THE

by Russ Baker

SOME MAJOR ADVERTISERS STEP UP THEPRESSURE ON MAGAZINES TO ALTER THEIR

CONTENT, WILL EDITORS BEND?In an effort to avoid potential conflicts,it is required that Chrysler Corporationbe alerted in advance of any and all edi-torial content that encompasses sexual,political, social issues or any editorialthat might be construed as provocativeor offensive. Each and every issue thatcarries Chrysler advertising requires aWritten summary outlining majortheme/articles appearing in upcomingissues. These summaries are to be for-Warded to PentaCorn prior to closing inorder to give Ch ysler ample time to re-view and reschedule if desired. . . As ac-knowledgement of this letter we ask thatYou or a representative from the publi-cation sign below and return to us nolater than February 15.

-from a letter sent by Chrysler’sad agency PentaCorn, a division

of BBDO North America, to atleast fifty magazines

-

Russ Baker is a free-lance writer wholives in New York. His last piece for CJR,in the March/April issue, was aboutthe Food Lion v. ABC trial.

Is there any doubt that advertisersmumble and sometimes roar aboutreporting that can hurt them?That the auto giants don’t like

pieces that, say point to auto safetyproblems? Or that Big Tobacco hatesto see its glamorous, cheerful adsjuxtaposed with articles mentioningtheir best customers’ grim way ofdeath? When advertisers disapproveof an editorial climate, they can-and sometimes do take a hike.

But for Chrysler to push beyondits parochial economic interests bydemanding summaries of upcomingarticles while implicitly asking edi-tors to think twice about running“sexual, political, social issues”-crosses a sharply defined line. “Thisis new,“ says Milton Glaser, the NewYork magazine co-founder and cele-brated designer. “It will have a dev-astating effect on the idea of a freepress and of free inquiry.”

Glaser is among those in the presswho are vocally urging editors andpublishers to resist. “If Chryslerachieves this,” he says, “there is no

reason to hope that other advertiserswon’t ask for the same privilege.You will have thirty or forty adver-tisers checking through the pages.They will send notes to publishers.I don’t see how any good citizendoesn’t rise to this occasion and saythis development is un-Americanand a threat to freedom.”

Hyperbole? Maybe not. Just aboutany editor will tell you: the ad/editchemistry is changing for the worse.Corporations and their ad agencieshave clearly turned up the heat on edi-tors and publishers, and some maga-zines are capitulating, unwilling to riskeven a single ad. This makes it tougherfor those who do fight to maintain thead-edit wall and put the interests oftheir readers first. Consider:+ A major advertiser recently ap-proached all three newsweeklies-Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News-andtold them it would be closely moni-toring editorial content. So says ahigh newsweekly executive whowas given the warning (but whowould not name the advertiser). For

4 + A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

the next quarter, the advertiserwarned the magazines’ publishingsides, it would keep track of how thecompany’s industry was portrayedin news columns. At the end of thatperiod, the advertiser would selectone-and only one-of the magazinesand award all of its newsweekly ad-vertising to it.+ An auto manufacturer-notChrysler-decided recently to playart director at a major glossy, and themagazine played along. After themagazine scheduled a photo spreadthat would feature more bare skinthan usual, it engaged in aback-and-forth negotiation with that adver-tiser over exactly how much skinwould be shown. CJR’s source saysthe feature had nothing to do withthe advertiser’s product.+ Kimberly-Clark makes Huggiesdiapers and advertises them in a num-ber of magazines, including Child,American Baby, Parenting, Parents,Baby Talk, and Sesame Street Parents.Kimberly-Clark demands-in writ-ing in its ad insertion orders-thatthese ads be placed only “adjacentto black and white happy baby edi-torial,” which would definitely notinclude stories about, say, SuddenInfant Death Syndrome or Down’ssyndrome. “Sometimes we have tocreate editorial that is satisfactory tothem,” a top editor says. That, ofcourse, means something else islikely lost, and the mix of the maga-zine is altered.+ Former Cosmo Girl Helen GurleyBrown disclosed to News&y that aDetroit auto company representative(the paper didn’t say which com-pany) asked for-and received-anadvance copy of the table of contentsfor her bon voyage issue, thenthreatened to pull a whole series ofads unless the representative waspermitted to see an article titled“How to Be Very Good in Bed.” Re-sult? “A senior editor and the cli-ent’s ad agency pulled a few thingsfrom the piece” a dispirited Brownrecalled, “but enough was left” tosalvage the article.

