ProHipHop's Stance on XXL's Adverpictorial Back Cover

As I mentioned in my initial post regarding what I consider a surprisingly blatant crossing of the advertising/editorial divide, one of my favorite hip hop bloggers took me to task for some of my claims.  In addition to altering the post a bit, I've also been doing some thinking about my issues with Elliot Wilson that now really seem like an earlier chapter in hip hop blogging.

It's time to let personal grudges go because ProHipHop is moving to a different level of the game in a variety of interesting ways, some already visible, some still emerging behind the scenes, and holding on to such grudges will hold that progress back.

But I would have given anyone a hard time about that back cover and I would give anyone a hard time about some of the editorial statements regarding bloggers that Wilson was making before he added bloggers to XXL's website.

I also want to make it clear that I'm not really bringing marketers to task for the back cover.  The thing I like about marketers is that their agenda is so much more straightforward than anyone else's.  You know what they want and that makes it a lot easier to cut to the chase.

Plus, I really do think the advertising/editorial divide is one that must be maintained by journalists, editors and publishers because it is an important aspect of keeping the profession of journalism legitimate.  If marketers feel differently about their role, I'd love to hear about it, but history tells us that "marketing" is itself a term created as an alternative to the term "propaganda".

So I want to give big ups to the propagandists who pulled this one off.

It's unfortunate that it's about to become a major embarassment for Mr. Wilson among professional journalists, as I will discuss in a follow up post, though I feel sorrier for the many excellent writers at XXL whose integrity will also be tarnished by association.

Comments

[J. Dyme]

I find myself puzzled by this question of journalist integrity. And the only question I have is "why now?" I have been a subscriber to XXL since it's very first issue, the same one that happens to be in question and in Elliott Wilson's hands. When Wilson became Editor-in-Chief I lost half of my respect fot he magazine all together. Why are we questioning journalistic integrity NOW, when ALL ALONG his letters from the editor have been drenched with nothing but shit talking and ignorant garbage. Including bars that don't rhyme or even make sense. Someone should have questioned him the first time he did a Letter from the Editor and made the whole organization look like a clown operation. As a journalist I used to dream about working for XXL, now with Elliott Wilson's ridiculous antics as EIC...no thanks. Duh- anyone who knows journalism knows there is no question as to whether or not is wrong to cross the lines of advertising/marketing and editorial content. But let's back it up and talk about what's been going on from the start.

[Clyde Smith]

Why don't you click through the links to where I've discussed Elliot before?

Anyway, I'm not playing historian here. If you're so gung ho about the topic, why don't you do the work and post it online?

I've got too much to do as it is and he's really not that interesting a topic to make the focus of an in-depth study.

[Eric Wilson (no relation)]

I simply think hip hop editors don't respect journalism enough to not do this stuff.
All of them are just tabloids of hip hop and the web is going that route also. I saw think link via playahata.com