You can guess why. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that Verizon turned over the phone records of millions of people to the American government without their consent. And Verizon is hardly neutral on the issue of net neutrality, having successfully sued to keep the F.C.C. from blocking efforts to charge for a fast lane for data traffic.

After inquiries from various news media outlets, Verizon fed the editor who sent the recruiting email into the wood chipper, saying, “Unlike the characterization by its new editor, SugarString is open to all topics that fit its mission and elevate the conversation around technology.” When I contacted the company on Friday, they would not say if that elevated conversation would include domestic spying and net neutrality, but a spokeswoman sent a note saying, “Verizon believes this was a good, sound concept, but the execution was not what it should have been, and we’ll learn from it.”

Clearly, historical models of funding original content are under duress, and a variety of efforts have emerged to innovate around that new reality: nonprofit news sites, digital news operations with low-cost approaches and yes, brands like Verizon that are also beginning to finance their own media operations.

The brand publishing that has emerged ranges from enlightening to harmless, with much of it arrayed over topics like extreme sports, small business advice or food and health. As my colleague Stuart Elliott pointed out, Pepsi is big into brand publishing, having come up with Green-Label.com, a lifestyle publication sponsored by Mountain Dew and produced by Pepsi along with Complex Media.

Complex is also producing the SugarString site on behalf of Verizon. According to people who were part of the process, Verizon brought the idea to McGarryBowen, an ad agency, and it soon became clear that what the company wanted was not a brand campaign, but a media property with visibility in social platforms.