This week on UnBeige... fallout over Esquire's Obama cover

Well, not surprisingly, Esquire is getting some negative reactions to their Obama cover, left, which featured a flip-open ad in the center of Shepard Fairey's now iconic image. The ad for Discovery Channel was featured on the left, while editorial content appeared on the right, or the cover side. Esquire Editor David Granger will address the controversy in an upcoming American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) Members' Lunch on February 24, but Granger has already responded to the controversy in a Q&A format on the ASME Web site, which UnBeige found and posted a news blurb on Feb. 9, linking themselves to the conversation via www.foliomag.com

Anyways, the fuss about the cover started shortly after it appeared on newsstands, when ASME questioned if the cover violated the Guidelines for Editors and Publishers. While the ASME Board of Directors concluded that the cover did not violate these guidelines, some of its members are worried that this may be the beginning of a trend to satisfy advertisers by doing quirky things like this. In the interview on ASME's Web site, Granger says the advertiser did not have an influence on what Esquire did with the cover.

"They did not have any," says Granger. "They didn't see the cover until it was shipped. Their only responsibility was to come up with the unique creative to make use of the inside of the five-inch-by-five-inch window. And the agency for Discovery did a great job of making it work."

Granger discloses that he asked his staff three years ago to find unconventional ways of making a magazine. Those months of experimentation led in part to this cover. Asked why he would do this, Granger replied:

"...I got sick of reading about the demise of print, which is the best, most rewarding medium ever, and I got sick of all forms of print being labeled "old media." Yeah print has been around for a long time, but that's because it works really well. Both aesthetically and as a business - which is more than one can say for most forms of "new media." So we've been trying to find ways to get people to reassess the print medium."

I thought that quote was interesting because he goes on to say from there that he doesn't believe that the Obama cover violated the so-called "sanctity" of the cover. In fact, he doesn't think its any more intrusive than the gatefolds magazines sometimes have on their covers.

So I think this was definitely his way of getting people to reassess the print medium. Is it effective? Yes. Does it violate the sanctity of the cover? Actually, I don't think so. I got this issue of Esquire because my Magazine Editing class talked about it. Had my professor not told our class that there was an ad on the cover under that flap, I don't think I would have noticed. And if you wanted to save it for keepsakes, like I'm doing, you could just fold the ad back onto the cover and it would look the same as if the ad were never there. Does anyone have a different opinion on this?