Category Archives: magazines

Marie Claire podcast raises product placement ethics

Women’s Wear Daily (not my usual breakfast reading matter) has raised the issue of magazine podcasting ethics separating advertising and editorial after Marie Claire’s Unilever-sponsored “The Masthead With Marie Claire” podcast featured repeated mentions of the company’s products.

“sponsored by Unilever with occasional chipping in by Diesel as “patron.” … Nearly every one of the eight segments so far has prominently featured Unilever beauty products in scenes with the magazine’s editors, and the most recent one included footage of the Diesel New York show, with Marie Claire fashion director Tracy Taylor explaining in the podcast, “What I love about Diesel….”

The article goes on to quote American Society of Magazine Editors board member Jacob Weisberg as saying “[Advertising] can’t include the editors and shouldn’t be produced by the editors.”

Of course fashion and women’s magazines have never been renowned for their editorial integrity or independence. And Marie Claire seem to think they can avoid the issue by claiming “ASME guidelines do not extend to podcasts and Webisodes.”

“‘The Masthead With Marie Claire’ is a podcast that is designed as a television show produced for the Web. From reality shows such as ‘The Apprentice’ to scripted shows like ‘The Office,’ brand integration is the norm.”

Nice try.

Marlene Kahan, executive director of ASME, disagrees. “The general codes do apply” to digital productions by members, she says.

“All online pages should clearly distinguish between editorial and advertising or sponsored content,” the ASME guidelines read. “A magazine’s name or logo should not be used in a way that suggests editorial endorsement of an advertiser. The site’s sponsorship policies should be clearly noted, either in text accompanying the article or on a disclosure page, to clarify that the sponsor had no input regarding the content.”

Seems pretty clear to me.

Three ways of making a successful online magazine

1 Reply

Forbes.com has an interview with Mark Whitaker, editor of Newsweek from 1998 to 2006 and now vice president and editor-in-chief of new ventures for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. He makes an intelligent point about the challenges of preparing a publication for a Web-only audience (bullet points are not in the original, but I thought it made it easier to read):

“For everybody in the news business, it’s about producing something that goes beyond the headlines and offering something that other people can’t offer. There are three fundamental ways of doing that.

One is break news that nobody else is breaking.

Two is have writers who have a distinctive point of view that you’re not necessarily going to see someplace else.

And the third has to do with user experience. Traditionally, one of the things that people have loved about their favorite magazine was the way it looked and felt. What everybody has to do online is try to create a user experience that makes people fall in love with their site.”

Haymarket to spend millions recruiting digital experts

Online comedy magazine

Magazines: Web Sites will be about UGC & video

1 Reply

It’s all about user-driven content and video says MediaWeek of the Magazine Publishers of America conference:

“Marthastewart.com, the umbrella Web site of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, this summer will introduce new ways for audience members to share information with each other, said Susan Lyne, president and CEO, MSLO. And as MSLO looks for growth avenues, it’s looking at community sites, among other acquisitions.

“Dennis Publishing also is embracing user-driven content, though in a different way. Stephen Colvin, president and CEO, who joined Lyne on the panel, said Dennis’ Maxim magazine has in the works MyMaxim.com. Launching in three to four weeks, the new site will let visitors customize the text, images and video they see when they go there

“Executives noted that the Web has become a strong source of new subscriptions and in so doing, helped magazines lower their direct mail costs.

“Case in point is Blueprint, the lifestyle/shopping magazine MSLO launched with a test issue in May 2006, and which will publish bimonthly this year. The magazine derived two-thirds of its subscriptions for its first two issues from the Internet, Lyne said.

DMNews also reports that “155 magazine digital initiatives have been activated” at the conference:

“MPA members who announced digital initiatives included BusinessWeek, which will offer exclusive online content, a mobile edition for PDAs and cell phones, online business school rankings and multiplatform distribution of rich media and video content.

“Conde Nast, who this year will produce an online film festival, user-generated content on Web sites, interactive dating blogs, an online video series, an online radio station, bridal sites with virtual fitting rooms and PDA-enabled editions with mobile sites and text shopping/buying from cell phones. ”

“A section of Magazine Digital Initiatives has been created on the MPA’s Web site at www.magazine.org. It offers complete, detailed lists of new products and platforms for consumer magazines.

“The lists will be updated weekly and feature information with links to press releases and articles where available.”

Stop trying to make television – it’s video

3 Replies

The online video bandwagon rolls on, with Media Week reporting that the Telegraph is to team up with ITN for the “supply of broadcast content” (note the word ‘broadcast’). Meanwhile, today’s Press Gazette reports on the launch of new TV studios at VNU, and the Exeter’s Express & Star.

