The future of the media is bleak. Many criticise Leveson as being about a decade late, news outlets are closing left and right and free online content is eliminating the desire for paid news.

Bad news for journalism, but good news for corporate media, according to Tom Foremski. At last night’s CIPR Thought Leader event, Foremski – a former Financial Times editor and current tech blogger at the Silicon Valley Watcher – spoke on the quality and increasing relevance of corporate media, known in previous incarnations as contract publishing, brand journalism and content marketing.

Though news organisations are hemorrhaging journalists, those experienced writers are now flooding the brand new newsrooms of companies around the world. They are writing blog posts, researching stories and broadcasting news about Nissan, Nike and Nokia, among others.

Due to the decline of local and niche publications, companies who want their stories told are beginning to produce their own news. “Some of it looks like serious journalism, some of it doesn’t,” Foremski says. “Companies want to see their stories being told. I think corporate media can be trusted. Corporations understand the value of brand.”

While he does note that the content that is produced is fairly safe, as it has to be approved by the company, it is of a high quality due to the training and experience of those producing it. While corporate media is proliferating, Foremski says it fails to entirely fill the gap left by the demise of professional journalism. “They’re going to produce things in their interest. Where’s the other stuff going to come from?”

The CIPR Thought Leader series runs throughout the year and is designed to provoke debate in different areas of communications.

For more on content marketing, see March’s cover story.