Double Duty

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 2001 by Jimmy Guterman, Mark Miller

At least one writer-for-hire is beating the bad economy by soliciting payment from both publishers and advertisers.

Business-to-business magazines and the companies they cover often have a symbiotically complex relationship. The more esoteric the title, the more it depends upon the advertising of the companies it writes about for its economic survival. But, at the same time, the magazine's editorial must follow those companies aggressively enough to satisfy readers.

Accusations that beat reporters at trade papers are "drinking the Kool-Aid" supplied by the companies they cover are frequent--but what happens when there is something darker afoot: a clear, acknowledged financial relationship between a covered company and the reporter covering it?

Michael Trunko is one of what he claims are "many, many" freelance writers who are paid by companies to write about them in b-to-b magazines. Trunko solicits in both directions: He gets assignments from editors and he sells that access to companies looking for write-ups. Sometimes he tells the editors; most of the time he doesn't.

In one Trunko Communications contract obtained by Folio;, a potential client is asked to "check the box of your choice:

$4,500 for five articles--only $900 per article.

Or $4,500 for seven articles--Only $643 per article. Includes the writing and placement of five articles in publications of client's choice."

And in a Trunko Communications memo sent to Barco Products Co., a manufacturer of safety products that signed on for the seven-article package, Trunko writes, "When I got off the phone with you I called my associate who writes articles for the various restaurant and food publications. She said Restaurants & Institutions called yesterday to see if she could commit to an article for an upcoming issue. The editor has an opening but needs a commitment for an article from her on or before Monday, March 5, 2001. She said she would do your article!"

The memo goes on to make the following offer: "If you are willing to get the signed contract and check to me on or before Saturday, March 3, 2001, I'll throw in Restaurants & Institutions and College Planning & Management for FREE!"

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

Trunko is unabashed about his business practices. "When you think about it, 90 percent of what these magazines get are blatant sales pitches, so what's the difference between that and what I do?" he says. "At the top of my contract it says publicity services. What I do is PR. When I send out a news item, it's strictly PR. When I do an article for a client, like the one I did for [police management trade magazine] Law and Order, I got Tremco [a maker of antitheft systems for police cars] to hire me to write about them, and I pitched it to Law and Order. The guy I talked to at the magazine happened to have been a deputy sheriff before he was the editor. Once he was using the sheriff's patrol car, and the car got stolen. So, gosh, his ears perk up and everything." Trunko says Tremco paid him $1,250 for the piece.

Law and Order editor Ed Sanow says he was aware of Trunko's arrangement with the subject of his story. "This is a profound exception," he says, "but it does happen. We have some people who write for us who work for the companies the story is about. But when direct employees write, we don't pay them. What we do here is definitely not advertorial, promoting Product A at the expense of Product B."

ETHICS AND THE ECONOMY

Life as a freelancer is much tougher in this economy. Says Trunko, "Magazines these days, they just don't pay. Twenty or 30 years ago you'd get $400 or $600 dollars from a trade publication for a piece. You still get that today."

So isn't a little freelancing ingenuity acceptable, one may wonder? After all, magazine writers have been accepting perks and favors from advertisers forever. Entertainment and technology journalists are familiar with travel junkets, while book reviewers have shelves full of volumes provided for free from publishers. Prominent journalists have been known to receive birthday and holiday baskets from companies and independent publicists. And not every magazine has rules about such gifts.

The freebies may be prevalent--but some say Trunko's attempt to get paid by the subjects of his pieces as well as the publishers is another ethical matter entirely.

Indeed, some editors--including one contacted by Folio: who did not know that Trunko's work for that editor's magazine had been commissioned by a company--are wondering whether Trunko is attempting, in the words of one magazine executive, "to dupe people."

In March, Barco Products paid Trunko Communications the first half of a $4,500 fee to place seven articles about Barco in College Planning & Management and Restaurants & Institutions. According to Stephanie Sander, administrative assistant to the president of Barco, none of those seven pieces has appeared and, since she has contacted one of those magazines, she learned from the editor that "there is no chance that his article will be published" in Restaurants & Institutions. (Trunko blamed an illness for the delay in publishing the articles.)