Last week, in a posting titled Can A Review Be TOO Good? I described an incident in which I was asked to give a product a bad review because its publisher had cancelled some of its advertising in the magazine in question. I also addressed favoritism to advertisers in magazine reviews.
This week I read about Harry McCracken, Editor of PC World, resigning apparently because the publisher was reluctant to publish material critical of a major advertiser.
As I've noted elsewhere, the concept of, "Pay us [advertise] and we'll sing your product's praises; don't pay and we'll bury it," is too close to payola for comfort. Incidents of this kind also erode reader confidence in reviews.
--Mike
http://www.michaelabanks.com
Addenda: McCracken has returned to the helm of PC World.
Copyright © 2007, Michael A. Banks
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment