Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
44
 www.ideavirus.com
Enter the web. There are plenty of websites where the line between editorial content and
advertising is blurred, where sponsoring a website also gives you the right to say what you
want to say.…
So let’s imagine for a second that the 
New York Times
embraced this shocking idea. That
they said, “Okay marketers, write your own articles! And pay us to run them!” Now there’d
be some ground rules. First, the marketer would specify how much they’d be willing to pay
to have a story featured. For example, a restaurant could decide it might be worth $10,000
for a feature on their new chef to appear in print.
Second, the 
Times
would get final say over what was printed.
Obviously, a wholesale switch from powerful sneezer to promiscuous sneezer would decimate
the circulation base of the 
Times
. If the 
Times
accepted any article, regardless of credibility
and interest, just because the marketer was the highest bidder, it would totally destroy the
paper within a week.
But what if the 
Times
realized that picking only the very best articles that were submitted
(maybe just a few a day) could ensure that people would still be delighted to read the paper?
What if the 
Times
knew that for every 199 badly written restaurant fluff pieces, a great one
would show up? And what if the editor in chief had enough guts to pick just the great articles
and resist pressure to completely sell out?
Journalistic handwringing aside, this is already happening (not at the fabled 
Times
, of
course), and it’s going to happen more. It’s happening on websites. It’s happening on
television (witness the CBS coverage of iWon.com awarding prizes—CBS owns a chunk of
iWon.) And far more interesting than this tortured analogy, it’s already happening with
people’s personal sneezing ethics.
A hundred years ago, there weren’t many opportunities for playwrights, actors and captains
of industry to sell out. Today, Whoopi Goldberg pitches Flooz, William Shatner pitches
Priceline and Gerald Ford is on the board of directors of several companies. In each case, the
celebrity is shifting from role of influential, powerful, can’t-be-bought-I’m-a-style-statesman

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