Advertising within an Article

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Dr.Davies

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Hi All,

I've been commissioned to write an article about my gym membership. Should I mention within the article which gym I attend? Also, if magazines do allow this, is there ever an option of then approaching the gym to secure a payment for mentioning them?

Any guidance would be great I don't have a clue on this :)
 

JNLister

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Hi All,

I've been commissioned to write an article about my gym membership. Should I mention within the article which gym I attend? Also, if magazines do allow this, is there ever an option of then approaching the gym to secure a payment for mentioning them?

Any guidance would be great I don't have a clue on this :)

You can mention the gym if it's relevant. However, you shouldn't be getting paid by the gym for a mention in an article that the magazine is paying you to write as that's a major conflict of interest.

Simple rule of thumb is that you should only be getting paid by one "side" for an article, whether it's editorial or advertising.
 

Al Stevens

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Simple rule of thumb is that you should only be getting paid by one "side" for an article, whether it's editorial or advertising.
If you write an article that represents paid advertising, the client pays the magazine, and the magazine pays you as a copy writer. The article should include notification to the reader that it's paid advertising.

The main rule of thumb is that advertising and editorial have a Chinese wall between them. The only influence advertising has on editorial is in page count (inches, actually). Management wants editorial to maintain an inch count relative to the amount of advertising sold for an issue. But advertising cannot dictate or otherwise influence what is written. Advertising does know the theme and general contents of upcoming issues so they can target clients. They can also request ad placement to be in proximity to related articles.

That's journalism 101, but I'm told a lot of it has been tossed out the window in the new era of ethics in print journalism.
 

AW Admin

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Not really interested in helping paper mills and content writers with bullshit degrees.
 
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