VOL. 23, NO. 3	September 19, 1997

By Fred Knubel

  "Just about any editor will tell you the ad/edit chemistry is changing for the worse," writes freelancer Russ Baker in the cover story, "The Squeeze." "Corporations and their ad agencies have clearly turned up the heat on editors and publishers, and some magazines are capitulating, unwilling to risk even a single ad. This makes it tougher for those who do fight to maintain the ad/edit wall and put the interests of their readers first."

  Baker's article focuses on a letter sent to at least 50 magazines by the ad agency for Chrysler Corp. requesting prior review of story summaries and an alert "in advance of any and all editorial content that encompasses sexual, political, social issues" or that might be construed as provocative or offensive.

  He cites Esquire's decision to kill a fiction piece for the April 1997 issue, reportedly anticipating that the story's gay theme and raw language would cause Chrysler to pull its ads.

  And he offers examples of attempts by advertisers to influence the editorial content of the three newsweeklies and other magazines large and small. A number of magazines in jam-packed demographic niches told CJR they had no problem with the Chrysler letter, he reports.

  Baker notes that it has long been accepted practice in the magazine industry to give advertisers a "heads up" on potentially disconcerting editorial matter so that their ads can be placed at a distance from it or rescheduled for a later issue. But the Chrysler letter "crosses a sharply defined line," he says.

  "In the long run everybody involved is diminished when editors feel advertisers' breath on their necks," Baker concludes. "Editors simply cannot bend to the new pressure. They have to draw the line—subtly or overtly, quietly or loudly, in meetings and in private, and in their own minds."

  In a related article, "Woolly Times on the Web," freelance reporter Robin Goldwyn Blumenthal cautions new media to take care how closely they work with advertisers on the internet. She describes the use of "commerce links" and "co-branding," quoting American Society of Magazine Editors president Frank Lalli: "This is the Wild West of publishing now—sort of anything goes"; and Josh Schroeter, director of strategic planning at the Center for New Media at the Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism: "What you're going to see [in the digital medium] is a marketing vehicle with the editorial content inserted into that."