Be The Media

Commercial Alert seeks disclosure of product placement in magazines

From B to B online:

"Commercial Alert, a nonprofit organization that opposes "commercialism," announced Monday that it sent a letter to Marlene Kahan, executive director of the American Society of Magazine Editors, asking that new rules be established to require disclosure of product placement in magazines.

The letter, which was signed by scores of journalism professors, begins, "Magazine editors in the U.S. are under increasing pressure to weave advertising into their editorial content. In the past, advertisers have sought to influence stories, often with success. Now they are going further, and seeking to turn ads into articles."

Seeing these efforts as a "threat to press freedom," Commercial Alert suggested that product placement deals be prominently disclosed, that advertorials be identified more clearly and that the ASME incorporate in its code of ethics language prohibiting "favored treatment to advertisers."

Blurring the line?

By Brian Steinberg and James Bandler in the Wall Street Journal:

"The latest issue of Country Living magazine carries an eight-page advertising insert from Home Depot Inc. and its EXPO Design Center. On a facing page, the magazine displays a feature story describing how "with the help and careful planning of EXPO Design Center, a dreary kitchen turns into an efficient workspace."

Such juxtapositions are considered by many in the media industry to be a no-no, violating generally agreed upon boundaries between editorial content and advertising. Indeed, in this case, a spokeswoman for the magazine says it was a coincidence, not the result of a deal. But such juxtapositions are just the kind of editorial mention that marketers love to have as they seek to stand out from the advertising clutter.

Many advertisers are enjoying new opportunities to embed their marketing messages into TV shows, videogames, movies and other programming. That's emboldened some to try to mix ad messages and content in magazines as well — such as running ads next to magazine stories about the same product, getting products mentioned in stories, creating contests linked to magazines, and running ads that look like magazine layouts — all of which could blur the traditional line between editorial and advertising.

The American Society of Magazine Editors for years has maintained guidelines for upholding that separation. Now it says it's preparing to re-evaluate those guidelines. ASME's president, Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker, says the group isn't seeking to toughen or loosen the standards, but to eliminate "grey areas" in which content and advertising can blur. "Just the fact that some of this has happened in TV means that advertisers are starting to push a little harder" for similar treatment in magazines, says Mr. Whitaker. Many newspapers are facing similar advertiser pressure."

Online Challengers Roust Alternatives Weeklies From Net Slumber

From USC Annenberg's Online Journalism Review, by Mark Glaser:

"In years past, if you wanted to know what bands or disc jockeys were playing your local clubs, you picked up a copy of the alternative weekly newspaper. Now, you still have that option, but if you're chained to your computer all day, you might consider the daily newspaper's entertainment site, a local online-only site such as CitySearch, or even a niche local site or e-mail list.

While the Palo Alto Weekly was the first newspaper to publish content regularly on the Web in 1994, and The Village Voice had one of the more eclectic online radio stations, alt-weeklies have largely let the Internet revolution pass them by. Classified sites such as Craigslist.org and Match.com, and content sites such as Alternet.org and Salon.com have taken their mantle online, while alt-weeklies have looked on with growing horror.

Why horror? These very weeklies were the ones that spoke directly to urban youth with edgy editorial, uncensored personals, and the best live entertainment listings in town. But the youth of today aren't staining their fingers with ink, choosing to get much of their information online. For example, BIGresearch found that men aged 18 to 34 were reading newspapers and magazines less, and watching less TV in 2003, while 72 percent of them were online. And if there's any audience that's wired, it's the audience that traditionally has had its nose in alt-weeklies at the corner cafe.

Now the weeklies are starting to awaken from their long slumber online, with the New Times chain trying to outdo Craigslist with its Back Page initiative, and the Village Voice Media chain appointing a vice president for online. And innovation is coming from the edges, with the Buffalo ArtVoice wading into online multimedia, the Jackson (Miss.) Free Press putting Weblogs front and center on its site, and The Stranger (in Seattle) and Chicago Reader pushing new "aggressively local" online personals."

