CBC’s Smart Shift Web site: What’s the deal with IBM?

Cross-Promotion A screenshot from CBC’s Smart Shift Web site, sponsored by IBM. This story in the site’s "Case Studies" section, "A smart new travel companion," which has no byline, profiles IBM’s implementation of an iPhone application for Air Canada. The article, styled like a CBC news story, lists the features of the new application, and its subhead reads: "Success! The new app takes off."

CBC News’s new Web site, called Smart Shift: Conversations for Change is clearly labeled as “presented by IBM.” But what does the century-old US$109 billion business consulting firm get out of this partnership with Canada’s national public news source? And what do CBC.ca readers receive in the end?

The Financial Post says Smart Shift, a journalistic endeavor between the CBC, the Post, and IBM that began in September, sets out to "[look] at the big thinkers and doers who are devising new ways of doing business in the wake of the financial crisis." So far, the series has included this story on "Superfreakanomics"-esque proposals to fight global warming and this Diane Francis interview with the chairman and CEO of the Royal Bank, who basically said the solution to financial turmoil isn’t regulation but "principles," whatever the hell that means.

There is some good content on the Smart Shift Web sites—there are two of them: one at the CBC and one at the Financial Post—but most of it is bland. There don’t seem to be any investigative stories. Much of it is he said/she said-style reporting of energy, environemental or tech controversies, like this story on reopening the debate on offshore drilling on Canada’s west coast, centered entirely on the opinions of one Calgary energy consultant who advocates for drilling.

But there isn’t a real journalistic focus. It is a hodgepodge of stories mostly on the financial sector, but also on the environment, energy, urban planning, and technology, with no inquisitive edge.

In fact, it reads almost entirely like a promotional vehicle for IBM.

Marketing magazine describes Smart Shift as "editorial driven Smart Shift: Conversation for Change project, which seeks to engage Canada’s C-level executives in conversations about the environment, communities and business and, as the sole advertiser, build affinity for IBM and its ’Smarter Planet’ brand positioning."

So all that mediocre content being created and promoted by the country’s leading journalistic outlet and the leading financial newspaper is also the exclusive marketing endeavor of Big Blue.

Neither the CBC nor the Financial Post (which, of course, is part of the private company CanWest) hide the series’s ties to IBM. In fact, the ad space is all IBM, all the time. The CBC portal has four sections—Think Tank, Case Studies, The IBM Resource Centre, and Leaders—which seem to be entirely made up of IBM-created marketing content, like this story, called "Can governments get smarter?", which is presented like the CBC news stories on the site but has no byline, is clearly not news, is clearly related to IBM’s marketing program, and ends with a fake news poll:

How Can Governments Get Smarter?
- Use the internet and online networks to increase access to services.
- Make better decisions based on analytics and statistical analysis.
- Publish data sets and increase transparency to allow citizens access to government data.
Vote

All of this is sandwiched between the normal top and bottom of the CBC news site, including the comments section. The Financial Post Web site has similar IBM-focussed sections.

The endeavor is clearly marketing-driven. Its journalism is lukewarm and unfocussed. But its message is clear: information technology and "smarter thinking"—IBM’s new mantra—as the way of the future.

What exactly do the CBC, a crown corporation, and its readers get out of this partnership? Would the Financial Post still write a story critical of IBM—like this one from the British on-line tech magazine The Register calling an IBM project a "scam," or this one in Computerworld on US government stimulus and an IBM contract—after such a cozy encounter? End.