CMPA on NPR's "Marketplace"--August 9, 2004
TESS VIGELAND, anchor:
This is MARKETPLACE. I'm Tess Vigeland.
A week from today, Hearst Publications will launch a new magazine called
Shop Etc. Just in case the consumer society needed more help with its consuming,
the magazine is all about what to buy and where to buy it. Matthew Felling
is with the Center for Media and Public Affairs. He says this is just the
latest in an evolution of advertiser-driven publishing.
Mr. MATTHEW FELLING (Center for Media and Public Affairs):
We used to get--much like cigarettes are a delivery mechanism for that nicotine,
magazines were looked at by advertisers as a delivery mechanism to get their
product in front of people who just might be looking at Richard Gere on
the page opposite or looking at something--an essay in Harper's. But with
this, we're pretty much removing the filter and just giving people out there
just straight advertising. When I look at the hype around these magazines,
it reminds me of something that I used to have when I was a little kid.
We called them catalogs. We used to have magazines that showed us foreign
lands and magazines that showed us new ideas, and now we buy magazines just
to tell us what else to buy.
VIGELAND: Yeah. I think, in fact, they're coining a new
term for this called magalogs. You know, I have to say that it doesn't seem
to me that we're too far from what's already out there right now. For example,
InStyle magazine. Quite a bit of that magazine is dedicated to telling you
where you can buy the things that you're looking at.
Mr. FELLING: Oh, yeah. I mean, you can make little anecdotal evidence.
Everywhere--I mean, even in a swimsuit issue, they'll give you a price tag
attached to whatever Heidi Klum is wearing on that given day.
VIGELAND: Right.
Mr. FELLING: We've just never seen an entire magazine,
an entire niche of magazines dedicated to the idea of buy more stuff.
VIGELAND: Well, one other developments in the last week
or so is that Forbes.com, the online version of Forbes magazine, will be
placing links to advertisers within their editorial copy on the Web site.
Is this something new and different as well?
Mr. FELLING: Actually, this is something that started a
couple years ago, tossing in advertisements with Web copy in order to fully
maximize an advertiser's reach. It has benefits in that maybe if you're
reading something about this year's political season, there will be an ad
in the margin for 'click here to donate to Kerry,"click here to donate
to Bush.' The number one red flag is will a journalist, in order to pump
up the magazine or the Web site's ad revenue--will they toss in a brand
name rather than a generic name? And that's the concern out there, because
with every new media revenue stream comes the new possibility for a conflict
of interest, and I think you have to be very, very wary of people tossing
in brand names and tossing in advertisements for free where they wouldn't
have wanted to in the first place.
VIGELAND: And we're certainly not saying that reporters
over at Forbes.com would be doing that, but it does seem to me that there
is perhaps an erosion of this wall that we've had historically between the
advertising department and the editorial department.
Mr. FELLING: As the profit margins become more and more
important with media outlets, you have to worry about that, and then with
the Web bri--revenues being extremely dry, they might look to maybe squeeze
in one extra ad where they might not have in the first place. Over time,
we might start having ad creep in our copy, and the media has enough problems
with it, and it's already in low enough regard with the public already.
