A short article for Editors
How do you make decisions about what adverts a parish magazine should include or exclude. For example, is it all right to include adverts for Aroma Therapy? What about Yoga? And can we include an Advert for the Lesbian Gay Christian Movement without creating havoc in the parish?
There isn’t a simple answer to this. Each parish will have its own views, its own readership, and its own prevailing theology and churchmanship. But there is a way that you can decide what is best for your parish.
Why include advertising?
The first thing you need to decide is why you want to include advertising in the first place. Advertising can bring in a steady and valuable income stream, and can deliver customers to the advertisers. But why are you thinking about including ads? Is it simply to raise money? Is it to provide a service for the readers? Or is it to help create a sense of community? And why should advertisers pay for ads in your magazine anyway? Do you deliver a large enough readership to make it worth their while in commercial terms, or are they advertising with you in order to show community solidarity, or to support the Church?
And what about the problem of design? Will you design their adverts, or will you ask them to supply a design? What about pictures – can your production process cope with them, or will you limit your ads to text only?
Produce a written advertising policy.
All these questions need to be answered, and you need to produce a written advertising policy which can be referred to when the sticky questions arise. Without a written policy, you are highly vulnerable to pressure. Write down the reasons for including advertising, and the basis for any exclusions.
First of all, you need to establish some agreed criteria by which you can measure the acceptability of an advertisement. And once you have an agreed set of criteria, you need to apply it to the obvious cases.
For example, you might set out the following criteria:
An advertisement is acceptable provided:
- It does not promote illegality
- It does not promote activities that are opposed to Christian Belief or discipleship as practiced in your parish.
- It will not offend a significant proportion of our readers (there will always be some who may take offence, and you can’t please everyone all the time).
An alternative set of criteria might be that an Advertisement is acceptable if:
- It brings in some money
- It doesn’t offend people
- It promotes things that can be done in our parish
There are all sorts of criteria that you could develop. The important thing is that the publisher of the Parish Magazine, whether it be the PCC or the Incumbent, should have clear criteria that can be used, and given to those people who are likely to complain if you refuse their request to advertise.
Having established your criteria, the next job is to try to create a ‘black list’ of things that you can easily say will not fit the list. Here is an example of some set against the first set of criteria above:
We do not accept advertisements for the following:
- Spiritualism
- Occult activities
- So called ‘Adult’ material
- ‘Counselling’ services
- Political advertising
- Financial Services
Once you have a written advertising policy, it should be agreed by the Parochial Church Council, who are the publishers of your parish magazine. Don’t make the decision by yourself – you will need the PCC’s backing if things go wrong. And the P.C.C. may wish to add criteria or individual items to the list.
Handling disputes
If things go wrong, and you get pressure from someone either to include, or to remove, an advertisement, the general rule is that the Editor’s decision is final. You can make that decision much more effectively if you have a written policy that you can send to the complainant, or better still, send to each advertiser so that they know what to expect. You could also publish your policy from time to time – it makes a great discussion point for letters or articles. For example, why exclude Spiritualism? This can lead to an article on the dangers of the Occult. And so on.
Review the policy
Every three years, or more often if they are keen, the P.C.C. should include a review of the parish magazine and its various policies, including the advertising policy, at a P.C.C. meeting. You will need a budget, and you should be able to separate out the income from advertising from the income from sales.
And enjoy it.
There’s nothing quite so much fun as growing a publication. Advertising can be great fun, especially if you get some big backers. And here’s a hint: Try contacting the Ecclesiastical Insurance Company for some sponsorship. Sponsorship is often as good as Advertising, and can sometimes be even better!
