Trade Pressed

I’ve been obsessed with one topic the last few weeks and I’ve been trying to think of a more professional way to talk about it than just arrrrgggggggghhhhhhh! I guess I failed. Ethics.

ROP pages are down, everybody knows it. At my company, it feels like we’re finally satisfied that this isn’t just a “market fluctuation” and new types of ad programs are being formulated. Great! Maybe.

I thought these packages would focus on the Web and Internet projects — cool ways to get more information and more types of information to more people. It’s not going that way, though. We’re entering the golden age of the advertorial. Barf. The days of separation of church and state are gone.

So, dear reader, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does your company follow the ASBPE Code of Ethics or similar? There has to be a way for my magazine to make money and for me to keep my ethics.

I received my copy of ASBPE’s Editor’s Notes newsletter (requires login) in the mail today. Jeremy Greenfield, editor of min’s b2b is hilarious:

“I personally don’t like working with people who get paid a lot and do very little,” he is quoted in the newsletter. “Promote your superstar editors and fire the rest.” Actually, I guess it’s not so much hilarious as sad. I think we all see this problem sometimes.

I like the culture change Howard Owens is quoted talking about on Poynter Online:

“Reporters and editors would take seriously their roles as community conversation leaders, concentrating on getting it right on the web first — Web-first publishing, blogs, video, participation — and using the print edition as a greatest hits, promote the web site vehicle. Old packaged-goods-thinking about the newsPAPER would disappear overnight.”

This is a huge change and I’m sure a lot of people out there don’t want to do the homework. Editors need to experiment to find out how things work. And I think it’s critical that they use at least Web basics in their own lives.

So to expand on Jeremy’s thought, here’s my list of things every editor should know how to do to avoid being fired:

• Use an RSS reader
• Blog
• Get stuff posted on your magazine’s Web site, whether you do it personally or not
• Take a picture with your camera phone
• Send a text message
• Set up Google Alerts
• Send a meeting request in Outlook

Have any to add?