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Re: If you really want to see magazines whoring themselves out

Posted by andy19191 on March 1, 2007 at 01:37:16:
> Is there anyone out there who for a moment can imagine John Atkinson
> allowing his magazine to be used in an advertising campaign comparing
> main speakers with subwoofer from the advertiser, with main speakers
> alone, no subwoofer, from others? I can't. I feel confident that he
> would quit first.
What a question to ask but this ethics thing which currently seems to be being pushed by Stereophile is going to be double-edged as demonstrated by the avid audiophile bjh in a thread or two below.
To answer your question, John Atkinson has clearly demonstrated in the past he will do what is required to make Stereophile commercially successful. No problems, this is his job. Since it is inconceivable over the decades that he has not picked up a reasonable understanding of sound, sound perception and audio equipment this involves a fair degree of misdirection in support of what is commercially lucrative. A reasoned debate on the advantages/disadvantages of doing this for audiophiles and the audiophile industry would be interesting but obviously wholly impractical in public. However, the point is that he has demonstrated that Sunday school black and white ethics do not apply but what is good for the health of his magazine.
So would it be good for the health of the largest mainstream magazine to use the content as part of an individual manufacturers advertising campaign? Of course not. It could be commercial suicide unless all the other audiophile publications did likewise and, possibly, not even then because it would lose a lot of status/goodwill among audiophiles when it inevitably came out. Ditto taking direct payments for reviews and similar which crops up quite regularly.
But can you sell this as ethics to audiophiles?