Cosmo is hardly the only magazinethat has bowed to the new winds.

Kurt Andersen, the former New Yorkmagazine editor-whose 1996 firingby parent company K-III was widelyperceived to be a result of storiesthat angered associates of K-III’sfounder, Henry R. Kravisnonethe-less says that he always kept adver-tisers’ sensibilities in mind whenediting the magazine. “Because Iworked closely and happily with thepublisher at Nezu York, I was awarewho the big advertisers were,” hesays. “My antennae were turned on,and I read copy thinking, ‘Is this go-ing to cause Calvin Klein orBergdorf big problems?’ m

National Review put a reverse spinon the early-warning-for-advertisersdiscussion recently, as The Washing-ton Post revealed, when its advertis-ing director sent an advance copy ofa piece about utilities deregulationto an energy supplier mentioned inthe story, as a way of luring it intobuying space.

And Chrysler is hardly the onlycompany that is aggressive about itseditorial environment. Manufacturersof packaged goods, from toothpasteto toilet paper, aggressively declaretheir love for plain-vanilla. Colgate-Palmolive, for example, won’t allowads in a “media context” containing“offensive” sexual content or mate-rial it deems “antisocial or in badtaste”-which it leaves undefined inits policy statement sent to maga-zines. In the statement, the companysays that it “charges its advertisingagencies and their media buyingservices with the responsibility ofpre-screening any questionable me-dia content or context.”

Procter & Gamble, the second-largest advertising spender last year($1.5 billion), has a reputation asbeing very touchy. Two publishingexecutives told Gloria Steinem, forher book Moving Beyond Words, thatthe company doesn’t want its adsnear anything about “gun control,abortion, the occult, cults, or the dis-paragement of religion.” Even non-sensational and sober pieces dealingwith sex and drugs are no-go.

Kmart and Revlon are among thosethat editors list as the most demand-

ing. “IBM is a stickler-they don’tlike any kind of controversial arti-cles,” says Robyn Mathews, formerlyof Entertainment Weekly and nowTime2 chief of makeup. She negotiateswith advertisers about placement,making sure that their products arenot put near material that is directlycritical. AT&T, Mathews says, is an-other company that prefers a soft c&mate. She says she often has to telladvertisers, “We’re a news magazine.I try to get them to be realistic.”

Still, the auto companies appar-ently lead the pack in complainingabout content. And the automakers areso powerful-the Big Tluee pumped$3.6 billion into U.S. advertising lastyear-that most major magazineshave sales offices in Detroit.

After The New Yorker, in its issueof June 12, 1995, ran a Talk of theTown piece that quoted some violent,misogynist rap and rock lyrics-along with illustrative four-letterwords-opposite a Mercury ad, FordMotor Company withdrew from ‘themagazine, reportedly for six months.The author, Ken Auletta, learnedabout it only this year. “I actuallyadmire The Nezu Yorker for not tellingme about it,” he says. Yet afterwards,according to The Wall Street Journal,the magazine quietly adopted a sys-tem of warning about fifty compa-nies on a “sensitive advertiser list”whenever potentially offensive arti-cles are scheduled.

I

t is the Chrysler case, though,that has made the drums beat,partly because of Chrysler’s heftand partly because the revelation

about the automaker’s practice cameneatly packaged with a crystallineexample of just what that practicecan do to a magazine.

In the advertising jungle Chrysleris an 800-pound gorilla-the na-tion’s fourth-largest advertiser andfifth-largest magazine advertiser (itspent some $270 million at morethan 100 magazines last year, behindGeneral Motors, Philip Morris, Proc-ter & Gamble, and Ford). Where it

29. Squeeze I

leads, other advertisers may betempted to follow.

The automaker’s letter was mailedto magazines in January 1996, but&d not come to light until G. BruceKnecht of The Wall Street ]ournnl un-earthed it this April in the aftermathof an incident at Esquire. The Jooumalreported that Esquire had planned asixteen-page ,layout for a 20,000-word fiction piece by accomplishedauthor David Leavitt. Already inpage proofs and scheduled for theApril ‘97 issue, it was to be one ofthe longest short stories Esquire hadever run, and it had a gay theme andsome raw language. But publisherValerie Salembier, the ]oournaZ re-ported, met with then editor-in-chiefEdward Kosner and other editorsand voiced her concerns: she wouldhave to notify Chrysler about thestory and she expected that when shedid so Chrysler would pull its ads.The automaker had bought four pages,the 1ooumaZ noted-just enough toenable the troubled magazine to showits first year-to-year ad-page improve-ment since the previous September.