FCC's Copps: Protect the indies

Brooks Boliek in Hollywood Reporter writes:

"The FCC should expand its examination of U.S. media ownership rules to include concerns expressed by independent producers that vertically integrated media companies stifle creativity, the FCC's senior Democrat said Wednesday.

"That's something we definitely ought to look at," FCC commissioner Michael Copps said. "Look at John D. Rockefeller. It was not just the product. He had the content and the distribution, and that's what we have now."

Copps argued that without some protection for indies, the creative juices will flow out of broadcasting.

"This goes beyond dry figures. It really goes to the ability of the country to be creative ... to nurture it's creative genius or sustain it's creative genius," he said.

Most of the creative guilds, indie powerhouse Carsey-Werner-Mandabach, advertising giant MediaCom and Sony Pictures Television formed a pair of coalitions which asked the commission to set aside a portion of the primetime schedule for productions unaffiliated with the networks."

Check and balance

Paul Starr writes in the American Prospect:

"From the nation's founding, the United States has promoted communications through constitutional guarantees, favorable legislation, and extensive subsidies. There has been nothing sinister about this bias. Although the purposes have varied, the support — first for the press and later for other media — has helped to create a rich and diverse sphere of public debate and a dynamic and innovative industry. But the very success of that policy has also created a dilemma, as ownership has become concentrated in a few hands and the most powerful private interests have bent the law to their own advantage. Ideally, the media guard the public against abuses of power. It's not so clear how to guard against the power that the media themselves acquire.

As a political lobby, the media are a daunting force. Corporations in most industries enjoy influence primarily through representatives of the congressional districts and states where company headquarters, facilities, and jobs are located. The media, however, are ubiquitous, and politicians are especially reluctant to offend them because of their own needs for news coverage and publicity.

The First Amendment also puts the media in a distinctive position in relation to campaign-finance laws. Only media corporations can make what are, in effect, unlimited contributions by promoting the candidates they favor. Rupert Murdoch can put FOX and his entire empire at the service of a candidate or a cause. That's his right. But hardly anyone else can put comparable resources to political use at election time."

Waging the media battle

Robert McChesney exposes four powerful media myths, and proposes solid solutions in this excellent article for American Prospect:

"Coming off the media-ownership struggle, there is extraordinary momentum. Scores of groups have emerged over the past few years — local, national, and even global in scope — organized around a wide range of issues. In the coming few years, expect to see major progressive legislation launched to restore more competitive markets in radio and television; to have antitrust law applied effectively to media; to have copyright returned to some semblance of concern for protecting the public domain; to have viable subsidies put in place that will spawn a wide range of nonprofit and noncommercial media; to have a wireless high-speed Internet system that will be superior and vastly less expensive than what Mr. Roth and Mr. Corleone (the cable and telephone companies) have in mind; to have real limitations on advertising and commercialism, especially that aimed at children; to have protection for media workers, so they can do their work without onerous demands upon their labor by rapacious owners. The list goes on and on."

The Troubling Case of the Phantom Readers

Jacques Steinberg and David Carr write in the NY Times:

"Like hundreds of other media organizations that still use paper as the principal means to deliver news in an increasingly electronic world, Newsday, The Chicago Sun-Times and the Spanish-language daily Hoy have been under pressure in recent years to maintain their readership and, ideally, increase it.

Yet few newspapers or magazines have acknowledged, as each of those newspapers did recently, that they falsely pumped up their circulation to convey the illusion of vitality to advertisers and investors.

The flurry of disclosures, coming less than a year after it was revealed in a New York courtroom that Gruner & Jahr USA Publishing had inflated the circulation of Rosie magazine, has prompted some worried questions from advertising executives and Wall Street analysts. They wonder if newspaper and magazine publishers are policing their circulation practices aggressively enough and if the longstanding measures to monitor accuracy are still sufficient in an increasingly competitive climate.

At stake are hundreds of millions of advertising dollars - the lifeblood of these companies. Few publishers make much money from circulation, but the figures in large part determine how much advertising they can attract and how much they can charge."

