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CBC's Mesley takes on advertorials in Brule's new mag
June 17, 2008
- Posted by
 Advertorials, a controversial trend in print journalism, were debated Monday night in an interview on CBC's The National. Wendy Mesley, in an arts and entertainment segment, took on Tyler Brule, of Wallpaper* fame during an interview about the editor's new publication. Last year, Winnipeg-born Brule launched Monocle, a London, U.K.-based magazine that covers international affairs, business, culture and design. Mesley started the interview with classic softball questions about his desire for more "substance" after years focused on design for Wallpaper*. But the interview quickly took a turn when she began asking him about advertorials in the pages of Monocle. She questioned Brule about a particular Panasonic advertorial that is laid out in a similar way to the editorial content of the magazine: You speak so passionately about journalistic principles, but what about the journalistic principle of not blending ads with content? Brule replied that the advertorial is labelled clearly as such for readers, adding: It's an advertorial like anyone else would do. We're not the only people in the business who are doing it, absolutely not...I think that is absolutely standard commercial practice right now. A debate ensued about advertising and its relationship to editorial content. Comments on the CBC website show some viewers were horrified by Mesley's treatment of a successful Canadian in international journalism markets while others were pleased she had pushed an editor on the issue of advertorials. Watch the full interview here. Read the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors Advertising Guidelines here. What do you think? Is Brule right? Is the use of advertorials in this way standard commercial practice? | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The lack of separation between church and state goes much deeper than these advertorials in Monocle.
If you look closely at the first year's issues, you'll see that all major advertisers are peppered throughout the editorial content in the form of "value added" placement.
Now, I'm sure there are advertisers who merit an independent mention due to the quality of their product, but there are far too many instances of this.
Mr. Brule took a very hard line in the launch press against overbearing PR influence and this type of pay-for-play approach (though it is quite prevalent in lifestyle media).
I'm not sure who he thinks he's fooling.
Yes, I do think it's standard commercial practice, with emphasis on the word "commercial" -- which, unfortunately, is another thing entirely from "quality" or "ethical."
My question is whether readers care. In a perfect world of media-literate citizens, readers would choose to pay more money for a publication that serves them as readers first, rather than less money for a publication that sells reader's eyeballs to advertisers -- the current model of most of the media. Unfortunately, I don't think most readers think about this kind of stuff.
Good for Mesley for bringing it up; yet another reason to value the existence of the CBC public broadcaster.