What teeth ad:edit guidelines had are being pulled for expediency

Ad:edit guidelines in both Canada and the United States have always been voluntary, relying on the good sense and goodwill of subscribing members. In Canada, it was an industry task force made up of editors, advertising sales people and publishers who hammered out the rules, which rely wholly on moral suasion. In the U.S. they were developed by a committee of the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), which had at least a little leverage in that it could punish transgressors in the extreme by denying them entry into the U.S. national magazine awards.

ASME in particular has been fighting a rearguard action as many of its members are openly flouting the guidelines to keep ads and edit separate and distinct -- in particular on magazine covers. According to a story in MediaDaily News, the drop in magazine ad revenue has led magazines to grasp at whatever revenue they can get, including integrating advertising into and onto covers.

ASME just doled out a third official rebuke to a member publication for mixing its cover with advertising. The April 20 issue of Us Weekly received by subscribers carried an entire faux cover from a supposed 1940s version of the magazine to promote "Grey Gardens," the new HBO series starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, coordinated with a five-page ad spread inside the magazine.

Underneath the faux cover, which did not appear on newsstand issues, was the real cover featuring Lindsay Lohan. The faux cover was also identified as advertising. However, ASME CEO Sid Holt chastised Us Weekly in an email, reiterating: "ASME firmly believes that advertising cannot obscure the cover in any manner whatsoever, especially advertising that mimics editorial."

Similar recent cases involved Entertainment Weekly, Scholastic Parent and Child and ESPN The Magazine in the U.S. and Maclean's in Canada.

The argument made by some publishers and ad managers is that guidelines are all very well when times are good, but hard times make hard cases. And anyway, they say, what makes magazine covers so sacred?

What they don't acknowledge is that this is a one-way road; once travelled there is no coming back. The hard work of many people in this business to maintain the editorial integrity of magazines is being eroded by short-term thinking and if things proceed as they seem to be, any common sense of where the line should be drawn between edit and advertising could cease to exist.