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Copyright by Joshua Eric Miller 2017 i The Report Committee for Joshua Eric Miller Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report: Publishers, Brands and the Freelancers in between: Journalistic boundaries in the age of sponsored content and the gig economy APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Supervisor: Wenhong Chen Rosental Alves ii Publishers, Brands and the Freelancers in between: Journalistic boundaries in the age of sponsored content and the gig economy by Joshua Eric Miller, BSJ Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degrees of Master of Arts Master of Business Administration The University of Texas at Austin May 2017 iii Acknowledgements First I would like to express deep gratitude to my report advisor Dr. Wenhong Chen, one of the first and most influential people I met at the University of Texas. Dr. Chen taught me about the power of interpersonal ties in her Social Capital and Social Networks course my first semester of graduate school. She repeatedly reinforced their value over the next three years, as a teacher, supervisor and voice of encouragement. Without her timely and thorough feedback, patience and motivation, this report would have been impossible. Her humor always helped too. I also would like to thank second reader Rosental Alves, who pushed me to learn more about emerging business models in journalism and consider their implications for the profession. His knowledge of and authority in the field opened new paths to be discovered as well as many doors that otherwise may have remained closed. He is pretty funny as well, I guess. Lastly, I must acknowledge all of the research participants who gave their time and shared their stories. Their commitment to education and their crafts is inspiring. iv Abstract Publishers, Brands and the Freelancers in between: Journalistic boundaries in the age of sponsored content and the gig economy Joshua Eric Miller, M.A./M.B.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2017 Supervisor: Wenhong Chen As procedures and ethics surrounding native advertising and sponsored content creation coalesce, this report explores journalistic boundaries, performances of professional identities at the organizational and individual levels of content production, and relationships between stakeholders in an increasingly freelance economy. I build on the scholarship of journalism and mass media researchers, such as Mark Coddington, Nicole Cohen and Cynthia Meyers, by examining how changing business models in news publishing interact with expressed occupational values, labor practices and industry configurations. To supplement existing literature and broaden its universe of investigated contexts, I apply a mixed methodology. Over the course of my study, twelve freelance or institutional content creators participated in qualitative interviews. An analysis of the discourse constructed by startup content studio Contently, as well as its contractor network, added further perspectives. The findings indicate an individualization of responsibility for maintaining news-business divides and transparency in an age of v freelance-produced sponsored content. Beyond corporate suites and audience-facing texts, negotiations between public-interest reporting and financially motivated messaging involve hybrid journalist-marketers. This report contributes to industry practitioners’ and academic observers’ conceptualizations of the evolving content production landscape by considering how, in light of developments around boundaries and labor, myriad stakeholders are repositioning and rebranding themselves. It concludes by offering recommendations for theoretical and practical next steps. vi Table of Contents Introduction ..............................................................................................................1 Background: Sponsored Content and the Current State of Journalism ...........3 Research Questions ................................................................................................13 Literature Review ...................................................................................................14 Journalistic Boundaries and Sponsored Content ...........................................14 Practitioners’ Professional Identities: Truth, Trust and Transparency .........18 Organization-Content Creator Relationships ................................................21 Research Methodology ..........................................................................................25 Research Analysis ..................................................................................................30 Boundaries: Practitioners and their Practices ...............................................30 Boundaries: Responsibility and Guidelines ..................................................33 Writer-Advertiser Relationships ...................................................................37 “The Freelancer Lifestyle” ............................................................................41 Discussion ..............................................................................................................48 Limitations .............................................................................................................55 Conclusion .............................................................................................................57 References ..............................................................................................................61 vii Introduction “Sponsored content,” an iteration of “native advertising” (see Conill, 2016) that mimics journalism, is one of several new or recently refashioned alternative revenue streams for news organizations (see Meyers, 2015; Cohen, 2016). In its text-based form, sponsored content resembles editorial articles in appearance and tone, and predominantly is integrated, with discrepancies in disclosure, into the digital publications of legacy print and internet native media outlets. Still emerging in prominence and as a process, sponsored content creation has yet to acquire “codes of best practices, industry guidelines, or standards that more mature types of advertising enjoy” (Sweetser, Ahn, Golan & Hochman, 2016, p. 1452). Its implications for journalism stakeholders, from institutions and advertisers to individual practitioners and audiences, likewise, remain matters for debate (Coddington, 2015). The rise (or rebirth) of sponsored content coincides with decades of downsizing at editorial publishers (Mitchell & Holcomb, 2016; Vernon, 2016), and their growing reliance on freelance laborers (see Carr, 2013; Cohen, 2015), the same contractors who in some cases also create sponsored or other forms of content for brands. Scores of actors, meanwhile, have entered this fray as intermediaries between media organizations, advertisers, individual content creators and readers. One such company analyzed in detail below, Contently, connects thousands of independently employed journalists in its network with news editors and marketers. To advance knowledge in the fields of journalism, advertising and media studies, this report takes a critical look at sponsored content production, its makers and its significance for the news industry. Specifically, the study interrogates journalistic boundaries that have, if nothing else, professed to shield news coverage from financial considerations in order to protect its perceived autonomy and credibility. I also inspect 1 the performances of professional identities at the organizational and individual levels of content production. This informs consideration of occupational value redefinition, the assigning or assumption of responsibility for upholding those values, and how their maintenance is communicated. Attention also is paid to relationships between organizations and individual contractors, with particular emphasis on recent entrants to the arena of sponsored content creation. My work builds on the scholarship of journalism and mass media researchers, such as Mark Coddington, Nicole Cohen and Cynthia Meyers, by examining how changing business models in news publishing interact with expressed occupational values, labor practices and industry configurations. The literature on freelance content creators in these disciplines is sparse. Interventions in the creative industries (see Neff, 2012; Watkins, in press) as well as those from primarily Canadian (Cohen, 2015; 2016) and European (see Deuze, 2007; Frohlich, Koch & Obermaier, 2013; Gollmitzer, 2014; Obermaier & Koch, 2015) points of view are notable exceptions. To supplement these teachings, I bring in the American context. This study also broadens the universe of perspectives applied to these themes by more closely scrutinizing, through their messaging, brokerage entities between writers and sponsors. A mixed methodology therefore was employed. A group of 12, comprising seven freelance writers and five topical experts with experience working at organizations engaged in journalistic and sponsored content creation, participated in qualitative interviews. An analysis of the discourse constructed by startup content studio Contently, as well as its contractor network, added further depth. My findings indicate an individualization