I'm torn on BP's sponsorship of The New Republic's environmental blog. On the one hand, I see Sam Boyd's point. Having an oil company fund a blog about climate change is like having a wolf underwrite a blog dedicated to life expectancy among chickens. The sponsor's survival is basically dedicated on the blog's failure. But this is, in part, how advertising works. NPR is brought to you by Wal-Mart, Keith Olbermann by Boeing, Glen Becks by the Obama campaign's political advertising. The question is whether "powered by BP" is different than running an ad by BP. Optically, it is, which is why there's been outcry among readers and discomfort among journalists. Operationally, there's no reason it can't act like a banner ad, and be subject to the same wall between print and business. The New Republic, in fact, has a long history of this sort of thing, with lots of "advertorials" funded by Saudi Arabia (seriously) but written in a style that make them look like a New Republic report. The Prospect does something vaguely similar, though our special reports rely on support from foundations rather than corporations or foreign governments. In my perfect world, none of this stuff would happen. But since you guys don't like to pay much for content, magazines have to figure out a way to fund themselves, and that means going to people with more money, and those people want something in return, and soon enough, you're "powered by BP," running a blog that is implicitly arguing to put BP out of business at the same time that it's explicitly greenwashing their corporate image and making it less likely that public anger will actually threaten their business model. So the question is whether you can both be powered by BP and credible with your readers. It's easy enough for me to trust my friend Brad Plumer to stay honest. But if this is profitable for TNR, it won't end here. It'll be a first step towards something, someday, that I may not be able to trust. (Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Garlyn.) THE NEW REPUBLIC: POWERED BY BP.
I'm torn on BP's sponsorship of The New Republic's environmental blog. On the one hand, I see Sam Boyd's point. Having an oil company fund a blog about climate change is like having a wolf underwrite a blog dedicated to life expectancy among chickens. The sponsor's survival is basically dedicated on the blog's failure. But this is, in part, how advertising works. NPR is brought to you by Wal-Mart, Keith Olbermann by Boeing, Glen Becks by the Obama campaign's political advertising. The question is whether "powered by BP" is different than running an ad by BP. Optically, it is, which is why there's been outcry among readers and discomfort among journalists. Operationally, there's no reason it can't act like a banner ad, and be subject to the same wall between print and business. The New Republic, in fact, has a long history of this sort of thing, with lots of "advertorials" funded by Saudi Arabia (seriously) but written in a style that make them look like a New Republic report. The Prospect does something vaguely similar, though our special reports rely on support from foundations rather than corporations or foreign governments. In my perfect world, none of this stuff would happen. But since you guys don't like to pay much for content, magazines have to figure out a way to fund themselves, and that means going to people with more money, and those people want something in return, and soon enough, you're "powered by BP," running a blog that is implicitly arguing to put BP out of business at the same time that it's explicitly greenwashing their corporate image and making it less likely that public anger will actually threaten their business model. So the question is whether you can both be powered by BP and credible with your readers. It's easy enough for me to trust my friend Brad Plumer to stay honest. But if this is profitable for TNR, it won't end here. It'll be a first step towards something, someday, that I may not be able to trust. (Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user Garlyn.) 
