If you're planning to attend the Regional Azbee Awards banquet in Boston, note that you have an extra week to get the Super Early Bird Discount. It's now available through Tuesday, June 12. You must register and pay by that date to get the discount.

RSVP info and details on the banquet are here.

Labels: Azbee Awards

Labels: Azbee Awards, Boston/New England

HCPro Inc. in Marblehead, Mass., is looking for a managing editor to do developmental editing on books, occasional ghost writing, and more. The company specializes in providing training and educational materials and consulting services in the areas of healthcare regulation and compliance.

Further details on the managing editor position.

Labels: Employment

After removing paid links from within stories on some of its sites, Ziff Davis is again using the IntelliTXT service on at least one site. This time it's PC Magazine's site. (For me, at least, it took a few seconds after the page loaded for the links to show up. They're the green links within the story text.)

I'll let Paul Conley tell the story.

The backstory is here and here.

Labels: Advertising, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web

ASBPE has released the names of the Magazine of the Year Top 10. These are the top candidates shortlisted for the Magazine of the Year awards, which are given each year to two magazines -- one in each of the two circulation divisions, under 80,000 circulation and 80,000 and over.

The winners in each division will be anounced at the Azbee awards banquet on Aug. 2, during the National Editorial Conference. The top three in each circulation category will be announced there as well.

Although the Magazine of the Year award is given on a national level only, it's fun to see who the Top 10 finalists are from the Northeast region, which includes New England. They are:

Less than 80,000 circulation	80,000 and over circulation
CSO owned by IDG and based in Framingham, Mass.	BusinessWeek headquartered in New York City and owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies
Meetings & Conventions owned by Northstar Travel Media and based in Secaucus, N.J.	CFO based in Boston and owned by The Economist Group
The Scientist based in Philadelphia	CIO owned by IDG and based in Framingham, Mass.
Storage owned by TechTarget and based in Needham, Mass.	IEEE Spectrum based in New York City and published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
	Network World owned by IDG and based in Southborough, Mass.

See the complete list of Magazine of the Year finalists, nationwide.

Labels: Azbee Awards

The ASBPE national board has nominated a slate of officers to serve the next two-year term, which begins after the Aug. 2–3, 2007 National Editorial Conference.

The nominees are:

President: Steve Roll, Washington, D.C., chapter president	Vice President: Amy Fischbach, previously Kansas City chapter president	Treasurer: Jyme Mariani, immediate past president, Dallas/ Ft. Worth chapter

Voting members (those who are employed in an editorial capacity by a business publication or who are freelancers who edit or write regularly for business publications) must send their ballots in by Monday, July 2.

Learn more about the officers and their plans for ASBPE or get a ballot.

Labels: ASBPE Elections

According to this Folio: magazine article, Harry McCracken's temporary resignation as editor-in-chief of IDG's PC World is more evidence of the uncertainty in some quarters over who controls editorial.

According to the Folio: article, McCracken resigned after PC World CEO Colin Crawford pulled a column titled “Ten Things We Hate About Apple.” According to a report on Wired, Crawford also told editors PC World's product reviews were too critical of vendors, especially advertisers, although IDG disputes that claim; Wired later excerpted a forum post by a PC World staffer who said the issue was that Crawford killed the article without even consulting McCracken. The article has now been published, and McCracken is back in his old position. Crawford, who was just promoted to the CEO position in March, has now been moved to a position as executive vice president, online (before becoming CEO, Crawford was senior VP- online). IDG announced that it is searching for a new CEO for PC World and Macworld.

Folio: likens the episode to the controversies over IntelliTXT paid links appearing within editorial copy (see here and here). A quote from Matt Kinsman's article:

It’s a situation that is in danger of becoming common. Unlike print, where content is physically managed by the editorial team, online just about everyone has access to content and a perspective—inappropriate or not—of what to do with it.

Related articles:

• "PC World Editor Resigns Over Dispute" (Folio:, May 3, 2007)
• "It's Hard To Know Who To Trust When PC World Is Afraid Of Steve Jobs And A 'Sad Mac' " (Jossip, May 3, 2007)
• "Editor in Chief Harry McCracken Returns to PCW" (PC World, May 9, 2007)
• "PC World Invites Harry Back to Fill Their Crack In" (Jossip, May 10, 2007)
• "A Nod to Journalistic Integrity Is Seen in an Editor’s Return" (The New York Times, May 14, 2007)

(Note: McCracken was on the ASBPE Boston/New England chapter board before moving to California to work in PC World's offices there.)

Updated May 14, 9:21 p.m.

Labels: Ethics, The Business of Publishing, Web

The New England chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists is holding a seminar on investigative reporting techniques. Sean Murphy of the Boston Globe will lead a two-hour workshop on Saturday, May 19, from 10:00 a.m. to noon.

The workshop takes place at The Boston Globe, 135 Morrissey Blvd. Admission is free, but RSVPs are required. To reserve your spot, email SPJ New England chapter president Emily Sweeney at emily dot sweeney at yahoo dot com.

