Contest Over Authority

Abstract

This study explores how editors and business executives discursively renegotiated the boundary of authority in the wave of integrating native advertising at nine US publishers across five years. The findings demonstrate an overwhelmingly pro-business voice that legitimized native advertising as an innovation to increase revenue, advertisers’ interest, audience engagement, and even editorial quality. By contrast, the pro-editorial voice that resisted the integration inside the organizations was scattered and muted and gradually turned into a collaboration with the business side, while the industrial debate remained critical and unsettled on editorial involvement in content marketing. The dilution of the editorial–business boundary in those organizations suggests that journalistic autonomy was lessened from within—the autonomous force of journalism submitted authority to the heteronomous force of journalism.

KEYWORDS:

• church and state
• discourse analysis
• editorial–business relationship
• field theory
• journalistic autonomy
• native advertising
• qualitative method

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author appreciates the feedback given on the manuscript from the reviewers and editors.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Provost's New Faculty Research Award of Eastern Michigan University.

Notes on contributors

You Li

Web: http://www.emich.edu/cmta/faculty/media/yli.php