‘I WAS AWAREWHO THE ,BIGADVERTISERSWERE. I READ

COPY THINKING,IS ,THIS GOING

TO CAUSECALVIN KLEIN

BIG PROBLEMS?’

How many magazines will rejectChrysler’s new road map? Unclear.Lalli says he has not found anypublisher or editor who signed andreturned the Chrysler letter as de-manded. “I’ve talked to a lot of publishers,” he says, “and I don’t knowof any who will bow to it. The greatweight of opinion among publishersand editors is that this is a road wecan’t go down.”

Yet Mike Abe&h, Chrysler’s man-ager of consumer media relations,claims that “Every single one hasbeen signed.” Aberlich says that insome cases, individual magazinesagreed; in others a parent companysigned for all its publications.

CJR did turn up several maga-zines, mostly in jam-packed demo-graphic niches, whose executivesconcede they have no problem withthe Chrysler letter. One is Maxim, anew book aimed at the young-men-with-bucks market put out by theBritish-based Dennis Publishing. n We’regoing to play ball,” says Maxim’ssales manager, Jamie looper. Thestartup, which launched earlier thisyear, signed and returned the Chrys-ler letter. “We’re complying. We defi-nitely have to.”

Kosner then killed the piece,maintaining he had editorial rea-sons for doing so. Will Blythe,the magazine’s literary editor,

promptly quit. “I simply can’t stom-ach the David Leavitt story beingpulled,” he said in his letter of res-ignation. “That act signals a terriblenarrowing of the field available tostrong, adventuresome, risk-takingwork, fiction and nonfiction alike. Iknow that editorial and advertisingstaffs have battled-sometimes affa-bly other times savagely-for yearsto define and protect their respectiveturfs. But events of the last fewweeks signal that the balance is outOf whack now-that, in effect, we’retaking marching orders (albeit, indi-rectly) from advertisers.”

The Chrysler letter’s public expo-sure is a rough reminder that some-times the biggest problems are themost cliched: as financial concernsbecome increasingly paramount it

Kurt Andersen,former editor of

New York magazine

gets harder to assert editorial inde-pendence.

After the article about Esquire inthe Iburnul, the American Society ofMagazine Editors-the top cops ofmagazine standards, with 867 mem-bers from 370 magazines-issued astatement expressing “deep concern”over the trend to give “advertisersadvance notice about upcoming sto-ries.” Some advertisers, ASME said,“may mistake an early warning asan open invitation to pressure thepublisher to alter, or even kill, thearticle in question. We believe pub-lishers should-and will-refuse tobow to such pressure. Furthermore, webelieve editors should-and will-follow ASME’s explicit principle ofeditorial independence, which at itscore states: ‘The chief editor of anymagazine must have final authorityover the editorial content, words,and pictures that appear in the pub-lication.’ fl

On July 24, after meeting with theASME board, the marketing com-mittee of the Magazine Publishers ofAmerica-which has 200 membercompanies that print more than 800magazines-gathered to discuss thisissue, and agreed to work againstprior review of story lists or summa-ries by advertisers. “The magazineindustry is united in this,” saysASME’s president, Frank Lalli, man-aging editor of Money. “There is nodebate within the industry”

At R0.v a two-and-a-half-year-oldmagazine backed largely by FreedomCommunications Inc. (owners of TheOrange Counfy Regisfer) and aimed ata similar audience, publisher DrewMassey says he remembers a Chrys-ler letter, can’t remember signing it,but would have no problem provid-ing advance notice. “We do providePentaCorn with a courtesy call, butwe absolutely never change an arti-cle.” Chrysler, alerted to P.O.V’s Au-gust “Vice” issue, decided to stay in.Massey argues that the real issue isnot about edgy magazines likeP0.V; but about larger and tamermagazines that feel constrained byadvertisers from being adventurous.

Hachette Filipacchi, French-ownedpublisher of twenty-nine U.S. titles,from Elle to George, offered Chrys-ler’s plan for a safe editorial envi-ronment partial support. Says JohnFennell, chief operating officer: “Wedid respond to the letter, saying we

4 -3 A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

were aware of their concern aboutcontroversial material and that wewould continue-as we have in thepast-to monitor it very closely andto make sure that their advertisingdid not appear near controversialthings. However, we refused to turnover or show or discuss the editorialdirection of articles with them.”

