The New Brand Journalism: Future Proof Your Content Marketing with the Right Approach
Content marketing is in the middle of what you could call a midlife crisis. But it’s nothing compared to what traditional publishers and the news media are dealing with.
AI is taking over top-of-funnel marketing (including content writing), search and social algorithms keep people from clicking, and the SEO strategy that worked a few years ago isn’t paying off anymore.
It’s tough out there for content marketers. It’s even tougher for legacy media. According to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, around 75% of newspaper jobs have disappeared since 2005.
Yet here I am, suggesting you take a journalistic approach to content marketing. Why?
Copy the techniques, not the business model
I spent five years working as a local TV news producer and worked as a writer in the Features department of The Appleton Post-Crescent. That experience served me well when I moved into marketing at a time when content creation was becoming really important.
Working in traditional media taught me a lot, including how to take deadlines seriously, work with collaborators, and write a solid hook. But I’d never recommend basing your content operations on the legacy media model.
Originally, when marketing teams talked about “brand journalism,” it conjured up pictures of bustling in-house newsrooms and production studios that mirrored the operations of newspapers and TV news. There were dreams of pumping out multiple pieces of multimedia content daily.
But very few brands ever achieved that level of productivity. And that’s probably a good thing.
Because not only is the newsroom model struggling, it’s also completely unsustainable for marketing teams.
There are multiple reasons why your content program cannot and should not try to be the news. For one thing, Google will not view a brand website as a legit news source, and neither will readers. Beyond that, you’ll never be as fast as a real news operation. Reporting on current events in your industry as they happen will not pay off.
The volume of content you’d need to act like a news operation is too high and the payoff is low. News content is the opposite of evergreen content. It starts getting stale as soon as you hit publish.
Forget the idea of being a content newsroom or an online magazine. Think smaller. Simply apply a journalistic approach to each piece of content you produce, watch the quality improve, and see how much more it resonates with your target audience.
Specifically, there are certain types of journalism that can help you create compelling stories when everyone is churning out generic AI content. Maybe you shouldn’t operate like a newspaper, but the Opinion section… that’s where to set your sights.
That way, instead of reporting industry news, you’re responding to it in a way that adds to the conversation rather than echoing what the news is already reporting.
Put yourself at the center of the story
It can be a challenge for some content marketers to take center stage in their writing. We’re used to being the blog bylines that nobody cares about — or worse yet — we publish under a team/brand account.
That lets you off the hook. You can write about things in theory instead of based on real experience. This way of thinking is the first thing that has to change. Put yourself back on the hook and look for ways to insert yourself into the content.
There’s a type of journalism known for doing exactly this: Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism. Now, I’m not suggesting that you start inhaling ether like you’re in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I’m not even suggesting you embellish and exaggerate the way Thompson did.
What I am suggesting is that you experience what you’re writing about firsthand. And I’m suggesting you add real opinions to your content. And above all, you need to find your own voice and let it show up in your content writing. Don’t be afraid to be a little bit raw, at least as much as the brand guidelines will let you. Raw is honest and honesty builds trust.
The brand voice works for ads and landing pages. But your voice needs to come through in content marketing pieces when your name is attached.
We know Google sees quality content as having Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT). How can you do that without having the experience, gaining the expertise, showcasing authority, and earning trust?
Time to stop with the “fake it till you make it” approach and get real. That’s what Hunter S. Thompson would do. He’d also miss his deadline. Don’t do that.
Master the art of the interview
Not everyone can ghostwrite and not everyone can be ghostwritten for. But you can still take the insights from thought leaders and experts in your organization and include them in your content.
That’s what journalists do all the time. They’re usually not experts themselves, but they know enough about the topic to ask the right questions and get the right stories out of the people they interview.
Interviewing people for an article is a real skill. You’re trying to listen and learn while simultaneously trying to decide what to ask next. The trick is to get the interview subject to do most of the talking.
Don’t be afraid to ask “stupid” questions. It’s better to get corrected during the interview than after you hit “Publish” on a new post. Podcasting legend Alex Blumberg offers more great advice on conducting interviews below.
Before you even start outlining an article, record and transcribe your interviews. Then go back and look for the best parts. I still like to think of these as “soundbites” even if they are only text quotations in the end.
Find a logical flow for all the information you learned. Then, write towards these sound bites. By that I mean let the interviewees have the best parts of the article. Your writing sets it up, their quotation knocks it down.
Find the right point of view
Whether you’re writing about your own opinion or sharing the thoughts and ideas of others, you need to define the point of view (POV).
I suggest making it part of your content brief or including it at the top of your draft so it becomes a guiding light for your writing. Everything points back to that POV, which leaves you with content that’s clear and consistent.
Take a look at just about any piece of typical SEO content. 99% of it has no point of view. When you’re concentrated on keywords and the word count, you care less about what the content has to say and more about how many times you say it.
But a strong POV can transform your existing SEO content into something meaningful (and it may even improve your rankings). Watch what happens when we take traditional SEO headlines and add a point of view:
Before (no POV): How to Build a Successful Thought Leadership Strategy
After (with POV): Thought Leadership Fails When Brands Have Nothing to Say
Before (no POV): The Complete Guide to Content Personalization
After (with POV): Why Personalization Doesn’t Feel Personal Anymore
Before (no POV): 7 B2B Website Best Practices for 2027
After (with POV): Your B2B Website is Now a Trust Engine
When you read the headlines based on a real POV, it’s clear you’re getting content that has something to say. And what the article has to say won’t show up in an AI Overview. That means people will want to click through and uncover your opinion.
Is it time to expand your editorial team?
The business model around journalism may be obsolete, but we need good journalism more than ever. That goes for both traditional media and brand journalism in content marketing.
But here’s the reality of the situation. Creating content like this takes more time, resources, and commitment. You need the right people in front of the keyboard and on the calls with internal experts if you want it to work.
That’s not possible on every marketing team, but it is an area where the right content partner can be a valuable asset. Look for people who know how to interview, investigate, challenge assumptions, find the interesting angle, and turn expertise into a story someone actually wants to read.
Because that’s the goal. Not to create content that reads like journalism but to write something that’s worth your reader’s time.
