BoSacks Speaks Out: ASME Sets New Edit-Ad Guidelines

BoSacks Speaks Out; As the article suggests, the jury is still out on whether ASME will tighten or loosen the rules for keeping ads and edit apart.

Here is a firm promise and a prediction from BoSacks: if they loosen the rules, I will go editorially and ferociously ballistic. The industry has been on the edge of having or not having integrity for years. If the American Society of Magazine Editors takes the low road and decides that honor and integrity need have no place in the magazine industry, then they will surely reap what they sow.

There are reasons for the separation of church and state in both government and publishing. Integrity is a simple thing, and I make it a practice not to do business with those to whom integrity is a missing component. It's a simple rule and one that the public understands as well. It seems that the various divisions of our beloved industry each has their own nail for the coffin of our demise.

What do you think? Should we loosen the rules? Should we at last finally become known as advertorial media?


I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.
Sydney Biddle Barrows, ''Mayflower Madam' Tells All,' Boston Globe, 1986

Mag Bag: ASME Sets New Edit-Ad Guidelines
by Erik Sass,
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&s=95213&Nid=49647&p=263991


The American Society of Magazine Editors is tweaking the rulebook for keeping edit and ad content separate, according to a story in Adweek earlier this week. The new rules should be ready for approval by ASME's board by the middle of next year.


The exact substance of the changes--stricter or looser standards--is unclear. On the one hand, ASME's current chief executive Sid Holt conceded: "We've had situations where we've seen violations of the spirit of the guidelines, but not the guidelines themselves"--seeming to suggest that new stringency is in order. On the other hand, "we want them to be more industry-friendly in that they make sense to editors and advertisers alike."

So what "makes sense"? If recent moves by ASME members are anything to judge by, the new guidelines will loosen restrictions on integration of advertising into magazine cover art and headlines. This is one area where advertisers have been especially aggressive with their demands for more mingling of advertising and editorial content.

For example, the September issue of Esquire featured a blinking, flashing electronic display designed by E-ink and sponsored by Ford, although Ford was not mentioned on the cover. The high-profile cover led directly to a Ford ad spread in the front of the magazine that takes credit for the innovative front. The August 10 issue of The New York Times Magazine came with a cover wrap purchased by U.S. Trust, Bank of America's private-wealth management division, to promote its philanthropic financial products.

Last December, New York magazine sold a four-page cover wrap to the New Museum. Last year, Harper's Bazaar delivered 5,000 VIP copies that came embedded with "crystals"--courtesy of Swarovski, also an advertiser. In 2005, The New Yorker produced a single-sponsor issue for Target that incorporated the Target logo's distinctive red-and-white coloring on the cover as well as inside the magazine.

Requests for integration are attractive to magazines, given the drop in ad revenue. Through November, total ad pages are down 8.5% at over 200 weekly and monthly titles tracked by MIN Online.

AJR Facing Major Debt -- But CJR Says It's In The Black

AJR Facing Major Debt -- But CJR Says It's In The Black
By Joe Strupp
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003628948


NEW YORK While American Journalism Review is apparently $200,000 in debt with threats of closure, its counterpart, the Columbia Journalism Review, is having its best financial year ever, according to Executive Editor Mike Hoyt.

Hoyt, who has led the newsroom for four years, says his publication is about $50,000 in the black, with estimates of a $40,000 surplus in 2008. "We feel like we are on a roll," says Hoyt, noting the economic turnaround is based on a mix of some staff cuts and fundraising increases. "We didn't replace three editors, but we have been able to add some reporters and we've done a lot of fundraising."

Hoyt's assessment follows a report in The Washington Post today that AJR is about $200,000 in debt and may face closure if the deficit is not reduced.

Both AJR and CJR have benefited in recent years from a fundraising project led by former Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor Eugene Roberts, who has headed a group of news veterans in raising some $2.5 million for both publications since 2004.

Roberts was not surprised at today's report that AJR was in trouble, saying the publication will always struggle given its continued advertising revenue battles.

"It is an ongoing thing," Roberts told E&P. "Neither magazine gets enough advertising to be self-sustaining, they need to be supplemented each year."

Roberts, who launched the fundraising effort three years ago as part of a group that included former Associated Press President and CEO Louis Boccardi and Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Norman Pearlstine, said the initiative has so far raised about $1.25 million for each, with more likely to come. The group also helped increase circulation efforts as the magazines went to alternative monthly production schedules.

Tom Kunkel, AJR president, told the Post it is "more likely" that the magazine will be able to continue publishing next year, but that he must close the deficit, which represents about one-fourth of its annual budget.

"It's always been 'The Perils of Pauline' with the finances of a journalism review," Kunkel, dean of the journalism school at the University of Maryland, whose foundation has owned the review for two decades, told the Post, adding that there is "no guarantee" of survival but "we haven't been given a drop-dead date or anything like that."

Hoyt reserved comment on AJR's operation, other than to say, "we wish AJR the best, I think they are very good." As for his magazine and Web site, he says the economic news is the best in the magazine's history. "As far as I know, this is the first time we have been in the black," he said, noting the publication's $2.3 million budget and eight-person staff. "The first time in history."

He said that the magazine and Web site had both undergone redesigns this year, adding that a subscription drive helped bring in some 6,000 student subscribers in the past two years. The bi-monthly publication's circulation is about 19,000, he said.

"Advertising revenue has been stable in print, and online we have a single source advertiser for the first time," Hoyt said.

AJR faced another challenge this year, after Santa Barbara News-Press owner Wendy McCaw, embroiled in a year-long labor battle with employees, sued the review after it published an article in 2006 about her paper's problems.