.

Also Notable

Counting Fashion Ad Pages

These days, the Association of Magazine Media (MPA) has veered away from using ad page counts as a barometer for a magazine's ad revenue. Chantal Fernandez of Fashionista.com, frustrated with the unavailability of ad page counts for the upcoming September issues, has taken matters into her own hands. "Without access to internal revenue numbers," she writes, "it's the only metric that sheds light on advertiser demand for traditional print ads in each magazine." She and other staffers purchased hard copies of ten September fashion issues and counted the ads by hand. See her findings here.

Banner Ads: Still Relevant?

Many online publishers are still using display or banner ads to draw revenue, according to findings in the recent "Digital Publishing Benchmarks Report." Roughly 80 percent of publishers surveyed in the report used website banner ads, and 70 percent used email banner ads. Read more here.

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