“Art Journalism” UBS-Style: WSJ’s Boss Blasts Advertorials

Pure coincidence, no doubt. But it was almost as if Peter Kann, the chairman of Dow Jones & Co. (which publishes the Wall Street Journal), had read CultureGrrl‘s recent critiques of the UBS contemporary-art newspaper supplement that was folded into the WSJ, as well as my dismissal as “essentially an infomercial” of an WSJ online video clip, in which its own reporter interviewed a Christie’s specialist about an auction of rock memorabilia.
In Kann’s opinion piece, “The Media Is in Need of Some Mending,” published Monday on the WSJ’s editorial page, he decried “the blending of news and advertising, sponsorships or other commercial relationships”:
The resulting porridges may be called “advertorials” or “infomercials”; they may be special sections masquerading as news [shades of UBS], news pages driven by commercial interests, or Web pages [shades of the new WSJ.com videos] where everything somehow is selling something. Without clear distinctions between news and advertising, readers or viewers lose confidence in the veracity of a news medium. And advertisers lose the business benefit of an environment of trust.
What Kann didn’t say was whether his comments were intended as criticism of the very newspaper in which he was airing them.
One can only wonder.