If you haven’t noticed, Adweek and Adage are in a fight to the death – for ad dollars, as well as for relevancy. Lately, bloggers and serious journalists alike have been taking the pair to task. Longtime advertising reporter Lewis Lazare of Chicago’s Sun Times recently wrote:
“Too much of the online editorial in both Adweek and its principal competitor Advertising Age nowadays is devoted to issues peripheral to the real business of advertising, which presumably is what both magazines were created to cover.”
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AdPulp followed up with written:
“This year’s Agency Report Card special report shows how little interest Adweek has in covering advertising agencies.”
These are just two examples of a larger sentiment. Look through any of the ad blog’s comments and you’ll find readers poo-pooing the publications coverage. In some cases, each of these outlets have some sharp writers such as Adweek’s Brian Morrissey and AdAge’s Nick Parish, but over all – the people are disappointed. FAIL.
So… the question is – what do you want AdAge/Adweek to do? How they hell can they serve us all better? I’ll kick off this list.
1. Look beyond the press release and write the real story. Damn the man!
2. Invest in investigative, long form journalism. Listen, AgencySpy is a blog. There’s places we can’t go because hell… lots of people don’t take us seriously. But you guys? You guys are for reals. You’re venerable. You have dedicated writers and budgets. Sure. Maybe it’s a small budget, but at least you have one. Brian Morrissey is writing some of the best long form advertising editorials over on his personal blog. Not for Adweek. What’s with that? Is it the fear of losing advertising dollars? Hell… Look at the NY Times. You’re going to lose them anyway, so why not at least, serve your public with great editorial?
3. Get local. If the NY Times and the Huffington Post can cover news by locality, then why can’t you guys get some bloggers together and just do the damn thing? We have one blogger full time on AgencySpy. We can’t get to it all, but damn… we’ve got more regional than you guys. Sad.
Who’s got number 4? Number 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9? The comments section awaits.