Newsweek blurs the ad lines

Newsweek's redesign has incurred plenty of comments about where news is heading and what the magazine now provides, but this week's issue of Newsweek stepped beyond the normal, design-and-content blabber and took a bold step where a newsmagazine probably shouldn't be going.

Part of Newsweek's redesign is the swaths of white space surrounding the columns of text that somewhat fill its pages, and this week Newsweek got creative and sold adspace in those wide white spaces. Here's the catch: the ad and redesign go together so seamlessly, there's no real break where the advertiser is advertising and Newsweek is news-ing, which makes it look like they go together.

Amazon's ad pokes up in the bottom lefthand corner, and a portion of text points to the Newsweek story with an arrow, saying "In the time it takes you read this excerpt, you can wirelessly download an entire book." (And to complicate things, Newsweek is indeed running a book excerpt, which is another form of meshing the divide between coverage and promotion.) The Newsweek story is boxed off by a very thin blue line, but across the spread, Newsweek's fine-print masthead gives the appearance of being the ad's fine print, without any separation from the excerpt's photos, which hang in the margins.

Basically, Newsweek is going from running ads that look like content (which they do earlier in the issue, advertising for books in their books section) to running ads that wrap into the content. A bold, daring way to make money? No, I don't think so. Rather, it's just another way the new design is cheapening a strong product.