I’ve been dabbling into the discussion about 23andme and its blogger marketing machine on various blogs and I guess it’s time for an actual post and let everyone have at me, so here goes.
I work in magazine and web publishing. I’m not a trained journalist but I’ve been working hard to train myself, and so I guess I’m bringing that perspective in. I’ll just put that out there at the outset. Also no, traditional media are not perfect.
To be blunt though: I think 23andme is genius, and I have real worries about how they have leveraged the reputations of certain bloggers. And I think my concern about that really is twofold: this company in particular, but also how bloggers are being encouraged in general to approach their blogs as commercial vehicles, without having any training in how things work in other media.
So here are 5 things I wish bloggers knew before they signed:
Division of advertising and editorial
How a magazine works, generally, is that there is an editorial chain of command and an advertising chain of command, and both end in the publisher.
The publisher makes the call on questions like “do we sell space on our cover” and “do we put an ad for a weight-loss product next to a story about weight loss.” The traditional answer to both of these overall is no, by the way. Some of the lines do wobble under pressure, but my experience is that they are still hot topics, and that publishers really do care about maintaining editorial integrity, even when it comes to putting an ad next to related editorial . Because publishers are responsible both for building audience and brand reputation, AND for revenue. And they understand, like no other people, which compromises might be okay and which might not. Are they perfect? No. But they don’t just roll over for advertisers either.
Now on the web, it’s a bit different. Obviously Google Ads set the bar for this when they started serving ads by keyword. So placement of advertising is pretty loose that way. However, web ads are generally served in a way where it’s clear that they are ads. And, as the Torontoist editor pointed out at a recent PWAC meeting, the ratio of editorial to advertising in magazines is about 60% editorial, 40% advertising… a ratio which would torpedo any website. (Imagine if every third page were entirely ads.)
But this is how ads are served. It is not how ads are sold. We generally do not just write editorial about X because Y company might like to have an ad next to X. The editor’s job is to assign stories that serve the reader. Advertising’s job is to sell the audience gained to the advertiser.
The reason blog marketing is so exciting is that this division is removed. The blogger, that is, the writer and editor of most stories, is also the publisher and the director of sales.
Generally speaking companies cannot get a publisher to go out and hire a writer to say something like “my daughter died, and here are 500 words on this tragic tale, and now that you are totally emotionally engaged, I’ll tell you that the next pregnancy I went out and bought an ACME belly monitor and it made me feel better.”
Just so you know.
Context
Part of the role of a publication is to provide context for stories. I have had the pleasure of working with editors who really care about this. They are highly aware that part of the role of journalists is to place information in context and a lot of editing goes on around this.
So for example, generally speaking an editor would be careful about ensuring that a story about a drug discusses both the benefits and the risks of a drug, and not just the benefits. Serious efforts are made to present varying viewpoints. Stories are killed if we can only get one side of them, or presented as only one side. Even the visual treatment of a story plays into this: we don’t present light editorial seriously, etc.
Again, it’s pretty exciting for marketing and sales to have people present their products in the context of their life experience, especially if they are providing a testimonial. There is not the same pressure on bloggers to find an opposing viewpoint, and simply saying “it might not work for you” does not carry the same weight as two conflicting actual stories.
Editorial integrity and conflict of interest
When an editor assigns pieces, he or she generally keeps an eye out for conflict of interest. This is obviously also not a perfect process, but we do not assign pieces to marketing VPs for a company, for example. They would love it if we did, and it would be free for us, but it would turn editorial into advertorial. (You know advertorial? The pages that say at the top “a sponsored feature”? That costs a lot of money, and there are lots of rules, which vary from publication to publication but include font choices, etc.)
Generally speaking, if you are on the payroll of a company, you’re assumed to have a conflict of interest. So, a magazine wouldn’t generally hire someone who works for Weight Watchers to write a serious piece on weight loss research. Sometimes on the web we do play around with this a bit, but we’re careful to ensure that if we’ve say, had a Q&A with a trainer who works for a particular gym, that this information is front and centre.
[Also, reviews can be a bit different. Of course this is why Consumer Reports has a niche market. I don't actually have any objection to blog reviews.]
The PR-media relationship is both a grey area and an industry problem: journalists do rely on press releases and PR people to help us find stories. It requires Constant Vigilance on every level, from the individual writer to the top editor. PR companies do woo journalists. Travel journalism in particular is so expensive that the press junket has gradually moved out of “terrible practice” to “common practice.” But plain old gifts, generally, are not acceptable (sure the odd lip balm gets passed around, but at my company the PR stuff goes into charity sales). Money is not acceptable at all.
People lose their jobs over this stuff.
Fact checking
I will admit that magazines are better fact-checked than most media (and better than web generally, although we try), so they are the gold standard. But here it is. A copy editor (or her minion fact checker) is responsible for checking the facts of each story, quotes, etc. This can be a very minute level of detail.
One example from my own day this morning: I wrote a teaser for a piece of editorial that said “one of X number of women over X age hired here.” My copy editor (I don’t always have one, but for this I do) tossed it back to me with a note: “in the last five years.” Because she checks these things out, even if it’s just a cheery blurb saying here, come read our story.
We check the sources for PR releases. We decide if they’re good enough to go on.
Yes it matters for your freelance career
Yes, I read blogs of people I hire (if they have them). If you have written about a company from whom you have received money to write in your blog, on the topic for which I might hire you – I won’t.
People who start off as journalists and then start blogs usually are aware of this. They know not to torpedo their expertise. People who blog and then look for freelance gigs often aren’t.
Next post I’ll talk about 23andme in particular.
