Starting last week, Starbucks and Good magazine launched the Good Sheet, "a weekly series breaking down an important issue to help make sense of the world around us. Exclusively at Starbucks." This week's issue: Carbon emissions.

According to The Huffington Post, Starbucks timed this custom publishing/post-advertising promotion with the election season. Good will produce 11 Good Sheets between now and November. Starbucks was looking for a way to stimulate debate and conversation at its store locations. But does the coffee and pricey-tea-cakes company have the authority to publish (that is, expertise plus credibility) on issues such as the environment and health-care reform?

No.

But Good magazine certainly does. By partnering with a media property while controlling the distribution (and, to some extent, the content and other important details of the media), Starbucks is successfully building media with built-in authority and relatively low startup costs. Now, is it authentic for Starbucks to be a newspaper publisher/distributor? Coffee and newspaper...nah...it'll never take off.