Time Inc. corrupts news coverage in five magazines simultaneously!
Hitsville titled the previous post about Time magazine’s blowjobby piece on digital 3-D “Spinning 3-D,” using the word “spinning” in its metaphorical sense.
I mean, that’s essentially what writer Josh Quittner was doing: Presenting a unquestioning, upbeat and not-too-skeptical account of a new technology that will need a lot of friendly news coverage to gain some traction in the marketplace.
Turns out … it wasn’t metaphorical. Time Inc. has apparently cut a deal to provide friendly coverage of the technology in five of its magazines. Commenter “DW” passes along this post from a blogger who follows Canadian publishing:
Five Time Inc. magazines — Time, Fortune, People, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly– are running simultaneous, corporate-ordered editorial on 3-D technology and, in return, are getting a big advertising payday from Macdonald’s [sic], according to a story in AdAge.
The “Canadian Magazines” blog seems … evanescent, but the story* The story the blog refers to is apparently real. I can’t get the full version yet, but here’s the abstract from the AdAge site:
MediaWorks
Time Inc. Helps Out Future of 3-D
Five Titles Coordinate Coverage After Dreamworks CEO Katzenberg Calls Huey
Published: March 13, 2009
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Synergy couldn’t deliver on the grand dreams of AOL Time Warner, but it still has life at the Time Inc. magazine division. Later this month readers of five fairly dissimilar sibling titles — Time, Fortune, People, Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly — will find each magazine giving big editorial coverage to the subject of new-wave 3-D. …
The blogger continues:
The campaign came about because Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation SKG, called John Huey, the editor in chief of Time Inc. to pitch the subject, Mr. Huey said. “I said, ‘What magazine are you pitching for anyway?’ He said ‘All of them.’”
What would have happened if Fortune, for example, came back with an article arguing that 3-D was a doomed fad, not the future of cinema at all? That problem didn’t arise, said John Huey, editor in chief of Time Inc. “It isn’t something I had to deal with.”
What a surprise.
* I misread the blog originally and didn’t apprehend it was as substantive as it was, which is why I said it seemed evanescent.
3 Comments so far
Leave a reply
“The Canadian Magazines blog seems … evanescent…”
Do you mean it seems like, um, a blog?
It certainly told you something important that you didn’t know, so why the gratuitous slam?
(Disclosure of neutrality: I have no connection to the CM blog beyond just being a regular reader.)
I guess the next logical question: if we cannot look to Time and the other properties to bring us anything other than PR pablum in *this* case, in what others have these publications failed us?
@DW You’re totally right and I fixed. Honest, when I was first looking at it I couldn’t find an archive or previous posts.I see the previous posts now but didn’t originally. This could have been because I was on the road and the hotel I was staying at had a weak wireless setup, but that doesn’t excuse my lack of digging. Didn’t mean to dismiss it! .