I've had a quick flick through and it looks much better. No articles on how to shoot cars or sheep in mono! No advertorials as far as I can see. The "Frosty and Corf Show" review of readers photos has gone The DSLR listing has gone to be replaced with a listing of papers, both inkjet and traditional. A reportage article (at last!) on Elliot Erwitt. Nice to see David Herrod back, I'd missed him. Plus the mag is actually bigger in size. They seem to have gone back to basics. Well done Liz, keep it up!
If/when they get rid of the "Advertorials" I'll probably start buying it again. I can live with the digital content, although it has no interest for me, in trade for the often excellent articles, images and other goodies. But, by infesting the magazine with adverts masquerading as editorial they totally destroy any credibility the magazine may otherwise enjoy. How am I to tell if an article is giving the opinion of the author or that of some advertiser? Or, am I supposed to check the start of each article in the magazine for the "Advertorial" banner? B*gg*r that for a game of soldiers!
Well, if that really is the opinion of the general population here I suppose I'd better knock the Silverprint advertorials on the head. But I did put a considerable effort into writing them in the spirit of contributing to the magazine, rather than trying to do a hard sell. I did get a number of people commenting appreciatively, but maybe it's time to have a proper vote.
Don't do that Martin, your Silverprint Advetorials are not in the same league, they are superb and informative, they don't pretend to be ordinary articles.
Well, if that really is the opinion of the general population here I suppose I'd better knock the Silverprint advertorials on the head. But I did put a considerable effort into writing them in the spirit of contributing to the magazine, rather than trying to do a hard sell. I did get a number of people commenting appreciatively, but maybe it's time to have a proper vote.
Nope. As Ian says, yours are a completely different animal from the usual. In fact, I did think at the time of my initial post of expressly excluding Silverprint's from the general rule...
I guess I wish they would pay you with an advert elsewhere in the mag because some will inevitably paint you with the same brush as the others, which I agree would be grossly unfair. Certainly, it's not the Silverprint ones that stop me buying the mag!
Thanks very much, Bob, it's good to know it's coming over as intended.
The way the advertorial thing works (for us) is that we pay for a full page advert, which gives us the key of the door to produce an advertorial page, processed by the editorial team but with our own choice of content (within reason). However, as the last 62 pages in this thread illustrate, BW readers are pretty astute and are not going to be led by the nose anywhere. So the only practical way as to use the advertorial page, as I see it, is on something that hopefully complements the editorial content, rather than acting as a Trojan horse.
But I do take your point about adverts masquerading as editorial, I think it's down to Liz & her team to police the material and label it on the page according to how the advertisers are following the (unwritten) rules!
Last edited by Martin Reed; 05-17-2008 at 10:03 AM.
Reason: Improvement in readability para. 2
But I did put a considerable effort into writing them in the spirit of contributing to the magazine, rather than trying to do a hard sell. I did get a number of people commenting appreciatively
I am a subscriber and I appreciate them, I wouldn't call them advertorials, more edverts, i.e. closer to editorial than advertising.
Martin, just make sure your advertorials don't look at all like regular articles, which they haven't done so far.
There isn't anyone else advertising who has your depth of knowledge about films, papers, processes etc, all of which you learnt while sat on Goldfield's knee as a youth
I think what most readers really dislike are the Tamron 28-300 Advertorials. I actually like & use Tamron lenses, I have three superb Adaptall's, the f2.5 28mm, the SP f3.5 17mm and an SP zoom I never see as my nephew annexed it plus a couple of modern Di zooms which have paid for themselves many times over. But we ALL know that 28-300mm zooms are truly awful and the editor shouldn't be endorsing them with an Advertorial.
So Martin, keep giving us useful info, we don't want Copywriters hype.
The DSLR listing has gone 
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