Citing “an unwritten policy against accepting ads containing religious messages,” Rolling Stone rejected an ad that Zondervan had booked for its Today’s New International Version Bible. An executive from the magazine’s parent company didn’t comment on why ad space had been sold to the religious publisher to begin with.
I suspect that the real problem RS has with the ad is that the guy in it isn’t in his underwear, surrounded by naked women.
So what’s the big whoop?
All magazines serve a specific theme and target a specific audience. US News goes after news junkies, PC Magazine goes for the geeks, Linux World goes after the uber-geeks, Woman’s Day targets females, GQ targets males. Rolling Stone is no different and the editors of RS realize that a Christian ad, or any other religious ad, really doesn’t fit their publication’s focus or target audience.
And before we get all high and mighty towards RS, I don’t really see many Muslim, Pagan, Hindu or Buddhist adverts in there either. Conversely I don’t see many Calvin Klein ads in Christianity Today nor have I spied a beer ad in The Christian Century. Why? Because such ads really don’t fit their focus. Whether or not they’ve been approached by Calvin Klein or Budweiser is irrelevant. I think we’d all agree that, if they were, they’d deny the ads.
And let’s be fair about this. Rolling Stone is a privately run magazine. It’s not a public forum, it’s not a public magazine. It’s a private affair run by private individuals. They have the right to deny anything for their magazine, and that doesn’t just mean ads. I wonder how many stories are denied or placed on the back burner every month at RS.
TNIV is controversial in and of itself…
I remember in my upper division church history and ministry classes the furor over the release of TNIV. TNIV is a politically correct attempt at removing gender-specific language from the text. Some of my friends who were really into koine Greek and ancient Hebrew had problems with such translational reinterpretation.
As to Rolling Stone dumping the ad, I would not be surprised that some “Christian publications” would not run the ad either.
Re:So what’s the big whoop?
You are entirely correct and there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone like Walmart refusing to sell certain movies, books or music. Rolling Stone or Walmart owns the sandbox and they get to make up their own rules.
No big whoop
I agree: RS can run or turn down whatever ads they want, and it’s really no big deal. Though it does seem that the RS target audience (hedonistic young pop-culture fans?) is the same group Zondervan was going for. Anyway, the free publicity will probably result in more Bible sales than the RS ad would have.
I posted the item because it seemed sort of strange that the magazine would have sold ad space to a major Christian publisher (which RS did) if they have this “unwritten policy.” And, let’s face it, if some magazine were to reject an ad for, say, a Michael Moore book, that would probably hit LISNews, too.
Looking back over a few issues of RS, I notice a few ads which are possibly relevant to the present news item <grin>:
1. In the past couple issues, they’ve run small ads for a t-shirt vendor, featuring a shirt with an open-armed Jesus and the caption, “Put down the drugs and come get a hug.”
2. The Dec. 30 issue includes a full-page ad that refers to the latest edition of the Rolling Stone Album Guide as "The bible of rock record guides."
3. Also in the Dec. 30 issue, there’s a quarter-page ad paying tribute to 30 years of Todd Rundgren’s music. As we all know, Todd is God.
Oh, and the cover of the Jan. 27 RS says that Gwen Stefani is “A Rock Goddess With Major Issues.”