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What's Wrong (or Not) With This Cover?
The magazine-cover debate continues. It started with the controversy over Esquire in February, heated up with Stuart Elliott's Times piece on Scholastic Parent & Child in March and got even hotter with the publication of ad-related cover executions on ESPN and EW in early April. To help ASME members understand the reasoning behind some of the recent decisions by the ASME Board of Directors about whether publications violated the ASME Guidelines concerning covers, the ASME staff has put together a summary of those decisions. Included are magazines that were found to be in violation as well as magazines that weren’t.
The way the guidelines work is, ASME members, ASME staff, media reporters and, truth be told, the ad departments of competitive titles monitor hundreds of consumer magazines for violations of the guidelines. When ASME staffers are alerted to potential violations of the guidelines, they take a look. If the violation is crystal-clear (an ad labeled Advertisement printed on the cover), the staff has the authority to act, but if there’s any room for doubt, the staff refers the matter to the Guidelines Committee of the board of directors.
The Guidelines Committee meets every quarter, but violations are usually discussed in an e-mail chain. Once the Guidelines Committee makes a decision, the potential violation is submitted to the board. ASME staff puts the case for and against, and after sometimes spirited discussion, the board votes (the discussion, by the way, usually covers quite a bit of ground, from editorial ethics to advertising sales). Votes are often unanimous one way or the other. Everybody on the board runs a magazine—and instinctively understands not only how decisions are made at magazines but also what’s right and wrong without having to pore over written guidelines. The board prefers to give magazines the benefit of the doubt but is also determined to fight for the principles ASME stands for, especially editorial integrity and editorial independence.
If a magazine is found to be in violation of the guidelines, ASME staff sends a letter to the publisher of the magazine explaining the violation and urging compliance with the guidelines. ASME usually doesn’t comment on specific guidelines violations unless the matter has already been widely discussed in the media or the board believes explaining the decision would be especially helpful to ASME members. Most magazines are more than willing to comply with the guidelines. On extremely rare occasions, an editor has been suspended from ASME membership and a magazine banned from the National Magazine Awards. But the real power of the guidelines is this: They codify industry standards, and violating those standards is bad for business.
Admittedly, the system is a little loose—there is no ASME police force, more like a couple of Altoids-chewing constables—so some folks get pulled over for a stern lecture about the dangers of breaking the rules while other folks seem to whiz by. Fortunately, most editors and publishers, even ad execs, know the rules and respect them. Not because ASME’s written them down, but because they make sense. Don’t drive 90 on a village street; don’t try to fool the reader. It’s that simple.
Still, there are people who say ASME is out of touch, ASME just doesn’t get it. ASME members don’t think so, of course, and the magazine business doesn’t think so either. The ASME board of directors currently includes the chief editors of five of the 10 largest consumer magazines in the country, ranging in size from just short of 4 million circ to more than 20 million. Every member of the board is responsible for making decisions that make or break magazines—decisions that drive hundreds of millions of dollars in ad sales. Board members and other ASME members aren’t softies. They know what’s happening; they’re leading our industry through the fix it’s in. They just happen to think that good editorial decisions are also good publishing decisions—and selling our future is not a sustainable business strategy.—Sid Holt
Summary of Recent Cover-Guidelines Decisions
“Esquire,” February 2009 [Barack Obama]
The Question: Did the modification of the cover to include a so-called trap door, along with copy reading, “Open Here,” violate the guidelines?
Board Decision: No advertising appeared on what is traditionally considered the cover. The trap door opened onto editorial copy on the right and an advertisement on the left. There was no attempt to disguise ad as edit, and the trap door was used for credible and legitimate editorial purposes.
Staff Comment: There are ASME members who believe this cover execution is little short of editorial sacrilege. Board members thought that no matter how you felt about the trap door—and there were a lot of board members who liked it, thought it was pretty nifty—it still wasn’t a guidelines violation. The lingering concern among ASME members is, will competition force magazines to accommodate especially invasive ad executions on their covers, disguising a sales coup as an editorial initiative?
“Ladies’ Home Journal,” March 2009 [Ellen DeGeneres]
The Question: Ellen DeGeneres appeared on the cover; the cover photo was credited to a major marketer; the ad spread off the cover featured DeGeneres as a spokeswoman for the same marketer; and the marketer was mentioned in the cover story. Did this violate the guidelines pertaining to Covers, Adjacencies and Product Placement/Integration?
Board Decision: The board disapproved of the appearance of the same person on the cover and in the first advertising spread, in a way that could be interpreted as an editorial endorsement of the advertised product, but concluded that the guidelines were not violated. The product in the ad adjacent to the cover was not explicitly promoted on the cover, and there was no evidence to show that the subject appeared on the cover or inside the book in return for advertising.