I

t has long been a widely acceptedpractice in the magazine industryto provide “heads-ups”-warningsto advertisers about copy that

might embarrass them-say, to thefriendly skies folks about a sched-uled article on an Everglades planecrash, or to Johnnie Walker about afeature on the death of a hard-drink-ing rock star In some instances, ad-vertisers are simply moved as far aspossible from the potentially discon-certing material. In others, they areoffered a chance to opt out of the is-sue altogether, ideally to be resched-uled for a later edition.

In the 198Os, Japanese car makersgot bent out of shape about news ar-ticles they saw as Japan-bashingsays Business Weeks editor-in-chief,Stephen B. Shepard, a past ASMEpresident. Anything about closedmarkets or the trade imbalance mightbe seen as requiring a polite switchto the next issue.

‘I KNOW THATEDITORIAL ANDADVERTMNGSTAFFS HAVEBATTLED FORYEARS. BUT

EVENTS SIGNALTHAT THE

BALANCE IS OUTOF WHACK’

Former Esquire literary editorWi l l Blythe,

in his resignation letter

out of one issue into the next issueabout ten times a year. We haven’tstopped dealing with any maga-zine.” He compares placing an ad tobuying a house: “You decide theneighborhood you want to be in.”That interesting metaphor, owningvaluable real estate, leads to othermetaphors-advertisers as editorialNIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) try-ing to keep out anybody or anythingthey don’t want around.

Chrysler, some magazine peopleargue, is simply formalizing thislongstanding advertiser policy ofgetting magazine executives to con-sider their special sensitivities whileassembling each issue. But Chrys-ler’s letter clearly went beyond that.PentaCorn’s president and c.e.o.,David Martin, was surprisingly bluntwhen he explained to The Wall StreetJournal the automaker’s rationale:“Our whole contention is that whenyou are looking at a product thatcosts $22,000, you want the productto be surrounded by positive things.There’s nothing positive about an ar-ticle about child pornography.”

As for the current contretemps,Aberlich says it’s nothing new, thatChrysler has been requesting ad-vance notice since 1993. “We sent aninitial letter to magazines askingthem to ,notify us of upcoming con-troversial stuff-graphic sex, graphicviolence, glorification of drug use.”But what about the updated and es-pecially chilling language in the1996 letter, the one asking to lookover editors’ shoulders at future ar-ticles, particularly polifical, social ma-terial and editorial that migizt beconstrued as provocative? Aberlich de-clines to discuss it, bristling, “Wedidn’t give you that letter.”

Chrysler spokesman Aberlich in-sists the brouhaha is no big deal: “Ofthe thousands of magazine ads we’veplaced in a year, we’ve moved an ad

II

ow did we get to the pointwhere a sophisticated advertiserdared send such a letter? Inthese corporate-friendly times,

the sweep and powers of advertisersare frenetically expanded everywhere.

1Q7

Formerly pure public television andpublic radio now run almost-a&Schools bombard children with ce:real COmmerCialS in return for themonitors on which the ads appear.Parks blossom with yogurt- andsneaker-sponsored events.

Meanwhile, a growing number ofpublications compete for ad dollars,not just against each other but againstthe rest of the media, including newmedia. Those ads are bought by ever-larger companies and placed by ashrinking number of merger-mindedad agencies.

Are magazines in a position wherethey cannot afford to alienate anyadvertiser? No, as a group, magazineshave done very well lately, thankyou. With only minor dips, ad pagesand total advertising dollars havegrown impressively for a number ofyears. General-interest magazinessold $5.3 billion worth of advertisingin 1987. By 1996 that figure hadmore than doubled, to $11.2 billion.

Prosperity can enhance indepen-dence. The magazines least suscep-tible to advertiser pressures areoften the most ad-laden books. Un-der its new editor-inchief, DavidGranger, the anemic Esquire seems tobe getting a lift, but GQ had sup-planted it in circulation and in the se-rious-article business, earning manyNational Magazine Awards. This isin part because it first used adver-tiser-safe service pieces and celebrityprofiles to build ad pages, then hadmore space to experiment and takeliSkS.

Catherine Viscardi Johnston, sen-ior vice president for group salesand marketing at GQ’s parent com-pany, the financially flush CondeNast, says that in her career as apublisher she rarely was asked to re-schedule an ad-perhaps once ayear. Meddling has not been a prob-lem, she says: “Never was a pagelost, or an account lost. Never, neverdid an advertiser try to have a storychanged or eliminated.”

