Advertising 1, Journalism 0

For fashion magazine publishers, integrity is the ultimate luxury. When ad budgets are fat, they can afford a lot of it; when the flow of dollars slows to a trickle, advertisers start to feel their oats.

Judge for yourself, then, what it says about Harper's Bazaar confidence in its future prospects that the Hearst-owned fashion title gave over 40 pages of prime editorial space -- and the cover -- to the "stars" of an ad campaign for a new fragrance. (Personally, I side with the beauty industry analyst who tells the Times, "Boy, they really sold out.")

Of course, Hearst is eager to spin this as a valued "exclusive." But anyone who thinks average readers care one whit about the details of a new perfume launch is inhaling something a lot more potent than Estée Lauder's Sensuous. All you really need to know is who came up with the idea: not a Bazaar writer or editor, or even a publicist, but Esté Lauder group president John Demsey.

The whole thing is sadly in character for Hearst, which seems to be rapidly abandoning its commitment to the traditional separation between advertising and editorial. A few months ago, I kicked up a fuss when Esquire shamelessly donated itself as a venue for Victoria's Secret marketing. In 2003, Bazaar actually used an outtake of a Gap ad shoot as its cover image. And then there's Seventeen, whose previous editor, Atoosa Rubenstein, dropped out of the American Society of Magazine Editors rather than abide by its rule against putting brand names on the cover.

Of course, that was only prohibited under the old ASME guidelines. The current rules merely state, "Companies and products should appear on covers only in an editorial context and not in a way that suggests advertisement." As I said, integrity's a luxury, and right now the whole magazine industry's feeling pretty strapped.

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Disclosure: Portfolio is owned by Condé Nast, whose magazines compete with Hearst's.

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