There are many more writers on Forbes now than 5 years ago. You might not like them all. They may not all be of the same, high caliber. None of them are &quot;randos&quot; as the parent comment noted; they all come in with a body of work and a reputation and are vetted by editors.<p>&gt; a lot of them have massive conflicts of interest of one sort or another<p>That hadn&#x27;t been the case. With hope, it&#x27;s still not. There are ~disclosures linked from every byline.  There are points of view and interests, to be sure. Those interests should be at least as transparent as they are for Fortune, Business Week, The New York Times, et al.<p>&gt; more interested in being provocative than being thoughtful or correct<p>Well-said. This has been the trajectory of news, entertainment, and the media in general for many decades. The web has helped accelerate it, but it&#x27;s not proprietary to web publishers.<p>&gt; And BrandVoice really blurs the lines between advertising and editorial<p>That&#x27;s by design and intended to be so in a positive way: &quot;don&#x27;t just pitch products at me, but give me information I&#x27;ll find useful or entertaining even if it does suit your agenda.&quot; My disclosure is I worked on BrandVoice and similar programs; I&#x27;m no longer with Forbes. My strong opinion is all media have forms of this ad&#x2F;edit line-blurring via product placement, advertorial, sponsorships, and combinations of them all. (more on that <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@sjkmcnally&#x2F;you-call-e-t-a-movie-but-there-s-a-bag-of-reese-s-pieces-right-there-5d02b68ecd6f#.2dytgsug0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@sjkmcnally&#x2F;you-call-e-t-a-movie-but-ther...</a> )<p>re the parent post, advertorial is one way publishers are making some money and, in part, paying writers to bring you news and entertainment.  It doesn&#x27;t directly involve malware and usually not even ad networks. It&#x27;s not intended to disrupt reading experiences -- like pop-ups, take-overs, &amp; pre-roll -- and all the tools are there for advertisers to disclose conflicts and provide some thoughtfulness &amp; value to people who engage with it. When that&#x27;s not the case 100% of the time, it&#x27;s about specific executions rather than corruption of the concept as a whole.