It’s nearly impossible these days to pick up a newspaper or read a blog and not find some discussion of the future of the media business and what it means for journalism. To say that it’s an experimental time in the way content is distributed and funded is a bit of an understatement perhaps, as various outlets test out models that rely on everything from crowd-funding and institutional endowments to niche-specific publications that serve a particular industry to get by. But it’s important to note what exactly we’re trying to preserve with these various methodologies, is it traditional media or traditional journalism? This distinction becomes helpful when considering a different kind of model recently reported on by Fast Company.

It’s no secret that to survive on the web and maintain audience interest, companies have had to become as much content creators as they are manufacturers or service providers, but how do you step outside the corporate blog and make something truly compelling?

For the Carpenter Co., the world’s largest producer of comfort cushioning products and the name behind SleepBetter.org, that meant hiring journalist and novelist Dan Gearino, housing him in the town of Stephenville, Texas and give him free rein to document the life going on there. The blog, going under the name Stephenville Dreams, is a long-form journalistic marketing campaign that says as much about the small Texas as it does about a bedding company.

Which is to say, that by successfully treading the fine line between the two, it might represent one more way to write about and distribute the news. After all, we’re already subject to advertising in the form of print ads, blinking banners and commercials, so why not sponsored content that assumes no bias and maintains journalistic integrity?

Gearino likens the experience to the “the Federal Writer Project, when the government paid thousands of writers, including the likes of John Cheever, Saul Bellow and Studs Terkel to capture everyday life during the Depression.” And  in his initial blog,suggested that the project is “revolutionizing the underpinnings of journalism.”

Needless to say, it will be interesting to see if this project is merely a flash in the pan or something that will inspire an industrywide trend in the way our stories are reported.