Absolut corruption?

Saturday Night crossed an advertising Rubicon in its July/August 1997 issue, when it asked Absolut vodka to sponsor a Mordecai Richler story called "Barney's Wedding."

More surprising still, the text of the entire last page of the story wrapped around the shape of an Absolut bottle, making the story itself an ad for the vodka.

Journalists worry that this will set a precedent, whereby features are sponsored by advertisers who demand a say in content. Saturday Night replies that it rejected a change Absolut asked for, and adds that it normally cannot afford to run fiction.

Later that year, Absolut went a step further, sponsoring a short story contest in which writers were required to mention the vodka in the stories.

The line between content and paid placement gets blurrier all the time. In October 1997, The Economist ran an alarming account of strong-arm advertising tactics at Chrysler. The car giant demanded the right to review, in advance, the content of any publication in which it advertised.

The demand for advertiser-approved content may have led Esquire to drop a potentially controversial article on gay issues. It took considerable industry-wide pressure before Chrysler backed down.

But even so, the "Chinese wall" between editorial content and advertising is getting weaker all the time. The same issue of The Economist reported that the Los Angeles Times reorganized so that section editors would work closely with ad salespeople assigned to those sections.

According to the Columbia Journalism Review, advertisers are putting more pressure than ever on magazines to restrain content that may contradict corporate PR messages.

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