At the other extreme, Maxim,which signed the Chrysler letter,does face grueling ad-buck competi-tion. The number of new magazine

29. Squeeze

startups in 1997 may well exceed1,000, says Samir Husni, the Univer-sity of Mississippi journalism professorwho tracks launches. And Maxim’sdemographic-LX- to 34-yearold males-is jam-packed with titles..

This is not to say that prosperityand virtue go hand in hand. WitnessConde Nast’s ad-fat ArchitecturalDigest, where editor-in-chief PaigeRense freely admits that only adver-tisers are mentioned in picture cap-tions. The range of standards amongmagazines is wide.

And that range can be confusing.“Some advertisers don’t understandon a fundamental level the differ-ence between magazines that have aserious set of rules and codes andserious ambitions, and those thatdon’t,” says Kurt Andersen. “Thesame guy at Chrysler is buying adsin YM and The New Yorker..”

If it is up to editors to draw theline, they will have to buck the in-dustry’s impulse to draw them evendeeper into their magazines’ businessissues. Hachette Filipacchi’s U.S. presi-dent and c.e.o., David Pecker, *1s onewho would lower the traditional ad-edit wall. “I actually know editors whomet with advertisers and lived to tellabout it,” he said in a recent speecl~Some editors at Hachette-and othernews organizations--share in increasedpmfits at their magazines. Thus, to of-fend an advertiser it might be argued,would be like volunteering for a paycut. So be it; intrepid editors must beprepared to take that.

I ronically in fretting over publicsensibilities, advertisers may notbe catering to their consumers atall. In a recent study of public

opinion regarding television-whichis even more dogged by content con-tX%rsies than magazines437 percentof respondents said it is appropriatefor network programs to deal withsensitive issues and social problems.Crhe poll was done for ABC, NBC,and CBS by the Roper Starch World-wide market research firm.) Askedwho should “have the most to sayabout what people see and hear on

‘MOREADVERTISERS

WHO WEREN’TAWARE OF THIS

SYSTEM HAVEGONE TO

HEBR “AGENCIESAND SAiD,

Hm, WHY NOTME TOO?’

G. Bruce Knecht ofThe Wall Street Journal

television,” 82 percent replied that itought to be “individual viewersthemselves, by deciding what theywill and will not watch.” Almost noone-just 9 percent-thought adver-tisers should be able to shape con-tent by granting or withholdingsponsorship. Even PentaCorn admit-ted to the Journal that its own focusgroups show that Chrysler ownersare not bothered by Chrysler adsnear controversial articles.

So what’s eating these folks? Par-tially, it may be a cultural phenome-non. Ever since magazines began toattract mass audiences and subsidizesubscription rates with advertising,many magazines have chased read-ers-just as networks chase viewersnow-with ever more salacious fare.But corporate executives have oftenremained among the most conserva-tive of Americans. Nowhere is thistruer than in heartland locations likeChrysler’s Detroit or Procter &Gamble’s Cincinnati.

Ad executives say one factor in themix is sponsors’ fear of activist groups,which campaign against graphicor gay or other kinds of editorialmaterial perceived as “anti-family”Boycotts like the current SouthernBaptist campaign against Disney for“anti-family values” may be on therise, precisely because advertisers dotake them seriously. This, despite alack of evidence that such boycotts

do much damage. “Boycotts have nodiscernible impact on sales. Usually,the public’s awareness is so quicklydissipated that it has no impact atall,” says Elliot Mincberg, vice-presi-dent and general counsel of PeopleFor the American Way, a liberal or-ganization that tracks the impact ofpressure groups. Why, then, wouldadvertisers bother setting guidelinesthat satisfy these groups at all?“They’re trying to minimize their riskto zero,” says an incredulous WtiBlythe, Esquire’s former literary editor

Yet not every advertiser pines forthe bland old days. The hotter theproduct, it seems, the cooler theheads. The “vice” peddlers (booze &cigarettes), along with some appareland consumer electronics products,actually like being surrounded byedgy editorial copy-unless theirown product is zapped. Party on!

Even Chrysler’s sensitivities ap-pear to be selective. Maxim’s premierissue featured six women chattingprovocatively about their sex lives,plus several photos of women inscanty come-hither attire, but Chrys-ler had no grievances.

