Growing Doubts About Advertising | Common Dreams

Growing Doubts About Advertising | Common Dreams:

Nader on advertising.

Terry Simons on advertising.

I have experience similar to Simons'. My last "traditional job" (9 to 5 etc) was Managing Editor of Oregon Business Magazine. Here the content-ad relationship is more complex because they are one and the same, we report on businesses who are the advertisers. What I hated were the ad salesmen who would come in 15 mins before we were going to press with a half page ad to insert. And the boss made us do it. So we were forever cutting up stories at the last minute to get in more ads.

I was a misfit as a business journalist. We were under-staffed so I wrote a lot of features myself -- interviewing CEOs in downtown high rises in jeans (but wearing a tie) and a full beard. I had a long interview and argument with Phil Knight for our Nike story. I tried to convince him to give some crumbs to the arts. He hated me and told my boss. It was the beginning of "cleaning up my act" but fortunately shortly thereafter I received a fat grant and was able to give notice. I'd already done all the fun work, which was converting a total piece of shit into a respectable state business magazine. Myself and the art director did virtually all the work. We were the only two employees at the time!