VICTORY! Federal Court Overturns FCC

Its OFFICIAL!: A Federal Court overturned FCC Chairman Powell's June 2, 2003 media ownership rule changes, joining Congress and millions of Americans in unanimously opposing the proposed regulations.

Powell should resign - it should not have gone this far in the first place.

Thanks to Jonathan Schwartzman of the Media Access Project, the folks at the Prometheus Radio Project, Media-Alliance, FreePress, and the millions of Americans that expressed their outrage.

Magazines: The drug war gravy train

By Daniel Forbes in Salon.com:

"At least six major U.S. magazines have submitted anti-drug articles they have published over the past year to the government's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in an attempt to qualify for thousands of dollars of financial credits under the same federal advertising program that has benefited the television networks, Salon has learned.

Those magazines whose articles have been deemed by the drug czar's office as "on-message" have qualified for the credits, which are awarded in lieu of advertising obligations. Those that failed the test have not.

The drug-control office has made some of the most lucrative ad buys from magazines that maintain an anti-drug editorial environment that it considers hospitable to its messages."

Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's, expressed no great shock: "The only surprise here is it hasn't happened sooner. Most consumer magazines a long time ago turned themselves into delivery systems for advertisers."

One of the writers whose story was submitted to the White House drug office for valuation stated, "This is a clear violation of journalistic ethics. It's really egregious."

"This shapes the type of reporting you're doing and what editors are asking for," continued the journalist, who requested anonymity. "If we ever did something like this as a writer — showed a story to a source ahead of publication, say — our career would be finished."

What is indisputable is that the U.S. government is using taxpayer money to, in effect, reward publications whose editorial content matches the government's views on drug control.

Besides the six magazines listed above, 20 others captured $11,935,000 of the drug-control office's ad budget in 1999. These included Essence ($124,000); Ladies' Home Journal ($148,000); Newsweek ($207,000); Reader's Digest ($1,392,000); Teen ($199,000); TV Guide ($232,000); and Vibe ($106,000).

A number of Time Warner publications also participated, including Sports Illustrated ($1,385,000); Time ($1,344,000); People ($743,000); People En Español ($160,000); Life ($111,000); and Family Life ($74,000). To date, Salon has obtained no evidence that any of these publications sought to swap editorial content for drug-czar financial credits.

Overall, the drug office's five-year, roughly billion-dollar ad buy enriched a wide range of media. Television, both local and network, got well over $80 million in fiscal year 1999; radio got more than $10 million; billboards, transit and the like got over $5 million, and in-school efforts got a similar amount. Print, both newspapers and magazines, received some $17 million, with about $10 million of that going to magazines, as detailed above.

Magazine Industry struggles through consolidation

This looks like a horrible year shaping up for the magazine industry. Strong titles will grow but small titles will have a hard time surviving. First they must get their magazines into a consolidated distribution system, where just four companies control 90% of the market. Then they need good "facing" in the increasingly consolidated world of supermarket chains like Safeway and giant shopping malls like Wal-Mart - display space is limited. The cost of acquiring subscribers is tremendously high due to the demise of Publisher's Clearinghouse, the collapse of the sweepstakes companies, and the fact that the do-not-call registry will soon go into effect. Add to all this the Rosie fiasco - Jeff Bercovici in Media Life says that this will be a better year for magazines. Somehow I doubt it. From Media Life:

"Meanwhile, advertisers will be more skeptical than ever of the circulation figures publishers report, thanks to Gruner + Jahr’s book-cooking ways as revealed in the Rosie trial, in which executives admitted they inflated newsstand sales in order to make the magazine look healthier than it really was. “I think we’re really going to suffer from it,” says Kent Brownridge, Wenner Media’s general manager, of the Rosie scandal. He predicts that advertisers will pressure publishers to turn over instant sales estimates based on scan data and postal receipts rather than wait until they have reported their figures to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. “The data is available, the data is accurate and the data is timely, and I think advertisers are going to demand it,” he says."