Labels: Non-ASBPE Educational Programs, Reporting

Sorry to be slow getting to this, but anyone who hasn't been reading Paul Conley's blog might not have heard that Ziff pulled the IntelliTXT paid links that were appearing in some of its properties' online articles.

Meanwhile, CMP started using the links, but then stopped.

For more on what IntelliTXT links are, see previous post.

Labels: Advertising, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web

An update on this week's earlier post:

• Internet marketing expert Prescott Shibles is against the use of paid links in edit copy, but is open to the idea that there might be a different implementation for InTelliTXT and similar services that would not be unethical.
  
  
• Wooden Horse Publishing's Meg Weaver wonders if magazines will be replaced by "ad platforms." She cites an article on AdAge.com, "Publishers Move Into Agency Territory and Marketers Take Notice" (registration required to read article abstract; subscription or pay-per-article access required to read entire article). Weaver notes that consumer publisher Hachette Filipacchi Media US has purchased Internet ad company Jumpstart Automotive Media, while Meredith has purchased two interactive ad agencies and a marketing firm.)

Here's a paragraph grabbed from Weaver's article:

Meredith's president of its publishing group, Jack Griffin, summed up the new direction of today's large magazine publishers when talking about his own company: "What we're doing is equipping Meredith to be a robust marketing-communications provider."

Labels: Advertising, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web

The same day I posted about a recent Folio: profile of Ziff Davis Media, B2B publishing consultant Paul Conley published a blog post titled "Ziff Davis crosses the ethics line again."

Conley's post centers around Ziff Davis' decision to once again use Vibrant Media's IntelliTXT in-context ads on some of its sites, after pulling them from eWeek earlier this year. (See earlier post on this blog, "eWeek/IntelliTXT Flap," and two earlier posts on Paul Conley's blog, "eWeek crosses an ethical line" and " eWeek retreats in ads-within-edit scandal" for background.) The ads are back in eWeek and also appear on the company's CIO Insights web site.

Folio: published a story about the controversy on May 3. The article quotes Ziff Davis editorial director and senior VP Michael Vizard as saying "The IntelliTXT ads are clearly labeled as advertisements in compliance with existing ASME and ASBPE guidelines as we understand them. Should these officially recognized bodies adopt specific policies related to IntelliTXT ads, we would welcome that clarification and would also be inclined to comply with those guidelines."

ASBPE's ethics guidelines do, in fact, state that links within editorial content should be under editorial control. But in response to Vizard's statement, the ASBPE ethics committee has attempted to clarify the issue. The last sentence of the relevant portion of our Code of Preferred Editorial Practices, Section VII, Paragraph D, previously read:

Contextual links within editorial content should not be sold, and generally should not link to a vendor’s Web site, unless it is pertinent to the editorial content or helpful to the reader.

It now reads:

Contextual links within editorial content should not be sold. If an editor allows a link, it generally should not link to a vendor’s Web site, unless it is pertinent to the editorial content or helpful to the reader.

ASBPE national president Roy Harris relayed this change to Folio: and it was posted as an addendum to the May 3 article. As Roy says in an accompanying statement to Folio:, "We feel the code offers a clear guideline: Editors, not publishers or ad-sales folks, should make the final decisions on ALL uses of links within edit copy. Also, ad links within editorial text should NOT be sold under any condition."

A short news item about the whole matter will soon be issued by ASBPE national and posted on the ASBPE web site. I'll post an update when it appears. In the meantime, here are other posts on the topic:

From ASBPE ethics committee member Jeff Seglin:

• "Hypertext Ads Within Online Edit Cause Confusion"

From Paul Conley's blog:

• "ASBPE takes stand in Ziff Davis ad-link scandal"
• "More on the Ziff Davis ads-in-edit scandal"

From custom publisher Rex Hammock's blog:

• "Paul Conley is mad as hell at Ziff Davis for embedding text ads in news articles"

For a contrarian view, see this post on Eric Shanfelt's personal blog:

• "Give Ziff Davis a Break"

(Shanfelt is a former senior VP of emedia at Penton Media Inc.)

Update, 5/16/07: Also see "ASBPE Speaks Out on Hypertext Link Issue," on the news section of ASBPE's web site.

Labels: Advertising, Boston/New England, Ethics, IntelliTXT, The Business of Publishing, Web

Labels: Marketing and Promotion, New Product/Content Development, State of the Industry, Technology, The Business of Publishing, Web

Compliance Week, a Boston-based electronic newsletter and print magazine on corporate governance, risk, and compliance, is looking for an assistant editor. They're looking for someone with five years' editorial experience, a strong knowledge of business reporting and business issues, and the ability to develop a beat. The candidate also must know HTML.

Among the duties required:

• tracking a governance developments such as SEC investigations and public companies' financial restatements on a daily basis and updating the Compliance Week Web site accordingly;
  
  
• participating in regular editorial meetings, updating the Compliance Week editorial staff on governance, risk, and compliance developments as tracked above;
  
  
• writing a weekly column of industry personnel announcements.

For full details, see the ASBPE web site.

Labels: Employment