In all cases publishers seem to be making television – not video. A good example is the Telegraph’s video on London Fashion Week (WMV). It starts well – lots of footage of catwalk action: the sort of thing you can’t get across in print. But it then falls into standard TV package fare – headshot interviews with designers which could be much better placed in print where the reader can scan-read.

My suggestion: either drop the headshots and run the interviews over catwalk shots; or combine video footage with a text report.

A much better example – ‘Elephant Rampage’ (WMV). Quirky, compelling visuals, and a short piece which you could imagine on YouTube.

As for the Exeter Express & Star’s ‘Fire in Sowton’ piece, this begins with a TV news-style ‘presenter’ introducing the item before handing over to a reporter on the spot to deliver it. Why? On television, the presenter is there to anchor the whole and link different items, but online the webpage performs that function. This use of a presenter is not only wasting the viewer’s time, but the TV studio’s time. In fact, it begs the question, why do you need a TV studio at all? These publishers may come to realise they’ve wasted their money.

Futurology

1 Reply

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism]. I’ve only just caught up with Shane Richmond’s post on the future (or proposed death) of newspapers, following a seminar which suggested in the year 2012 “a typical media group will have a stable of publications: a daily premium news magazine, a free daily paper, a portfolio of websites, an internet television channel and a hyperlocal publishing network.”

Richmond disagrees with the magazine element because “people are less and less inclined to pay for bundles of content” and the RSS-fuelled Daily Me (Frighteningly, Negroponte’s idea is over a decade old) is a “model of media consumption that leads me to believe that media delivery to portable devices (phones, PDAs, electronic readers, flexible displays etc) will, at some stage in the future, supersede ink-on-paper media. I think so, others in the room disagreed.”

I’m of the mind to agree that portable devices and the My Google-style personalised news page will come to dominate news consumption, but that paper will continue to have an important role for the reason that RSS still requires you to select what interests you, whereas paper presents a browsing experience different to the ‘search-and-scan’ approach online. Research shows people are very task-oriented when they go online; a paper is an opportunity to come across stories you wouldn’t otherwise find; and in a local paper context, get an overall picture of what’s happening.

Now, two things may change this: first, social recommendation. When those whose judgement we trust begin to drive our news consumption in a mainstream way, the editor’s role becomes, if not redundant, at least transplanted. Second: screen resolution. When reading a story online or on a portable device becomes as comfortable as reading paper, we may drop the search-and-scan approach.

As for magazines, as I’ve written elsewhere, I think one future for them is as facilitators of virtual communities – a forward thinking magazine publisher will be investing in social recommendation software, forums, reader-editors and expert bloggers right now…

Save this story on del.icio.us / Digg this story

Paul Bradshaw lectures on the Journalism degree at UCE Birmingham media department. He writes a number of blogs including the Online Journalism Blog, Interactive PR and Web and New Media

Analysis: video journalism is the easy option

8 Replies

This was originally published on the Blogger-hosted version of this blog.

[Keyword: journalism, online journalism, video journalism].

I find it disappointing that as newspapers rush to embrace the online medium, the one recurring theme is ‘video journalism’. The Telegraph’s move to a new multimedia hub will involve intensive training in video production for print journalists, and the newspaper’s Executive Editor (Pictures) sees the future of the editorial photographer’s trade as being video (a perspective echoed by the Washington Post); The Guardian have recently announced that original video from the group’s production company, Guardian Films, will be edited for use on the web; The Times are sourcing video news from ITN; and Vogue, among many other magazines (including Stuff), are launching their own TV channel. Even The Sun now has a video version of Deirdre’s Photo Casebook.

Now Trinity Mirror is reported to be planning to increase the numbers of video journalists working across its regional titles as it relaunches its websites. Curiously, Trinity’s editorial director is quoted as saying “we’re basing the new website design on interactivity,” and yet video is, if anything, even less interactive than print. You cannot scan-read a video; you cannot skip to the last paragraph, or the curious subheading.

The rush to online is becoming a rush to a form of TV which just happens to be broadcast on the web. And in that rush, newspapers are in danger of not exploiting the real benefits of the web: giving users control; providing extra information and context that wouldn’t fit in a print (or video) version of the story; creating communities between readers, or a forum for them to express their knowledge and opinions; communicating complex concepts in a way that can’t be done with words alone; engaging the reader through innovative formats, or by connecting them directly with interviewees.It appears that newspaper executives used to a lecturer-audience relationship are choosing the options that challenge that least: video; podcasts – “we talk, you listen”. The most control users have is over where they listen, or watch.

Perhaps the genuine interactivity that the BBC and Guardian have done so well for years represents too much of a paradigm shift for their competitors – a change in thinking about how we tell stories. I only hope that the current changes in print don’t stop at filming the sports editor reading out his latest scoop.