Staff Comment: Did ASME let LHJ get off on a technicality or three? Plenty of members think so, but ASME would rather foster consensus around the values embodied in the guidelines than send out legalistic letters based on suspicions. In fact, other members saw something of a double standard at work here. When celebrities show up on the cover of a magazine to promote a movie (sometimes in a cover photo pulled from a publicity shoot for the movie), we don’t give it a second thought if there’s an ad for the movie in the same magazine. What happens when a celebrity signs on to promote something besides her own artistic endeavors and that something happens to be a major marketer? ASME guidelines may not apply in every case, but editorial bywords like “transparency” and “trust” always do.
“Scholastic Parent & Child,” April 2009
The Question: Well, there was no question. There was an ad on the cover; in fact, there were two. The first was for something called Smilebox; the ad was labeled Advertisement. The second, which was unlabeled, was for an insert sponsored by Merck (and no, the insert was not labeled as advertising either).
Board Decision: The board is acutely aware that the recession, coupled with changes in the way consumers and advertisers use media, is hurting magazines but believes that destroying what makes magazines valuable and unique is not the road to recovery. The board directed the staff to notify “Parent & Child” that it had violated the guidelines.
Staff Comment: The guidelines don’t go into detail about why magazines shouldn’t put ads on their covers, probably because no one imagined even five years ago, when the current guidelines were written, that any responsible editor or publisher would think that was a good idea. ASME has published a statement on its website explaining its position.
“Rolling Stone,” April 2, 2009 [Gossip Girls]
The Question: There were no cover lines on subscriber copies, only the phrase “To See What’s Inside” with an arrow. Inside was the same cover image, now with cover lines, facing a foldout ad. Was the cover designed to direct readers’ attention to the ad, which ASME considers an inappropriate use of the cover for advertising purposes?
Board Decision: After comparing the subscriber and newsstand copies (which had cover lines outside and the same image without cover lines inside; in other words, the reverse of subscriber copies), the board concluded that the issue did not violate the guidelines. Rolling Stone apparently had to print the cover early to expedite the manufacturing of the ad off the cover, which led to the creation of outside and inside covers, but the cover had not been expressly created to direct readers to an ad.
Staff Comment: Ad types seem to think editors are uncooperative fuddy-duddies. And there are editors who just know the ad side would do anything—anything!—to sell another page. In fact, collaboration is the rule, not the exception; otherwise, magazines would never get out. This issue of Rolling Stone is a case in point: Agency X wants to run an ad that throws off the editorial-production schedule, but the editors step up and figure out a solution that does a service to ice-cream lovers everywhere.
“Entertainment Weekly,” April 3, 2009 [Heroes & Villains]
The Question: A notch at the top of the cover exposed the words “Pull This!” printed on an ad inside a cover pocket. Was this the same as putting an ad on the cover?
Board Decision: The modification of the cover (the notch) to facilitate advertising, the appearance of ad copy (“Pull This!”) and the use of the cover to direct consumers to a marketing message (the ad inside the pocket) constituted a guidelines violation. Unlike some other recent controversial covers, the notch on EW served no apparent or conceivable editorial purpose.
Staff Comment: Whenever a magazine is questioned about a dubious ad execution, someone says the magazine was only trying to be innovative, to work with its advertising clients. Which is fine—ASME likes innovation too. And ASME really likes advertising; it pays the bills. But violating reader trust is not innovation; it’s a mistake that can wreck your business.
“ESPN,” April 6, 2009 [Manny Ramirez]
The Question: Did the flap on the cover, which displayed part of the magazine logo and the phrase “(You Wouldn’t Settle for an Incomplete Cover),” violate the guidelines?
Board Decision: The flap was the same as printing an ad on the cover. Even the ad copy reading, “(You wouldn’t settle for an incomplete cover),” acknowledged that the flap impinged on the cover. The copy was also misleading—it was unclear whether it was ad or edit (an earlier version of the flap distributed to the media was labeled “Advertising”)—and used an editorial zone to direct readers toward a marketing message on the back of the flap.
Staff Comment: ASME’s position on the front cover is actually the magazine business’s position on the front cover. You can look at 250 years of consumer-magazine covers and not find a single ad. Why? Not because ASME has been stopping anybody, but because everyone knows that the editorial and circulation objectives the cover serves offset the temporary advantage of creating another ad position. Are the ASME Guidelines stopping magazines from being competitive? Most publishers and advertisers believe the value of our medium lies in the unique bond readers have with magazines. The purpose of the guidelines is to sustain that bond.
