The hardtracking staff has noted on numerous occasions Time Inc.’s pimping out its editorial content to advertisers.
Now comes Exhibit Umpteen, via Gawker.
Time Inc. Rates Writers on How “Beneficial” They Are to Advertisers
Time Inc. has fallen on hard times. Would you believe that this once-proud magazine publishing empire is now explicitly rating its editorial employees based on how friendly their writing is to advertisers?
Last year—in the opposite of a vote of confidence—Time
Warner announced that it would spin off Time Inc. into its own company, an act of jettisoning print publications once and for all. Earlier this year, the company laid off 500 employees (and more layoffs are coming soon). And, most dramatically of all, Time Inc. CEO Joe Ripp now requires his magazine’s editors to report to the business side of the company, a move that signals the full-scale dismantling of the traditional wall between the advertising and editorial sides of the company’s magazines.
The unkindest cut of all? A Time Inc. spreadsheet that ranks writer/editors according to this criterion: “Produces content that [is] beneficial to advertiser relationship . . . ”
Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.
Campaign Outsider 
How does the Globe rate its baseball writers these days?
Uh, it doesn’t.
What is this thjing called “Time” magazine, anyway. I’ve never seen it, nor have any of my associates. My questions: is it a vital, vibrant source of news or insight or (sigh) information? Is it a vanity press for some writers who think the world of themselves and their opinions, and tink we should care about what they have to say? Do I need to hang around more doctors’ offices to actually see a copy of this publication? Does it have anything to do with another print “fossil” I saw in the library archive stacks, something called “Life” magazine?
Inquiring minds need to know…..
I think Fox News contributors are rated by how many times they say “Chicago,” or “Detroit.”