In the news: The American Society of Magazine Editors have drafted guidelines for native advertising. Will these new rules become the industry norm?

Native advertising has spawned much debate within magazine publishing circles. Should magazines run ads easily mistaken for editorial content? If so, should there be guidelines to ensure that any sponsored content is easily identifiable? Publishers want to avoid the controversy that ensued in January when The Atlantic published native content sponsored by the Church of Scientology.

The American Society of Magazine Editors has weighed in with its own set of native advertising rules, inspired in part by The Atlantic's policy changes after its misstep. The new guidelines appear in the Best Practices for Digital Media. Read more commentary on the new rules here and the rules themselves here.

Also Notable

American Magazine Conference 2013

Last week, magazine professionals gathered for MPA's annual conference. Hot discussion topics included native advertising, the future of tablet publishing, the continued importance of print, postage rate hikes, and others. Read roundups of the concert here, here, and here.

Using Competitors' Content for Digital Editions?

Architectural Debut magazine has developed a digital edition rich in editorial content -- competitors' content. The magazine app makes it clear that the linked material comes from other publications; however, one editor whose publication's content appears on the app has expressed displeasure over the practice. Should a magazine be able to aggregate other publications' articles and monetize it as a magazine app? Read more here.

Today's Journalism

These days, cross-training between digital and print editorial departments is more important than ever. For a long time, it seemed that print was getting the lion's share of editing, while with digital the priority was up-to-the-minute content over writing quality and aesthetics. But this disparity between print and digital quality has lessened over the years. Read Foliomag.com's take on the "newest journalism" here.

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