The real danger here is not cen-sorship by advertisers. It is self-censorship by editors. On onelevel, self-censorship results in

omissions, small and large, that de-light big advertisers.

Cigarettes are a clear and familiarexample. The tobacco companies’hefty advertising in many a maga-zine seems in inverse proportion tothe publication’s willingness to criti-cize it. Over at the American CancerSociety media director Susan Islamsays that women’s magazines tendto cover some concerns adequatelybut not lung cancer: “Many morewomen die of lung cancer, yet therehave hardly been any articles on it.”

To her credit, Glamour’s editor-inchief, Ruth Whitney is one whohas run tobacco stories. She says thather magazine, which carries a lot oftobacco advertising, publishes the re-sults of every major smoking studyBut Whitney concedes they are mostly

4 + A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR

short pieces. “Part of the problemwith cigarettes was-we did do fea-tures, but there’s nobody in thiscountry who doesn’t know cigaretteskill.” Still, everybody also knows thatgetting slimmer requires exerciseand eating right, which has not pre-vented women’s magazines fromrunning that story in endless permu-tations. Tobacco is in the news, andmagazines have the unique job ofdeepening and humanizing suchstories.

Specific editorial omissions areeasier to measure than how a maga-zine’s world view is altered whenadvertisers’ preferences and sensi-tivities seep into the editing. Wheneditors act like publishers, and viceversa, the reader is out the door.

Can ASME, appreciated amongeditors for its intentions, fire up thetroops? The organization has beeneffective on another front-againstabuses of special advertising sec-tions, when advertisements try toadapt the look and feel of editorialmatter. ASME has distributed a setof guidelines about just what con-stitutes such abuse.

To enforce those guidelines, ASMEexecutive director Marlene Kahansays the organization sends a coupleof letters each month to violators.“Most magazines say they will com-ply,” she reports. “If anybody is reallyegregiously violating the guidelineson a consistent basis, we’d probablysit down and have a meeting withthem.” ASME can ban a magazinefrom participating in the NationalMagazine Awards, but Kahan says

the organization has not yet had todo that. In addition, ASME occasion-ally asks the organization that offi-cially counts magazine ad pages, thePublishers Information Bureau, notto count advertising sections thatbreak the rules as ad pages-a tacticthat ASME president Lalli says tendsto get publishers’ attention.

Not everyone in the industry thinksASME throws “much of a shadow.“ASME can’t bite the hand thatfeeds them,” says John Master-ton ofMedia Industry Newsletter, which cov-ers the magazine business. DuringRobert Sam Anson’s brief tenure aseditor of Los Angeles magazine, thebusiness side committed to a fifteen-page supplement, to be written bythe editorial side and called “TheMercedes Golf Special.” Mercedesdidn’t promise to take any ads, butit was hoped that the car-makerwould think kindly of the magazinefor future issues. The section wouldappear as editorial, listed as such inthe table of contents. Anson warnedthe business side that, in his opinion,the section would contravene ASMEguidelines, since it was in effect anad masquerading as edit. A seniorexecutive told him not to worry-that at the most they’d get a “slapon the wrist.” The section did notrun in the end, Anson says, becauseof “deadline production problems.”

T he Chrysler model, however-withits demand for early warnings,and its insistence on playingeditor-is tougher for ASME to

police. Special advertising sectionsare visible. Killed or altered articlesare not. And unless it surfaces, as inthe Esquire case, self-censorship is in-visible.

One well-known editor, whoasks not to be identified, thinks theproblem will eventually go away“It’s a self-regulating thing,” he says“At some point, the negative public:ity to the advertisers will cause themto back off.”

Of course, there is nothing par-ticularly automatic about that. Ittakes an outspoken journalistic com-munity to generate heat. And suchattention could backfire. The Journal’sKnecht told the audience of public ra-dio’s On the Media that his reportingmight actually have aggravated theproblem: “One of the negative effectsis that more advertisers who weren’taware of this system have gone totheir advertising agencies and said‘Hey, why not me too! This sour&like a pretty good deal!’ rr

Except, of course, that it reallyisn’t. In the long run everybody in-volved is diminished when editorsfeel advertisers’ breath on theirnecks. Hovering there, advertisershelp create content that eventuallybores the customers they seek Thenthe editors of those magazines tendto join the ranks of the unemployed.That’s just one of the many reasonsthat editors simply cannot bend tothe new pressure. They have todraw the line-subtly or overtlyquietly or loudly, in meetings and inprivate, and in their own minds.

184